The theme of indivisibility in the post-war struggle against prejudice in the United States
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 48; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0031322x.2014.922773
ISSN1461-7331
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoABSTRACTWhitfield's essay seeks to identify and explain a tendency that emerged in the United States in the 1940s and extended through the 1950s. It was then that a notion became commonplace, especially among liberals, that the victims of prejudice were interchangeable and that bigotry was undifferentiated. Before the 1940s, the problem of prejudice was not widely believed to be urgent; but the war against the Third Reich heightened awareness of the price of an irrational hostility to minorities. American liberals in particular came to the understanding that bigotry was indivisible; and, for its objects, the cards of identity could easily be shuffled. Whether the victims were Jews or Negroes or homosexuals, the hatred that they elicited appeared to be formed without making any distinctions among them. Evidence can be found in the culture of those two decades, in novels, plays and films. The unitary view of the character of prejudice had some support in social science, including in the authoritative volume The Authoritarian Personality. The theory would also be reflected in a major shift in the agenda of Jewish civil rights organizations, which redefined their mission as promoting the democratic rights of all minorities rather than the particular interests of American Jews. This distinctive tendency vanished in the 1960s, however. One reason for the change was a fuller appreciation of the hostility that minorities could harbour towards other minorities. The realization also deepened of the singular vulnerability of black Americans under the pressure of racism, which demonstrated a tenacity as well as a proclivity for violence that had been largely absent from other forms of bigotry. Finally, a broader legitimation of difference itself emerged in the 1960s to bury the notion that minorities were fungible.KEYWORDS: American Jewish CommitteeantisemitismCrossfireThe Diary of Anne FrankDore ScharyExodusGentleman's AgreementHome of the BraveNAACPprejudiceSouth PacificWest Side Story The author appreciates the opportunity to have presented an early version of this paper at the annual conference of the British Association of American Studies, held in Manchester in 2012. For very helpful comments on drafts of this essay, the contributions of Jeffrey Demsky, Scott Feinberg, Lawrence J. Friedman, Richard H. King, Joel Rosenberg and Judith Smith are deeply appreciated.The author appreciates the opportunity to have presented an early version of this paper at the annual conference of the British Association of American Studies, held in Manchester in 2012. For very helpful comments on drafts of this essay, the contributions of Jeffrey Demsky, Scott Feinberg, Lawrence J. Friedman, Richard H. King, Joel Rosenberg and Judith Smith are deeply appreciated.Notes1 Constance Webb, Richard Wright: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons 1968), 292–3 (letter quoted 293).2 Donald Weber, ‘The limits of empathy: Hollywood's imaging of Jews circa 1947’, in Jack Kugelmass (ed.), Key Texts in American Jewish Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 2003), 91–104.3 Dore Schary, Heyday: An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown 1979), 157.4 Quoted in Robert L. Fleegler, ‘“Forget all differences until the forces of freedom are triumphant”: the World War II-era quest for ethnic and religious tolerance’, Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 27, no. 2, 2008, 59–84 (76).5 Quoted in Robert L. Fleegler, ‘“Forget all differences until the forces of freedom are triumphant”: the World War II-era quest for ethnic and religious tolerance’, Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 27, no. 2, 2008, 65; David R. Roediger, Working toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books 2005), 235–44.6 Quoted in Fleegler, ‘“Forget all differences until the forces of freedom are triumphant”’, 65; Marc Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2000), 77.7 Arthur Miller, Focus (New York: Penguin 1984), 217. See also Donald Weber, Haunted in the New World: Jewish American Culture from Cahan to The Goldbergs (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2005), 109; Judith E. Smith, Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press 2004), 144.8 Quoted in Christopher Bigsby, Arthur Miller, 1915–1962 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2009), 258, 259.9 Arthur Miller, The Crucible (New York: Bantam Books 1952), 6; Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York: Vintage Books 2003), 21.10 Quoted in Smith, Visions of Belonging, 163.11 Quoted in Smith, Visions of Belonging, 162; and in John Mason Brown, ‘Seeing things: if you prick us’, Saturday Review, vol. 30, 6 December 1947, 68–71 (71).12 Quoted in Smith, Visions of Belonging, 150.13 Quoted in Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1980), 443, and in Smith, Visions of Belonging, 151.14 Arthur Laurents, Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2000), 14; Smith, Visions of Belonging, 134–8.15 Stanley Kramer, A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: A Life in Hollywood (New York and London: Harcourt Brace 1997), 33.16 ‘Good for cannon fodder . . . but not for anything else!!’ Laurents, Original Story By, 50–1, 178; Kramer, A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 35; John P. Roche, The Quest for the Dream: The Development of Civil Rights and Human Relations in Modern America (New York: Macmillan 1963), 206.17 Kramer, A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 34, 40–1, 43.18 Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Random House 1956), vii; Kramer, A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 34, 40.19 Ethan Mordden, Rodgers & Hammerstein (New York: Harry N. Abrams 1992), 118, 121; James A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (New York: Macmillan 1947), 111–12; Lawrence Downes, ‘Bloody Mary is the girl I love’, New York Times, 4 April 2008.20 Hugh Fordin, Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II (New York: Random House 1977), 270–1; ‘N.A.A.C.P. reports sharp rise in number of life memberships’, New York Times, 7 May 1967.21 Oscar Hammerstein II, ‘You've got to be taught’, in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Six Plays by Rodgers and Hammerstein (New York: Modern Library 1953), 346–7.22 John Bush Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England 2003), 152–3; Fordin, Getting to Know Him, 270n.23 Leonard Bernstein, Findings (New York: Simon and Schuster 1982), 144; Laurents, Original Story By, 329; Deborah Jowitt, Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance (New York: Simon and Schuster 2004), 266–7; Elizabeth A. Wells, West Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press 2011), 28, 30; Misha Berson, Something's Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination (Milwaukee: Applause 2011), 20–30, 207–8.24 Quoted in Wells, West Side Story, 30; Craig Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 2nd edn (New York: Harper & Row 1986), 14; Martin Gottfried, Broadway Musicals (New York: Harry N. Abrams 1979), 54, 64.25 Berson, Something's Coming, Something Good, 209.26 Quoted in Smith, Visions of Belonging, 323; ‘A Raisin in the Sun: epic movie version to rival stage play's huge success’, Ebony, vol. 16, April 1961, 53–6 (55).27 Eliza R. L. McGraw, ‘Southern Jewishness on screen’, in Lawrence Baron (ed.), The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England 2011), 278–80 (278); Melissa Fay Greene, The Temple Bombing (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley 1996), 280–7, 288–9, 408–9, 412–13; Clive Webb, Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right in the Civil Rights Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press 2010), 163.28 Archibald MacLeish, J.B.: A Play in Verse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1958), 12; Robert Vanderlan, Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas inside Henry Luce's Media Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2010), 127–36.29 Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, trans. from the Dutch by B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1953), 186–7.30 Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, The Diary of Anne Frank (New York: Random House 1956), 168; Lawrence Graver, An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary (Berkeley: University of California Press 1995), 59–60; Ralph Melnick, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank: Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the Diary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1997), 108–9.31 Quoted in Melnick, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank, 115–18, and in Smith, Visions of Belonging, 254.32 Milton Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor 1972), 11–12, 14–15, 42, 79–80, 96, 176, 177, 181, 186, 198, 257–8, 261, 282, 285, 290.33 Quoted in Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 78, see also 86–91.34 Quoted in Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941–1945 (New York: Simon and Schuster 2002), 51.35 See Roche, The Quest for the Dream, 190, 197; Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 79.36 Quoted in Fleegler, ‘“Forget all differences until the forces of freedom are triumphant”’, 69.37 Fleegler, ‘“Forget all differences until the forces of freedom are triumphant”’, 61, 62–3, 70, 79.38 Quoted in ‘Superman and the “Clan of the Fiery Cross”’, B'nai B'rith Magazine, vol. 125, no. 4, 2011, 15; Stuart Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press 1997), 44–5.39 Marianne R. Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945–2006 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England 2007), 51.40 Quoted in David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor 1953), 222–4, 234, 270; Leonard Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home: Antisemitism and the American Jewish Experience (New York: Columbia University Press 1987), 181–2.41 Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong, 31–2.42 Quoted in Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New Press 2009), 308; Sanua, Let Us Prove Strong, 32.43 Quoted in Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2006), 115; Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice, 95, 97.44 Quoted in Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 145; Greenberg, Troubling the Waters, 126; Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice, 83; Art Simon, ‘Make Way for Youth: the American Jewish Committee and the social problem film’, American Jewish History, vol. 97, no. 4, 2013, 367–89 (371).45 Quoted in Fleegler, ‘“Forget all differences until the forces of freedom are triumphant”’, 77.46 President's Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights (New York: Simon and Schuster 1947), 133–4.47 Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 353.48 Greenberg, Troubling the Waters, 121, 123; Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice, 8, 10, 11, 179.49 Quoted in Gerald L. Early, A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2011), 59.50 Quoted in Jonathan Kaufman, Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times between Blacks and Jews in America (New York: Simon and Schuster 1995), xi, 45, 66, 69; Martin Luther King, Jr, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper 1964), 143.51 John Higham, Send These to Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in Urban America (New York: Atheneum 1975), 176; John Higham, ‘American anti-Semitism historically reconsidered’, in George Salomon (ed.), Jews in the Mind of America (New York: Basic Books 1966), 237–58 (238); Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice, 18.52 Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Boston: Beacon Press 1954), 68, 69.53 Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Boston: Beacon Press 1954), 68, 73, 74; Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1996), 16–19, 44.54 T. W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford, in collaboration with Betty Aron, Maria Hertz Levinson and William Morrow, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper 1950).55 Higham, Send These to Me, 174–5; Philip Gleason, Speaking of Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1992), 98, 162, 171; Richard H. King, Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals, 1940–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2004), 75–94.56 Quoted in Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice, 30.57 Arnold Rose and Caroline Rose, America Divided: Minority Group Relations in the United States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1948), v, 3; Gleason, Speaking of Diversity, 98.58 Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York: Harper 1941).59 John Collier, The Indians of the Americas (New York: W. W. Norton 1947).60 Bruno Bettelheim and Morris Janowitz, Dynamics of Prejudice: A Psychological and Sociological Study of Veterans (New York: Harper 1950), 41–2, 160; Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown 1973), 236.61 Bettelheim and Janowitz, Dynamics of Prejudice, 27–31; Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality, 624.62 Maurice Samuels, ‘Renoir's The Grand Illusion and the “Jewish question”’, in Baron (ed.), The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema, 40–9 (41).63 Benny Lévy, ‘Today's hope: conversations with Sartre’, Telos, no. 44, Summer 1980, 155–81 (177–8); Weber, ‘The limits of empathy’, 102; Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. from the French by George J. Becker (New York: Grove Press 1960), 53, 54, 69; King, Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals, 59, 60.64 Nathan Perlmutter, conversation with author, Waltham, Massachusetts, circa 1970.65 Quoted in Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston: Little, Brown 2003), 29; Richard J. Whalen, The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: New American Library 1966), 79–80; Higham, Send These to Me, 193.66 Eric J. Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1995), 4, 40, 43, 143.67 Quoted in Eric J. Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1995), 41, 46.68 Quoted in [Dalton Trumbo], ‘Exodus: people are different’, in J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler (eds), Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2003), 214.69 Leon Uris, Exodus (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1958). See also Deborah Dash Moore, ‘Exodus: real to reel to real’, in Hoberman and Shandler (eds), Entertaining America, 207–19 (212–13).70 Quoted in John Skow, ‘Verdict on a superstar’, Time, vol. 120, 6 December 1982, 71.71 Black Anti-Semitism and Jewish Racism (New York: R. W. Baron 1969).72 Quoted in Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 195–6.73 Quoted in Tip O'Neill with William Novak, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O'Neill (New York: Random House 1987), 122.Additional informationNotes on contributorsStephen J. WhitfieldStephen J. Whitfield holds the Max Richter Chair in American Civilization at Brandeis University. He is the author of A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till and In Search of American Jewish Culture, among other works. His article, ‘Nixon and the Jews’, appeared in Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 44, no. 5, 2010. Email: swhitfie@brandeis.edu
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