Blacks and Jews: The Two Groups That Backed Harris
A blueprint for renewed cooperation
This is a guest post from the JPF family by Jeffrey Kass, author of Black Batwoman v. White Jesus: and other essays from the anti-racism collection.
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Blacks and Jews: The Two Groups That Backed Harris
by Jeffrey Kass
In the 2020 election, nearly 70% of Latinos backed Biden. Over 70% of Muslims voted for Biden.
Biden beat Trump by over 15% among women.
Biden soundly defeated Trump among voters under 44 and even tied Trump in voters in the 45–65 age range.
Biden won the suburban vote by a couple of points.
Other than white men, Biden won nearly every demographic in 2020.
But in 2024, things shifted dramatically. Trump won or massively cut into nearly every group except two.
As we’ve all learned by now, Trump won 46% of the Latino vote, compared to under 35% in 2020. This is despite Trump’s repeated calls for mass deportations of their relatives and falsely claiming Mexicans are in many cases “criminals, drug dealers and rapists.” And despite commenting that immigrants “poison the blood” of this country.
In swing states like Michigan, Trump won a staggering 58% of Latino voters, compared to just 39% for Harris, according to an Edison poll.
At a Denver Nuggets game just before the election, a Black friend and I shook our heads in disappointment when we noticed several young Latino men wearing MAGA hats. It’s anecdotal, but I hadn’t seen that image before.
Nationwide, 54% of Latino men supported Trump.
Significantly less than 50% of Muslim voters voted for Harris, easily forgetting Trump’s prior statements about a complete shutdown of Muslim immigrants to the U.S.
Trump even gained dramatically among white women. And suburbanites.
Despite all these alarming shifts, two groups remained solidly in Harris’s corner.
Blacks and Jews.
Though Trump made some small inroads with Black men, especially those under 45 years old, 80% of Black men still backed Harris; 93 % of Black women also voted for the Vice President.
For Jews, over 70% of whom have backed the Democratic presidential candidate for decades, their numbers also remained steady. Anywhere from 66% to 79% of Jews backed the Vice President.
These votes have historical significance.
Since the early 1900s, when most Jews started immigrating to America (and even more after the Holocaust), numerous Blacks and Jews worked together to fight injustice, extremism, and inequality.
While their experiences were not the same by any stretch, Blacks and Jews both understood what it felt like to be treated as less than. To be different.
Jews and Blacks formed The Urban League and NAACP. They worked together with Dr. King in protesting the Jim Crow South. They backed each other’s policy priorities in Congress for decades.
Jewish Supreme Court Justices like Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and Arthur Goldberg helped pave the way for Thurgood Marshall to confront racial inequality in our laws.
Current Jewish Justice Elena Kagan even clerked for Justice Marshall.
Young Black and Jewish men and women died protesting lynching and Jim Crow laws.
Giants of the Black movement, including Nobel Prize winner Ralph Bunche, Dr. King, John Lewis and Medgar Evers, all understood that the fight for equality had a much better chance of success with their Jewish friends and brothers working alongside. Dr. King was an unwavering supporter and ally of the Jewish people.
Among his closest collaborators was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Prophet's Prophet | My Jewish Learning
Abraham Joshua Heschel. Modern Jewish Thought. Jewish History and Community.
But something happened after the 70s.
Jews, like every other group, moved out of the cities. They followed the white majority to the suburbs.
Jews, who just a few decades prior were not permitted admission to many top universities, were now admitted in large numbers. Jews, who were not allowed to enter many professions, were now becoming doctors and lawyers.
Clubs and other organizations that for decades had excluded Jews were starting to let a few trickle in.
This change created distance from their Black brothers and sisters. Jews longed to fit into the greater society, so they copied white folks and sought their approval.
As a result, Blacks and Jews no longer lived in the same places. They no longer went to the same businesses. They no longer ran in the same circles. Younger Blacks and Jews no longer knew each other or even had a chance to.
