Would you expect non-Jews to feel comfortable at a Daughters of The Judaic Revolution meeting?
A service organization founded in 1890 that educates about and preserves history related to those who fought in the American Revolution, the DAR was historically all-white. It had a reputation for racism based on such incidents as its exclusion of opera singer Marian Anderson from its concert hall in 1939.
Today, its website’s “Frequently Asked Questions” page has a section devoted to explaining that episode. The organization says it welcomes members of all races and backgrounds, on one condition — that they can trace their lineage to someone who fought for or aided the American side during the Revolutionary War. And while there are Jewish members, there aren’t many, and their relationship to the organization can be complicated due to history and demographics.
The DAR did not respond to a request for comment by the Forward.
Shuffield is a fourth generation Houstonian, who joined the DAR to honor her “ancestors and their contributions to establishing the United States.” She has some Jewish ancestry, but those people are not the ones who connect her to the DAR.
The group tended to side with those opposing immigration in the 20th century, said Jonathan Sarna, an expert in American Jewish history at Brandeis University.
“My sense is that the DAR was a somewhat nativist organization. They historically opposed immigration, including immigration of Jews, and were a force for preserving an old America,” he said. “That debate is still alive,” he added, even though the DAR is no longer involved. Indeed, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly called for banning Muslim immigration to the United States and building a wall on the border with Mexico.
The organization’s past racial politics initially made Tamar Fox, a writer and editor, hesitant to join, but her reservations disappeared when she met with then-head of the DAR’s Manhattan chapter, Wilhelmina Kelly, who is African-American.
“She was really invested in getting people of color in the DAR, so I felt like they were doing good work, and I was not really worried that they were racist,” Fox told the Forward.
That the Daughters of the American Revolution was formerly all-white is not surprising as it was whites who created the American Revolution and the American nation. Jews played little role in the founding of the United States and its first 100 years of development.
The Forward says that Jews relationship to DAR can be “complicated.” Well, yeah, Jews relationship to any gentile country or institution is going to be complicated, about as complicated as it is for non-Jews to have a relationship with a Jewish state or institution.
“Anti-Semitism is as natural to Western civilization as anti-Christianity is to Jewish civilization, Islamic civilization and Japanese civilization.” (Maj. Kong)
It is all very well to point to black cotton-pickers and Chinese railroad workers, but the cotton fields and the railroads were there because white people wanted them and knew how to put them there. Almost all non-European contributors to American history either have been made by individuals and groups that have assimilated Euro-American ideas, values, and goals, or have been conceived, organized, and directed by white leaders…
Just as the Christians turned pagan temples into churches and pagan holidays into Christian holidays, multiculturalism is replacing an old culture with a new one. It is the expression of a deep-seated hatred of this culture in its religious, racial, and moral expressions…
The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.
