DELEGITIMIZING ANTISEMITISM: JEWS CAN’T BE VICTIMS

Dear Professor Lipstadt:

I’ve just come from a seminar on American Ethnicity, Religion, and Race, where I think I encountered antisemitism head-on. As part of a discussion, one of the students referred to “prejudice, including racism, sexism, and homophobia,” at which point another student calmly but deliberately interjected, “and antisemitism.” The first student accepted the point and was trying to proceed when, from somewhere around the seminar table, came a mutter: “Yeah. Right. Jews are really suffering. Talk about privilege.” When the students sitting on either side of the Mutterer glanced at him, he added a bit defensively, “Jews aren’t suffering. They have good jobs, get into good schools, and have no problem succeeding in life. Antisemitism is not in the same category as racism. Certainly not in this country. Yet Jews are always referencing the Holocaust and what they call ‘antisemitism.’ They’re always playing the Holocaust card. Suffering? They’re just trying to hitch a free ride on the backs of people of color who face real racism. They are white and they are privileged.” I was stupefied by what he said and by the confidence with which he expressed it. The professor asked for responses. Feeling compelled to say something, I was about to jump into the fray when the class ended.

I must admit that I’m not sorry the class ended before I could speak. I have no idea, even after our exchange of letters, precisely what I would have said. I’m a bit ashamed that, even though I’m Jewish, I didn’t have a cogent answer at the ready. Some of what he said rings true. For the most part, Jews do live better lives than people of color. I know we don’t experience prejudice in the same way at all. But I also know that there was something very wrong with both what he said and how he said it. The whole thing left me deeply unsettled.

Yours,

Abigail

Dear Abigail and Joe:

Abigail, please don’t feel discouraged that you didn’t know how to respond to the Mutterer. It’s an ongoing challenge even for those of us who are considered “experts” in the field. The fact that you have a Jewish heritage does not automatically equip you—or anyone else, for that matter—to know what to say when challenged by someone who minimizes the significance of antisemitism today.

Your Mutterer contends that while antisemitism may exist in some parts of the world, it’s not a problem of the same magnitude as other prejudices—racism in particular. It’s something separate, apart, and of little—if any—consequence. My response may surprise you: In certain respects, he’s right. Antisemitism is different in structure, history, and contemporary impact than other forms of racism. Then again, he’s also wrong. Antisemitism is an ongoing phenomenon that must be taken very seriously. In the case of the Mutterer, what’s unclear to me is whether his mistake is perceptional or ideological in nature.

Before we turn to the Mutterer’s argument, let’s think about the etymology of the word “prejudice,” which comes from the Latin praejudicium, or prejudging. Prejudice is the act of negatively prejudging or assessing someone’s personal characteristics and behaviors based on stereotypical beliefs about the racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, political, or geographic group to which she belongs.1 And regardless of how many people a prejudiced person may encounter who do not conform to their group stereotype, this person continues to hold his racist beliefs. Are there Jews who are obsessed with money? Are there feminists who are perpetually angry and shrill? Yes, just as there are Jews on fixed incomes who spend time doing volunteer work and feminists who are mellow and laid-back. But that doesn’t interest the racist, who is often an insecure and/or angry person who needs to deprecate groupings of people who are different from his group in order to feel good about himself. In the best of all worlds, antisemites would be pitied for their ludicrous ideas. But they are capable of doing real harm, as can be seen by what happened in Germany in the 1930s and throughout Europe in the 1940s—those events that the Mutterer is so tired of hearing about.

The Mutterer is not wrong in his opinion that racial minorities are affected by prejudice today in a fashion that is different from the way Jews are affected by it. Racial minorities can cite very real ways in which their day-to-day lives are shaped by prejudice and hatred. Such is not the case for most American Jews today. In the twenty-first century it’s illegal for real estate developers to put clauses in contracts that bar Jews from living in certain neighborhoods. It’s illegal to fire someone who cannot work on Saturday. It’s illegal to tell someone who walks into a public building that he must remove his kippah. A qualified Jewish applicant who is repeatedly passed over for promotion at the workplace has legal recourse. Philip Roth has memorably described how his father, who worked for a “Gentile insurance colossus,” could never win well-deserved promotions or access more lucrative clients because he was Jewish.2

And yet, all is not well. The Mutterer is most likely oblivious to the fact that either a private guard or a police officer is stationed in front of most synagogues in Europe because of concerns about antisemitic attacks. Not long ago, when I tried to attend services at a synagogue in Rome I was turned away, despite the fact that I had my passport and was not carrying a backpack or any other paraphernalia. (This didn’t happen when I visited churches, both large and small.) Eventually, a member of the Jewish community who recognized me got me in.

