Many of us recently discovered that the famous black American novelist Alice Walker is anti-Semitic. We also learned that a lot of people have known this for a long time. The writer and professor Roxane Gay tweeted on December 17 that Walker “has been anti-Semitic for years” and she brings it up at all of the events she discusses her admiration for Walker’s novel Possessing the Secret of Joy. What Gay knew, and what became widely known this weekend due to a New York Times Review interview with Walker (“Alice Walker: By the Book“), is that she is a huge fan of a British “professional” conspiracy theorist named David Icke.
According to Tablet Magazine, this character has “over 777,000 followers on Facebook.” And of course the conspiracy theory that he cannot resist repeating is—despite its unoriginality, and its obvious nonsense—Jews secretly run the world; that the major events in the papers or in history can somehow be traced back to some “global Jewish cabal.” Icke’s books have made a huge impression on Walker. “In [his] books,” Walker told NYTR, “there is the whole of existence on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.” I have no idea what that means, but it certainly sounds like high praise.
Now that we know that Walker is anti-Semitic, we must next ask why this is so? What made this black American writer hate Jews so much that she even wrote a long and dreary and bone-dry poem called: “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty to Study the Talmud,” which was reproduced by Tablet Magazine. I propose we blame Steven Spielberg.
Alice Walker has been anti-Semitic for years. I talk about it at my events when I talk about how much I appreciate Possessing the Secret of Joy.
— roxane gay (@rgay) December 17, 2018
Now, though I was completely in the dark about Walker’s anti-Semitism, I’ve always known this one and clear fact: She is not a good writer. I only had to read the first pages of her most popular novel The Color Purple to reach this conclusion. And what has boggled me to no end since my early encounters with her work (during the winter of 1990) is how a large number of people see her as a major contributor to the rich canon of African American letters. Not much effort is needed to determine that she’s no Baldwin, no August Wilson, and certainly no Toni Morrison, whose greatest achievement isn’t Beloved but Song of Solomon. Walker’s style and thinking are stone-dry, and her stories never fail to feel forced.
But here is the thing. The Jewish American director Steven Spielberg was able to do something that’s quite incredible. He transformed her altogether bad novel The Color Purple into a beautifully brutal and soulful movie. What is not shocking to insist is that his film is far better than her novel. And I’m also certain Walker has always known this in her heart. It must have eaten her soul over the years (the film was released in 1985). Spielberg’s adaptation is not only an American masterpiece, but it also stars some of the brightest and most talented lights of black Hollywood—Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg. And it was scored by none other than Quincy Jones. All that was wrong in the book, was made right on the screen.
If we hope to find the roots of Walker’s anti-Semitism, a good place to look would be the artistic success of this movie by a Jew. She just couldn’t stand it. He bettered her with her own words. Why was she not as good as he? It must be a conspiracy. In walks this Icke character from across the pond, and there was the nourishment for a hate that was ready to grow. That’s my theory.
