Bicausalism Type B

Alabama

Here’s a brief explanation of why I lean toward “Bicausalism Type B”:

The short answer is Southern history. Jews have always lived in the South, but Southern Jews only played a marginal role in the downfall of our social institutions. The most obvious example would be the abolitionist movement, the War Between the States, and the destruction of the Confederacy.

Jews were never perceived as the major threat to slavery by antebellum Southerners. Try real hard to think of the Jews who were behind the abolitionist movement. Prominent Jews like Judah Benjamin of Louisiana and David Yulee of Florida resigned from the Senate when their states seceded from the Union. Jews fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States.

During Reconstruction, Southern Jews joined the Ku Klux Klan. Montgomery was redeemed from Reconstruction by its first Jewish mayor, Mordecai Moses, who ran as “the true White man’s candidate.” Throughout the Jim Crow era, Southern Jews were part of the commercial elite in cities like Montgomery and Selma, and never seemed to have any problem accommodating themselves to segregation and white supremacy.

When the Civil Rights Movement erupted in the 1950s, Southern Jews were embarrassed by the sheer number of Northern Jews who came to the South, particularly in Selma and Montgomery, and many of them even joined the White Citizens’ Council. In the South, the Civil Rights Movement was never associated with the Jewish population. It was seen as the work of “outside agitators” – Jews, Quakers, Catholics, Northern Protestants, Unitarians – Jewish and Yankee radicals who arrived in the South from some point of departure in the Northeast or Midwest.

The history of the South is different from the history of the North. The threat to the South’s racial order has always come from the outside – through the existence of the Union – whereas in the North it has always come from the enemy within.

Basically, I don’t see Jews as the primary infection because, if it were not for the existence of the Union, I just don’t see Southern Jews overthrowing slavery, destroying the Confederacy, or rising up to overthrow the Jim Crow system.

Update: Here’s an excerpt from one of the most fascinating books about the Jewish Question in the South that I have ever read, Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights:

“Opposition to Northern intrusion was also indicative of the fact that some southern Jews were intensely skeptical, if not openly scornful, of the need for immediate integration. Over half the interviewees included in sociologist Alfred Hero’s survey of southern Jewry argued that desegregation was proceeding “too fast,” admitting that they felt emotionally ill at ease about integration even when they accepted it as inevitable and in the long run desirable.” The ideological differences between northern and Southern Jews clearly expressed in a letter addressed to the American Jewish Committee by Montgomery, Alabama, Jewish Federation. “The White community in the South is generally opposed to desegregation,” read the letter. “The Jewish community in the South is part of the white community in the South.” …

Al Vorspan recalled one particularly heated discussion with Montgomery’s leaders that took place behind a locked door of a downtown hotel room. Having hoped he might convince his audience that the national Jewish organizations were taking the moral highground in supporting integration, Vorspan was horrified to hear himself and other New York Jews described as being “worse than Adolph Hitler” because of the way they “stirred up anti-Semitism.”

Here’s another revealing excerpt about the integration of Atlanta:

“For Charlie Leb, the Civil Rights Act was the beginning of the end. His intransigence had been a cause of considerable embarrassment to the Atlanta Jewish community. Marvin Goldstein shakes his head as he concedes that Leb was a “rabid” segregationist. “He shouldn’t have been,” asserts Goldstein. “He came from humble surroundings.”

Leb had always insisted that his business remained segregated only out of respect for the sensitivities of his white customers. This was nothing if not disingenuous. Situated on the same street as Leb’s was another restaurant called Harrod’s, which had desegregated before the sit-ins ever began. Almost every day, those who tried to eat at Harrod’s had to first pass through a Klan picket line. By contrast, the Klan posed no threat to Charlie Leb. As Charles Wittenstein explains, “He was getting a lot of admiration and attention and was the hero of the white race and that segregationist crowd, and he bought into it and continued to do so.” On January 27, 1965, a dinner was held in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., who had recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Among those who organized and attended the dinner were many of Atlanta’s Jews. Outside on the street, Klansmen paraded in protest. Marching alongside them was Charlie Leb. …”

Here’s another excerpt from Mississippi:

“This might initially appear a rather contentious remark. We have already seen that Jews ordinarily joined the Citizens Council not out of any ideological conviction but as a means of deflecting attention from their true feelings on the race issue. Yet in Jackson itself one of the most articulate spokespersons in defense of segregation was indeed a Jew, Al Binder. Binder, an attorney, was closely associated with the power structure, not only in Jackson, but throughout the state. It was he who led the prosecution of the Freedom Riders in 1961. “Al’s one of us,” asserted the leader of Mississippi’s massive resistance movement. “He’s our Jew.”