How “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” Has Been Debunked
1. It Misrepresents Sources
The book often quotes real historical documents
out of context to exaggerate Jewish involvement in slavery.
- Individual Jewish names are highlighted while Christian and state-run institutions are minimized or ignored.
- When historians examine the same sources in full, they do not support the book’s conclusions.
Multiple scholars have reviewed its citations and found that the evidence does
not match the claims being made.
2. It Ignores Proportions and Scale
Serious historical research shows:
- Jews made up a tiny fraction of slave traders in the Atlantic world.
- The slave trade was dominated by European governments, royal charter companies, and Christian merchantsfrom Britain, Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands.
- Jewish communities were small, often poor, and legally restricted during this period.
Highlighting a handful of Jewish individuals while ignoring the overwhelming majority is
statistical manipulation, not honest history.
3. It Promotes Collective Guilt
The book treats Jews as a unified group acting together, which is a hallmark of antisemitic thinking.
- Jews are portrayed as secretly coordinated and disproportionately powerful.
- This mirrors classic antisemitic myths used for centuries in Europe to justify persecution.
Historians emphasize that
individual participation ≠ group responsibility — a basic rule of historical analysis the book violates repeatedly.
4. It Has Been Rejected by Professional Historians
Mainstream historians — including Black, Jewish, and non-Jewish scholars — have publicly criticized the book.
Examples include:
- Henry Louis Gates Jr., who called the claims misleading and inflammatory
- David Brion Davis, one of the most respected historians of slavery, who rejected the book’s conclusions
- Academic reviews showing it fails basic standards of historical methodology
There is
no credible academic consensus supporting the book’s thesis.
5. It Serves an Ideological, Not Educational, Purpose
The book emerged in a political context where:
- Blame for slavery was redirected away from empires and institutions
- Jews were positioned as a scapegoat
- Historical complexity was flattened into a conspiracy narrative
This doesn’t help Black history or Jewish history — it
distorts both.
“The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” has been debunked because it:
- Cherry-picks evidence
- Ignores historical scale and context
- Promotes collective guilt
- Aligns with long-standing antisemitic tropes
- Is rejected by credible historians
Understanding slavery honestly means confronting
state power, colonialism, and economic systems, not blaming one marginalized group.