The problem of black anti-Semitism in America is real, but often overstated. Much of the blame often falls on prominent black Muslim leaders like Louis Farrakhan. But it’s interesting to me that America’s most successful devout Muslim rapper, Lupe Fiasco, keeps dropping references to Judaism. On a track from his last album, Paris, Tokyo Lupe casually mentioned that he likes to order Kosher meals when he travels first class, and on the remix with Q-Tip and Pharrell, he signs off with a cheeky “I’m gone/Shalom.”
Jews often turn up in Hip-hop in varying ways, sometimes reductive (Nas’ insistence that “Jews stick together”) sometimes celebratory (Jay-Z toasting “L’Chaim” at his “black bar-mitzvah), or sometimes even in solidarity (Dead Prez’s arguing that the Holocaust and Slavery prove G-d doesn’t exist) but the context suggests a far more complex relationship to Jewish identity than the current conversation about anti-Semitism in the black community implies. Rather, it points to the conception of Jewish success as unique because of their painful history, which may be why they see it as something worth citing.
–A. Serwer
