How My Father’s Problem With Blacks Mirrors the Left’s Problem With Jews

The temptations of tribalism distort the tempers and minds of people who want to do good

By Todd Gitlin

Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life |October 6, 2014

I don’t know how old I was when my father gave me my first lesson. I was happily reciting the common playground rhyme you use for choosing up teams: “Eenie, meenie, minie mo, catch a … ” Well, you know the words that followed. My father stopped me right there: “Son, you must never say that. Never. Say ‘catch a tiger by the toe.’” So, from then on, I did.
My father, a New Deal liberal, taught history in high school. His heroes were Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His father, a tailor who had fled Belarus in 1905 to get away from pogroms and the tsar’s army, helped organize the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In 1960, when I threw myself into left-wing politics, my father tried to talk me out of it. My views were sensible, he eventually admitted, but I shouldn’t act on them. To establish common ground, he confided to me that he had voted for the Socialist Norman Thomas for president in 1932—when he was 23—and attended a left-wing spiel supporting the Spanish Republicans. He had grown into a New York liberal, outgrown his youthful excesses—he was then 51. I should get on down the safe road, in his footsteps.

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