Black, Jewish, and Interracial

Abstract

Black, Jewish, and Interracial: It's Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity. KATYA GIBEL AZOULAY. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1997; 219 pp. Reviewed by P. L. SUNDERLAND The BIRIS Group, Inc., Chicago As the title and subtitle suggest, Gibel Azoulay's Black, Jewish, and explores questions of identity formation among Americans who are Jewish and Black. The book stresses the importance of recognizing the multiple or coupling nature of these identities and, as such, is attuned to contemporary racial/ethnic understandings found in both the American public sphere and recent scholarship. In other ways this work is highly unique and unusual, although potentially problematic for anthropologists. Gibel Azoulay openly expresses many of the personal and motivations that inform her study. As she states clearly on page 1, The idea for this research project originates with my personal background as the daughter of an couple who insisted on the compatibility of raising me with a sense of a dual heritage, Jewish and Black. Politically, the author has projects which lie well beyond simply the acceptance of multiple or coupled identities. Gibel Azoulay wants to disrupt American thinking which produces the equations Jewish - White and Black - Not Jewish. She also wants to disrupt racial thinking generally. For Gibel Azoulay individuals are the embodiment of this disruption; she views being as specialized capital useful in challenging the racial and ethnic status quo. The term interracial is carefully chosen. The author advocates the acceptance of Jewish and Black identities, yet harbors concerns about multiracialism and unreflective embracings of multiple identities. She sums up this worry well: Multiracial does not signify an end to race thinking but is suggestive of a diminishing affirmative attitude toward blackness (p. 99). Gibel Azoulay is troubled by the annihilation potential of assimilation on behalf of both Black and Jewish existences. In this context she analyzes the consequences of Boas' anti-racist motivated assimilation position as nonetheless ultimately negative for both Jewish and Black communities. Gibel Azoulay aligns herself with Black intellectuals who are critical of the political myopia of deconstructionists and the essentialism of Afrocentricity. As a Black woman insisting on Jewish identity, and as a Jewish woman insisting on Black identity, she is also combating notions of inherent tension between Jewish and Black individuals and communities. Importantly, Gibel Azoulay argues that the racial thinking that leads to the equation of Jewishness with whiteness is American, not Jewish. To make such a claim the author draws on experience and information bolstered by living in Israel. The study privileges -- explicitly and implicitly - the Jewish aspect of Black Jewish identities. This important aspect of the book is also clearly informed by the author's Israel experience. She tells us that after growing up in the United States, she lived for 21 years in Israel, and is now not only a speaker of Hebrew, but also the mother of three Israeli-born children. These personal and motivations are part of what makes this study unique. These aspects are not, however, what makes the book seem unusual or potentially problematic. Rather, particulars of research method combined with the literature and argument used for analytic purposes are what render this work remarkable. Black, Jewish, and consists of four chapters framed by a prelude and coda. In the prelude and first three chapters the author repeatedly reminds and tempts the reader with the promise of her interview data to be presented in the fourth chapter. Gibel Azoulay uses the language of ethnography and the anthropological reader builds up expectations that contextualized, thick, ethnographic interview material is likely to follow. …

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