Up until recently in the West there was little to no taboo against anti-minority bigotry propagated by other minority groups. In terms of social stigma, only that of “white male Christians” mattered because generally speaking they were the ones who had power in society.
But within some African-American political subcultures, especially in…
Up until recently in the West there was little to no taboo against anti-minority bigotry propagated by other minority groups. In terms of social stigma, only that of “white male Christians” mattered because generally speaking they were the ones who had power in society.
But within some African-American political subcultures, especially insular opaque group like NoI and Black Israelites, there have been commonly held wacky-ass views on Jews for decades. When Obama embraced Rev Wright and Trinity United because he saw it as a “quintessentially Black church” he probably wasn’t wrong and Wright’s frequent anti-Semitic sermons probably didn’t sound out of the ordinary to its congregants. Similarly Louis Farrakhan’s comments about “white devils” were laughed off as impotent and irrelevant for 40 years.
I should say, some of the most shocking unapologetically anti-black racist comments I’ve ever heard in my life were uttered by Jews. No filter, no stigma —minority privilege, I guess.
Those views only recently came “out of the closet” as it were as those political subcultures became mainstream or at least more sunlight and scrutiny by broader society was applied more universally. Only now are they getting the broad moral opprobrium they deserve.
Perhaps the explosion of social media and “cheap speech” has allowed more visibility to previously filtered bigotries—including anti-Semitism— that have long existed. Maybe the appearance of broad normalization of bigotries and anti-Semitism is at least somewhat illusory and not as bad as many fear.
Up until recently in the West there was little to no taboo against anti-minority bigotry propagated by other minority groups. In terms of social stigma, only that of “white male Christians” mattered because generally speaking they were the ones who had power in society.
But within some African-American political subcultures, especially insular opaque group like NoI and Black Israelites, there have been commonly held wacky-ass views on Jews for decades. When Obama embraced Rev Wright and Trinity United because he saw it as a “quintessentially Black church” he probably wasn’t wrong and Wright’s frequent anti-Semitic sermons probably didn’t sound out of the ordinary to its congregants. Similarly Louis Farrakhan’s comments about “white devils” were laughed off as impotent and irrelevant for 40 years.
I should say, some of the most shocking unapologetically anti-black racist comments I’ve ever heard in my life were uttered by Jews. No filter, no stigma —minority privilege, I guess.
Those views only recently came “out of the closet” as it were as those political subcultures became mainstream or at least more sunlight and scrutiny by broader society was applied more universally. Only now are they getting the broad moral opprobrium they deserve.
Perhaps the explosion of social media and “cheap speech” has allowed more visibility to previously filtered bigotries—including anti-Semitism— that have long existed. Maybe the appearance of broad normalization of bigotries and anti-Semitism is at least somewhat illusory and not as bad as many fear.