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July 23, 1993 - Image 58

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1993-07-23

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

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page 57

uncomfortable straight-
backed chair ever made. The
lower back of the chair stuck
out farther than the top so I
had the feeling that I was
hunched over as I sat there
watching the big woman rub
pink lotion into her hands.
She frowned at her hands,
and then she frowned again
when she saw me staring
through her glistening fin-
gers.
I wondered if she would
have been performing her
toilet like that in front of a
white taxpayer.

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Breast
self-examination —
LEARN. Call us.

4,

AMERICAN
CANCER
SOCIETY'

The book is set in 1953.
Mr. Mosley still wonders at
the prejudice he sees 40
years later.
"I encounter racism all
the time," he says. "Some-
times it's very overt.
Sometimes it's people who
act amazed when they meet
me. They'll tell me, 'You're
just as smart as I am!' —
and they mean it as a com-
pliment."
A wiry federal agent
named Craxton gives Easy
Rawlins his big break.
So Easy owns some apart-
ment buildings. So he forgot
to mention that he's collect-
ing rent money. So he really
should be going to jail for
quite some time to pay for
that, well, small oversight.
Instead, Craxton has a
suggestion.
He'd like Easy to start
looking in — you get the
idea — on a certain union
organizer, "Calls himself a
worker" and says he's doing
charity work.

"But that's just a front.
He's looking for others who
are like him; people who feel
that this country has given
them a raw deal. He feels
like that, doesn't hardly
trust a soul. But the thing is,
he'll trust you. He's got a soft
spot for Negroes."

The union organizer's
name: Chaim Wenzler.
Articles about Walter
Mosley always make it clear
that he identifies as black.
He also identifies as Jewish,
though he says he's not reli-
gious, and his books fre-
quently feature Jewish
characters like Chaim
Wenzler. Devil includes two
Holocaust survivors.
Mr. Mosley dreams of vis-
iting Tel Aviv. And his wife,
choreographer Joy Kellman,
is Jewish. They have no
children, but he already
anticipates the question:
"You want to know, are we
raising them Jewish?"
If he speaks more fre-
quently about racism than
anti-Semitism it's because
the former is inevitable in
American society. Jews, he
observes, have the option of

assimilating. They can
choose how much they iden-
tify as Jewish in public.
They can even change their
names. (Most people don't
complain about living next
to Jews, either, he says,
though they might not want
their daughter to marry
one). Blacks are always <
black.
During the early waves of
immigration to the United
States, and after World War
II, East European Jews
understood well what it
meant to be a recognizable
minority, Mr. Mosley says.
His own Jewish forefathers
"really understood oppres-
sion — what it means not to
be considered equal, to be
regarded not having a mind
and a soul."
In Devil in a Blue Dress,
Easy Rawlins recalls watch-
ing as his sergeant rescues
a boy from a Nazi death
camp, a boy so starved he
cannot at first digest decent
food.

(

Mr. Mosley
prefers not to
dwell on black
anti-Semitism or
Jewish racism.

"I'll never forget thinking
how those Germans had
hurt that poor boy so terribly
that he couldn't even take in
anything good," Easy says.
"That was why so many
Jews back then understood
the American Negro; in
Europe the Jew had been a
Negro for more than a thou-
sand years."

Today, most of those
immigrants' grandchildren
may identify as Jewish, but
they also feel themselves
very white. "Blacks," Mr.
Mosley says, "have never
considered themselves
'white.'"
Mr. Mosley prefers not to
dwell on black anti-
Semitism or Jewish racism
— he said no thank you to a
Jewish newspaper's request
that he denounce City
College of New York
Professor Leonard Jeffries,
who claimed that Jews
manipulated Hollywood
films to demean blacks —
but he does ask this ques-
tion of the Jewish communi-
ty:
"People are always talk-
ing to me about Jesse
Jackson. Why is it that
when somebody black says
something anti-Semitic it
becomes much worse?
"When Jews ask me about
Jesse Jackson, 1 say to

N

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