What I am about to say will sound really crazy but here it goes. In los angeles, we were headed in the direction you speak but some of us community organizers got involved in the anti-apartheid movement and became upset at the jewish support for Israel which was a major trading partner of apartheid south africa. So, we ostracized the jewish community, in which we were long time allies, and switched to the hispanics, who later started to identify as latino. this was a mistake because we would have MAINTAINED political leverage by working out our issues with the jewish community instead of switching to the latinos who turned against us once they became the larger "minority". at least we still would to this date outnumber the jews. I went to high school with a large jewish population and am fully aware of racism in their community against blacks but they did tend to identify with us more than the latinos, and in many ways still do. the person who helped me to realize this mistake was paul mooney, of all people. until recently as a film student i really didnt study much the history of black comedy and after studying mooney, and richard pryor i realized that many of thier "ghost writers" were jewish and they wrote a lot of the most "black conscious" and politically progressive of their material. and when i went to my 30 year high school reunion in 2005 this hit me like a ton of bricks. i remembered how back in the day the crips used to jump some of the "white" jewish students on martin luther king day (before it was a school holiday) and how me and some of my friends used to protect some of the guys who played football or baseball with us and black students used to take off from school on jewish holidays out of a sense of solidarity, with no problem from school officials, many of whom were our athletic coaches. and this was at fairfax hs. for years i was mad at jewish people, many of whom did not and still do not approve of the politics of the state of israel. it's kinda funny now when i think about cynthia mckinney running for president as a green party candidate, because a lot of greens are jewish activists from the 60s and 70s who are anti-war, pro-peace, support the rights of the palestinians, while many black folks from the same era have done an about face, turned republican, or are democrats who did not rally behind her when she came under attack. and a lot of those same "greens" in NoCal voted Obama in the California primary. but in SoCal, the black democrats led the hillary clinton brigade.
