I fully expected the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., to turn into a hate-filled demonstration against African-Americans. What caught me by surprise, though, was the venomous attack on Jews.
Please allow me to speak candidly about my embarrassing miscalculation of the depth of anti-Semitism that exists today.
As an African-American raised in the South, I am painfully aware of the symbolism behind a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee erected in a public park. However, I did not immediately grasp the Nazi-inspired message behind the chants “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.”
Before Charlottesville, some of us assumed that hatred against Jews paled today in comparison to the contempt blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and other minorities face in America.
While there has been an increase in bomb threats against Jewish institutions across America recently, overall anti-Semitic incidents still remain historically low. The most notable rise has been on college campuses, according to the Anti-Defamation League. But these incidents garnered less attention than recent attacks on other groups.
You could argue that Jews assimilated into American society after the Holocaust more easily than blacks did after slavery. You could ignore their fears and say their white skin gave them an advantage that other persecuted groups could never have.
Some may have thought that was enough to safeguard Jews from overt displays of hatred. But Charlottesville proved that bigotry has no racial, ethnic or religious boundaries. When unleashed on Jews, is as vile and contemptible as the hatred of blacks and other minorities.
While I might have been surprised to see swastika banners being held high at a rally to save a Confederate monument, many Jews were not. They are well aware of the increase in negative attitudes and hostility that, according to the ADL, has surged since the beginning of the year.
For my 82-year-old friend, Ann, the recent incidents bring back memories of a painful period when anti-Semitism was pretty much accepted.
A few days before the Charlottesville rally, Ann and I were having lunch and talking about news events. She had always wanted to be a journalist, she said. But when she applied to journalism school in 1951, she was turned down, despite her good grades and impressive portfolio.
She recalled meeting with a man in admissions who told her, “You look like a good candidate, but we can’t take any more of your people because for two or three years, we have our quota.”
“I shrugged my shoulders because that’s the way it was back then,” she said. “You kept your mouth shut so you wouldn’t get into trouble.”
Though Ann eventually found her true calling as an artist and a teacher, she would never forget how anti-Semitism shaped her life.
Another time, she told me about having to run for her life when she was 11 or 12 after taking a shortcut home through a neighborhood where Jews were not welcome.
She was late leaving the library and decided to cut through a West Side neighborhood her parents had forbidden her to go to. A group of young men, one wielding an ax, chased her and her friends and shouted anti-Semitic slurs. She and her friends got away by running to a nearby drugstore, where the owner just happened to be standing outside.
Those types of incidents rarely occur these days. But since Charlottesville, when neo-Nazis took to the streets, unafraid of showing their faces while promoting the so-called resurrection of the white race, it is clear that anti-Semitism did not fade with time.
With the attention focused on Confederate monuments, African-Americans are in the forefront now. But hatred toward Jews stems from biblical times — so far back that Ann wonders if it will ever end.
If anything, Charlottesville proved that hatred is cyclical. It may focus on one group today and another group tomorrow. And it will come around again and again — until someone stops the wheel from turning.
dglanton@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @dahleeng