Here in the United States, in March 2015, Rachel Beyda, a well-qualified candidate for a position on the student council’s Judicial Board at UCLA, was initially rejected because a majority of council members assumed that as a Jew she would be unable to deal with governance questions in an unbiased way. At the meeting to decide on her nomination, a member of the Undergraduate Students Association Council flat-out asked her, “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” After Ms. Beyda left the room, a debate ensued about whether her faith and membership in Jewish organizations would allow her to rule impartially on judicial matters. The oft-stated goal of having a diverse group of voices on college campuses did not appear to include a Jewish voice in this particular instance. Finally, a faculty member who was present pointed out that belonging to a Jewish organization did not in fact constitute a conflict of interest, and a second vote resulted in Ms. Beyda’s unanimous election to the board. But a video of the session was uploaded onto YouTube, and after severe expressions of criticism, the four students who had initially opposed Ms. Beyda’s nomination publicly apologized, saying that their intentions were “never to attack, insult, or delegitimize any individual or people, [and that they] were sorry for any words used during the meeting that suggested otherwise.” It’s difficult to believe that had the question been directed to a person of color, a member of the LGBTQ community, or a woman, the students would have had any trouble recognizing the explicit bias in what was being suggested. But I actually don’t believe that these students were being disingenuous. Their views reflect a sentiment among many students, including possibly your Mutterer, that Jews are members of the elite and therefore cannot be fair-minded or the victims of discrimination. In doublespeak worthy of George Orwell, for these students, keeping Jews out serves the goal of inclusion.3

Thanks to the civil rights movement, overt religious, racial, and ethnic discrimination has become illegal. Covert discrimination persists of course. But prejudice is a hard thing to root out, and racial minorities continue to be subject to overt acts of discrimination. This, however, doesn’t mean that Jews are no longer subject to antisemitism. The categories of antisemites we mapped out in our earlier letters were highlighted with examples from today, not from fifty years ago.

As recently as September 2017, former CIA operative Valerie Plame tweeted a link to an overtly antisemitic article (that she’d termed “thoughtful”) that maintained that Jews were behind efforts to get America involved in wars in the Middle East—including the 2003 war with Iraq. (This ignores the fact that among the main advocates of the war were Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and President George W. Bush himself.) It also called for Jews publicly commenting on foreign policy to identify themselves as Jews. The Jewish advisers in the White House who strongly supported the war, the article contended, were looking at this foreign policy issue only as Jews. When Plame was accused of antisemitism, her initial response was that she was herself “of Jewish decent [sic],” a traditional response when someone is caught in this type of situation. That didn’t seem to work, and in her eventual apology she claimed that she hadn’t in fact read the entire article and had “missed gross undercurrents” in it—a rather strange explanation for an article plainly titled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars.”4

Yes, the Mutterer is right when he says that antisemitism is not the same as some of the acts of extreme physical violence and social discrimination faced by African Americans. But public declarations and acts of antisemitism are still hateful, prejudiced, and wrong. They must be called out for what they are, and anyone who minimizes their intent or impact is either woefully ignorant of history or antisemitic himself. Valerie Plame is not the first person to accuse Jews of advocating for war for their own political or financial gain. In Germany in the 1920s, Jews were accused by Nazis of getting Germany involved in what became World War I for their own personal gain. If the Mutterer considers that piece of information “playing the Holocaust card,” that will certainly show everyone else in your seminar where his politics lie. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to change his beliefs. But you are correct, Abigail, in your impulse to speak out against his hateful words.

DEL