While the collective Jewish heart remained pro-justice, a new generation of Jews no longer understood what Black people endure in America every single day.
Many Black people mistakenly began thinking that Jews were now king of the whites — and safe and secure in America. Black people in large part no longer understood that Jews still face dangerous hatred. Black people no longer understood what Jews thought and felt. Or what they confront.
Some Black people resented that Jews, many of whom changed their names and passed for white, experienced a faster path toward financial success. All while young Black men and women still faced mass, systemic, and overt racism. Many felt Jews left Black folks behind on the climb up America’s ladder. That Jews abandoned them.
For many Jews, they finally started to feel accepted by society, causing some to not want to make waves anymore. Standing up for others always comes with a cost.
A new generation of Black leaders, disconnected from their Jewish peers, largely remained ambivalent at best regarding Israel, further contributing to distance from Jews.
In addition, Black nationalists and separatists, while a very small but vocal minority of the Black community, further distanced the two groups because some of their leaders loudly blamed Jews for their ills. However absurd the idea might be to group blame Jews, this caused increased anti-Jewish sentiments among some Black people.
Jews, in turn, gave those loud voices more attention than they probably deserved. Some Jewish organizations became hyper-focused on unabashed antisemites like Louis Farrakhan, Leonard Jeffries, and Jesse Jackson, despite the fact their views were not representative of most rank-and-file Black folks.
This hodgepodge of unrelated factors ensured that Black and Jews, while not enemies by any stretch, were left ironically fighting for many of the same causes they value, but not in cooperation and collaboration. Not in the same rooms anymore.
And yet both groups in large numbers still count among their highest values human dignity, equality, freedom, democracy and peace. Both groups remain determined to stamp out hatred.
The good news is there’s a path forward to re-establish the once-powerful alliance that created so many great organizations and helped end racist policies and laws.
It’s needed more than ever as racists and antisemites are out in full force.
So, here’s the call.
The top Black and Jewish organizations should start by putting together a national multi-day conference aimed at re-starting the alliance.
Topics should include issues critical to the Black community: Access to resources and funding. Entrepreneur support. Systemic Racism. Health care. Housing. Education.
They should include issues critical to Jews as well. Like why Israel is important to American Jews. Anti-Jewish activity on college campuses. Security for Jewish houses of worship. Hate crimes.
The conference should be designed so Blacks and Jews can get to know each other in social and settings. To start to recreate the lost relationships of the 20th century.
Most importantly, the conference should ensure attendance by young Blacks and Jews. It won’t help if 70- and 80-year-olds are just reminiscing about the good ol’ times.
Then the goal would be to jumpstart the next steps for the communities to find ways to support each other.
We’re stronger together than we are separately supporting the same ideals.
Extremely disconcerting that many Jews were unable to think critically and vote in their best interest. About 30 democrats voted for an arms embargo against Israel last week, 1 republican. Our fate as Jews is 100% intertwined with the fate of Israel and to back a party that wishes to see Israel destroyed is a form of suicidal empathy I cannot condone or comprehend. They won’t eat you last my Jewish brothers and sisters. You don’t have the love the big bad orange man, but stop pretending the antisemitism is equivalent or less dangerous amongst Democrats.
Trump never said any of those things. Latinos don’t want illegal immigration either. If you racist leftist people treated everyone equally and took 5 mins to actually talk to Latinos you would know that. Also Latinos are pro-family, pro-life and don’t want their children indoctrinated into LGBTG ideology.
Again if you bothered to talk to Latinos you would know that. No one wants illegal immigration except white upper class people who are clueless to the effect of illegal immigration to the working class. Btw Latinos HATE being called Latinx too.
It’s insulting since Spanish is a gendered language. An article like this shows you are all still refusing to take 20 mins to step back and see why you lost so badly and everywhere except the states totally controlled by White liberals e.g. CA, WA, OR, CO.
Keep this up and the Democrats will end up like the Whigs.