An Unillustrious Alliance: The African American and Jewish American Communities

Are the relationships between minority groups as significant as those between dominant and minority groups? Phillips argues that they are in this innovative analysis of the relationships between the African American and the Jewish American commmunities during the last 100 years. In An Unillustrated Allliance the evolved relations between the African American and the Jewish American communities are examined historically and sociologically. The scope of the work is from 1890 through to the 1980s, and the materials are organized largely into decades. The key relationships examined are negotiating, bargaining, cooperating and conflicting. Two main features of Phillips’ approach distinguish it from most of the traditional examinations of racial and ethnic or minority group relations. Firstly, there is strict emphasis placed on collective behaviour or action. Phillips examines the concerted group actions of these two minority communities for the attainment of their separate as well as their joint purposes. Secondly, the main concern is the concerted actions or alliances and coalition between two minority communities, not the relationships between a dominant and a subordinate group. Throughout the study, implications are drawn for public policy studies as well as for students and scholars of American ethnic and racial studies.