Andrew Esensten
JTA, Oct. 12, 2022
“The idea that African slavery in the Americas was not a mark of shame but instead a mark of distinction as God’s chosen people appealed to some African Americans, who appreciated the way the doctrine gave them pride and dignity in the context of Jim Crow segregation that sought to subordinate and humiliate them at every turn.”
In 1892, an Oklahoma preacher born into slavery received a series of divine revelations that compelled him to launch a new church and, with it, a new religious movement in the United States: Black Israelism, better known as the Black Hebrew Israelite movement.
More than a century later, the movement’s central tenet — that African Americans are the genealogical descendants of the ancient Israelites — has repeatedly found its way into popular culture through the expressions of non-Jewish African-American entertainers and athletes such as Kendrick Lamar, Kodak Black, Nick Cannon and DeSean Jackson. In some cases, these figures have also trafficked in antisemitic tropes about Jewish mendacity and manipulation.
Last week, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, invoked Hebrew Israelite doctrine when he described a friend as “a Jew just like all so called black people” in an Instagram post. (The friend, fashion designer Jean Touitou, was born in Tunisia to Jewish parents; he is not Black.) A couple of days later, Instagram locked Ye’s account after he posted a text exchange with Sean “Diddy” Combs in which he suggested Combs was controlled by Jews. So Ye, who identifies as a Christian, turned to Twitter to announce to his 31 million followers that he would soon go “death con 3” on the Jews, adding, “The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew…” Twitter removed the tweet for violating its rules.
Much of the outcry over Ye’s posts centered on his use of the phrase “death con 3” and a reference to a shadowy Jewish “agenda.” But some also flagged his pronouncements about Black people being the real Jews as offensive, especially to actual Black Jews.
On Tuesday, Vice published portions of an interview Ye gave to Tucker Carlson that were edited out of the broadcast. In them, Ye repeats his claim, though in a more convoluted way: “When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are.” (The tribe of Judah was one of the 12 tribes of Israel.)
