Yours
in Struggle : Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and
Racism by
Elly Bulkin
These thought-provoking personal essays examine
the political reality of racism and anti-semitism from the
perspectives of three lesbian activists from widely-differing
backgrounds and identities who share mutual respect for each
other's work. White, Christian-raised Southerner Minnie Bruce
Pratt, asks: "Where does the need come from, the inner push
to walk into change, if by skin color, ethnicity, birth culture,
we are women who are in a position of material advantage, where we
gain at the expense of others, other women?" Barbara Smith,
an African-American, examines the difficulty of talking about
anti-semitism to Black women and about racism to Jewish women
because, in a white-supremist patriarchy, "white skin, and if
you have it, class privilege, definitely count for something, even
if you belong at the very same time to a group or to groups that
the society despises." Elly Bulkin, an Ashkenazi Jew, traces
the roots and growth of racism and anti-semitism and ends with an
appendix of questions "intended to challenge, to reveal
changes in attitudes... to underscore how much each of us still
has to learn" about our own culturally-ingrained racist and
anti-semitic thinking and feeling. As these authors offer
righteous rage without anger and detailed analysis without tedium,
their experienced concern with everyday justice charges this work
with life-affirming energy.
Firebrand Books has reprinted this important
feminist title, originally published in 1984 by Long Haul Press.
It is not a speck less relevant in 1989. If anything, intervening
events have made it an even more essential piece of required
reading. At home, statistics on hate crimes have gone through the
roof. Renewed discussion of the relationship between
Jewish-Americans and African-Americans has been sparked by each of
Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns and the development of a
rainbow coalition, which has offered an umbrella full of pain and
promise to all Americans. In the Middle East, cracks have begun to
appear in the deadlock of race and nationality, blood and
religion. If the new initiatives of the Israeli peace movement,
the PLO, and even our own government give us much-needed reasons
for optimism, we must also remember that the Palestinian Intifada
is eighteen months old. And chances are very good that more people
will die. Yours in Struggle is a book for anyone interested in the
highly personal policies of racism and anti-semitism in the United
States. It consists of three essays, written respectively by each
of the book's three authors. Elly Bulkin, a well-known activist,
essayist, and novelist, is white and an Ashkenazi Jew. Minnie
Bruce Pratt, a gifted poet who recently was given the Lamont Award
for Poetry by the Academy of American Poets, is white,
Christian-raised, and southern. Barbara Smith, one of the founders
of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and a widely published
critic, is African-American. These three women write
self-consciously about their differences of color and culture, yet
their insights are rooted equally in their common languages:
commitment to feminism; shared pride in lesbian experience; and
their belief-in the face of denial, rage, and ignorance-in basic
human dignity and desire for change. Each one of these authors
took steps toward untying the knots of racism and anti-semitism
by, to paraphrase Minnie Bruce Pratt, stepping outside her circles
of protection. In their unique ways, Bulkin, Pratt, and Smith all
explore the idea that these circles of protection are illusory.
Their illusions of safety are the same ones we all cling to. Yours
in Struggle traces these emotional and political bonds to
complicated relationships among nationality, religion, sexuality,
money, gender, and a host of other "identities" that
history has weighted with fear and meaning. Together, the three
essays span a gamut of writing from polemic to personal odyssey to
suggestions for activism. The emotional range is at least as wide.
Readers of any and all backgrounds will surely be able to locate
themselves at some point, and probably at many points, along a
spectrum that moves from despair though anger to hope. Certainly,
there is much more to say about the complex political and
institutional histories of American racism and antisemitism than
can fit between the cover of this or any book. But Yours in
Struggle is a good place to start. Its focus on the personal
consequences of bigotry is what makes it uniquely moving, brutally
honest, and keenly challenging. Its feminist vision is always
right there, translating the politics of race and religion into a
familiar, discomforting, and illun-dnating vocabulary of daily
life and gritty experience that, I am convinced, is the key to
transcending paralysis and moving toward action.
Also from Elly Bulkin:
