Jewish Privilege?

[Paul Pott]

In a recent conversation, someone brought up the stereotype that too many Jews are rich, connected, etc.

They also listed a bunch of things that were supposedly facts, such as Jews in the west being overly represented in business, finance, etc and underrepresented in the ranks of the poor. They compared it to white privilege. This person was a student radical way back when, and I assume a black nationalist of some kind.

I don't know about her facts, but this got me thinking: could there actually be some kind of Jewish privilege under capitalism in the west originating in the middle ages, since Jews were confined to those jobs before they became more powerful with the rise of the bourgeoisie?

On the left we shy away from topics like this, but that's probably because of the stigma of anti-semitism.

[Sasha]

Yes, historic anti-semitism is one of the many reasons of a slight overpresentation of Jews in banking and the diamond trade. As Jews where not allowed into guilds and christians couldn't charge interest Jews got overrepresented, although funny enough the subject is never their under-representation in most other sectors.
But many Jews where dirt poor too

[Paul Pott]

When I say "became more powerful" I mean finance capital, if Jews were still overrepresented in it.

[Skyhilist]

Whites have more privilege in the western world because of having an economic advantage in the past.

Jewish people are on the average richer because they are (on the average, statistically. Not trying to generalize here) 'better' at capitalism in that they are more likely to become wealthy due to things such as slightly higher IQ, etc.
This isn't to say that all Jews are rich or more intelligent than all non-Jews. But using averages (which obviously don't apply to everyone) they are better at 'white collar' labor and therefore wealthier on the average within the capitalist system.

[Paul Pott]

Whites have more privilege in the western world because of having an economic advantage in the past.

Jewish people are on the average richer because they are (on the average, statistically. Not trying to generalize here) 'better' at capitalism in that they are more likely to become wealthy due to things such as slightly higher IQ, etc.
This isn't to say that all Jews are rich or more intelligent than all non-Jews. But using averages (which obviously don't apply to everyone) they are better at 'white collar' labor and therefore wealthier on the average within the capitalist system.

Yeah recently I've seen conservatives take the opposite stance from classical anti-semites and say that Jews are "successful" as a people.

[Raúl Duke]

So? They're not rich because they're Jewish.
There are historical and perhaps cultural factors, but it's a bit relative (i.e. much of the Jewish immigration to the US actually were quite poor and also many happened to be leftists, thus fueling American nativist reactionary fears of "immigrant Jewish radicals" and leftism as a "Jewish plot"). I really doubt capitalism in the west has a "Jewish privilege" framework as there are for say white American protestants (in the case of the US).

[Sasha]

Whites have more privilege in the western world because of having an economic advantage in the past.

Jewish people are on the average richer because they are (on the average, statistically. Not trying to generalize here) 'better' at capitalism in that they are more likely to become wealthy due to things such as slightly higher IQ, etc.
This isn't to say that all Jews are rich or more intelligent than all non-Jews. But using averages (which obviously don't apply to everyone) they are better at 'white collar' labor and therefore wealthier on the average within the capitalist system.

I would be careful with making something of an "genetic" argument as IQ seems to imply.
The cause would be more cultural, in Jewish culture there is a tradition of pride in education, in sacrificing yourself for the benefit of the improvement of your children etc etc.

[l'Enfermé]

Jewish privilege in the West? Have you ever heard the word "pogrom"?

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

What was it Marx said, destroy capitalism and you solve the Jewish problem?

Anyway, I can recomend a really good book on the subject of Jews, and how their mercurian character that had been nutured through the ages made them perfectly equiped for capitalism and the modern age. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Jewish-Century-Yuri-Slezkine/dp/0691127603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363125549&sr=8-1&keywords=the+jewish+century)

[Skyhilist]

I would be careful with making something of an "genetic" argument as IQ seems to imply.
The cause would be more cultural, in Jewish culture there is a tradition of pride in education, in sacrificing yourself for the benefit of the improvement of your children etc etc.

This might very well be true, and I'm sure you probably know more on this than I do. One thing that would be interesting to see though would be Jewish IQ scores during times of great oppression where as a people they didn't have the luxury of raisin their children in the same environment that they most commonly do now (e.g. the holocaust). I think that would at least partially either support or refute that claim on IQ being mainly nurture based. Although I think you're right, and my original argument may have been fallacious.

[Paul Pott]

I know a lot of Jewish immigrants to the US were poor, and that the majority of Jews are working class people like any other group, but that doesn't change if they make up a disproportional share of the ruling class due to historical reasons. That's what I mean by Jewish privilege.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

yeah i'm fucking loaded on my jewish wage labour. I'm so privileged.

So is my wage labour mum, my under-employed dad, my made-redundant grandpa, my wage labour gran and my communist great-grandpa.

Fuckin' joke.

[Paul Pott]

Jewish privilege in the West? Have you ever heard the word "pogrom"?

The modern, bourgeois democratic west isn't Tsarist Russia.

[Paul Pott]

yeah i'm fucking loaded on my jewish wage labour. I'm so privileged.

So is my wage labour mum, my under-employed dad, my made-redundant grandpa, my wage labour gran and my communist great-grandpa.

Fuckin' joke.

Really, so white privilege means white people are rich?

[Skyhilist]

I know a lot of Jewish immigrants to the US were poor, and that the majority of Jews are working class people like any other group, but that doesn't change if they make up a disproportional share of the ruling class due to historical reasons. That's what I mean by Jewish privilege.

Well you don't have to necessarily be rich to raise your kids in a "Jewish" manner, as I think psycho may have been suggested. This isn't to say that all Jewish people raise their kids the same, but certainly they, like most all group of people will have certain prevailing tendencies in doing so that are somewhat more common than in other groups. This might affect success under capitalism, despite the income that they started out with.

[Skyhilist]

yeah i'm fucking loaded on my jewish wage labour. I'm so privileged.

So is my wage labour mum, my under-employed dad, my made-redundant grandpa, my wage labour gran and my communist great-grandpa.

Fuckin' joke.

One data point isn't really relevant in disproving a trend in an entire population. I don't think advocates of white privilege claim that all whites are more privileged than all non-whites for example, they're simply noting a trend in the general population. This may not be true with the most extreme white privilege theorists, but I believe that this is where most of them are coming from, similarly to where OP is coming from.

[Paul Pott]

I don't think you can say it's because Jews raise their kids better than others or whatever.

This is sort of like the "inferior culture" argument that white supremacists and some far-right conservatives use against blacks to explain black poverty in the US.

There are historical reasons for both.

[Skyhilist]

I don't think you can say it's because Jews raise their kids better than others or whatever.

This is sort of like the "inferior culture" argument that white supremacists and some far-right conservatives use against blacks to explain black poverty in the US.

There are historical reasons for both.

I'm not saying monetary success under capitalism means someone was raised better. But to say that all groups raise their children precisely the same on the average is just being naive.
I certainly don't think that the bourgeois were "raised better" though. Raised in a manner more likely to cause monetary success, maybe (excluding those who started out rich). But I mean seriously, look at how exploitative the bourgeois class is. They certainly weren't raised "better", and that's not what I'm claiming.

[Astarte]

Is this chart true? Its by the Pew Forum, which is a branch of the Pew Research Center - I always wondered if the statistics it represents in regards to the U.S.A. are correct or not.

http://images.vizworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/americas_wealthy_religions.jpg

[Skyhilist]

Is this chart true? Its by the Pew forum, which is a branch of the Pew Research Center - I always wondered if the statistics it represents in regards to the U.S.A. are correct or not.

http://images.vizworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/americas_wealthy_religions.jpg

It's suspicious that they don't cite any actual study, but I could certainly be it as being legitimate. One thing that confuses me though is the "unaffiliated" category. Does this mean atheists, or people who believe in god(s) but don't follow a particular religion, or both?

[Astarte]

It's suspicious that they don't cite any actual study, but I could certainly be it as being legitimate. One thing that confuses me though is the "unaffiliated" category. Does this mean atheists, or people who believe in god(s) but don't follow a particular religion, or both?

I think the Pew is its own "source" as it gathers statistical information. ... Its kind of what it does. Mainly for the media and government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pew_Research_Center

Of course the chart has its problems, especially in regards to certain ways it categorizes denominations, such as "Black Churches" - but this thread is not particularly about Christian denominations anyway.

[Os Cangaceiros]

This is one of the reasons I don't find "privilege theory" to be that useful, because there are groups of people in developed countries (like Jewish & Asian people, for example) who are statistically as advantaged as "WASPs", but they are not saddled with the label of "privileged" by the left.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Uh, I think it's just called "white privilege". Unless North African and other brown Jews are also over-represented in banking, etc. . . . which I'm pretty sure they're not.

Also, re: the bizarro throw-back "high-IQ" antisemetic trope . . . I don't think you actually understand how IQ works. In fact, "success" precedes high IQ rather than the other way around, because IQ measures a whole lot of culturally contingent things (ie language), and not something innate.

[Raúl Duke]

What about the Hindus? That stats chart puts them as over-represented as Jews.

[Skyhilist]

Uh, I think it's just called "white privilege". Unless North African and other brown Jews are also over-represented in banking, etc. . . . which I'm pretty sure they're not.

Also, re: the bizarro throw-back "high-IQ" antisemetic trope . . . I don't think you actually understand how IQ works. In fact, "success" precedes high IQ rather than the other way around, because IQ measures a whole lot of culturally contingent things (ie language), and not something innate.

Is the fact that Asians are more rich also 'white privilege'?

Regardless of which precedes the other, IQ and monetary success under capitalism are still strongly associated (the non-linear version of correlated) with each other, so knowing one still tells us something about the other, regardless of what the causation is.

[Lobotomy]

I remember once hearing that Judaism is the only Abrahamic religion that has never prohibited usury (Christianity regarded it as a sin in medieval times, and Islam still does today in some places), and therefore some Jews have historically used usury as a means of climbing socioeconomic ladders. I do not know if this is true though.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

This is one of the reasons I don't find "privilege theory" to be that useful, because there are groups of people in developed countries (like Jewish & Asian people, for example) who are statistically as advantaged as "WASPs", but they are not saddled with the label of "privileged" by the left.

I don't think you actually "get" privilege. Like, nobody is "privileged" or "not" full stop - the idea is to engage with specificities. So, like, well off Asians are privileged because they're well off, not because they're Asian (in fact, there are still Asians in North America who remember being forcibly relocated to concentration camps by Canadian and American gov'ts during world war two), poor Asians who deal with the stereotypes of being middle-class members of a model minority, etc.
Similarly, Jews are mostly privileged because they're white - not because they're Jewish. As mentioned above, where are the brown Jews in this equation (erased! surprise!)?

[Skyhilist]

What about the Hindus? That stats chart puts them as over-represented as Jews.

From what I understand, monetary success is commonly highly emphasized in Hindu families. At least this is what a friend of mine who was raised Hindu has told me. Her goal is to "make six figures" when she is older, because she says that's the only way she can satisfy her family.
Note: I'm not saying that this is what it's like for all Hindus, or Jews or any group, or even that this occurs the majority of the time. But it would be silly to say that all ethnic groups have, on the average, the exact same methods of raising their children. And the statistics which "median household income" is based off of, looks at averages.

[Skyhilist]

Similarly, Jews are mostly privileged because they're white - not because they're Jewish. As mentioned above, where are the brown Jews in this equation (erased! surprise!)?

Then why do they have significantly more "privilege" on the average than other whites?

[Sasha]

"privilege" theory doesnt mean that (in an western context) every white non-handicaped male etc etc is more successful, it doesn't even have to mean that as a group for examples "white" people are by definition more successful than an other group. It just means that their is an starting advantage based not on all those other variables like culture, class, education of the parents etc etc.
the fact that a discriminated group can still, or even thanks to, be on average more successful doesn't in anyway disprove that certain other groups have an unfair advantage based on societal, systematic and institutional bias.

[melvin]

Whites have more privilege in the western world because of having an economic advantage in the past.

Jewish people are on the average richer because they are (on the average, statistically. Not trying to generalize here) 'better' at capitalism in that they are more likely to become wealthy due to things such as slightly higher IQ, etc.
This isn't to say that all Jews are rich or more intelligent than all non-Jews. But using averages (which obviously don't apply to everyone) they are better at 'white collar' labor and therefore wealthier on the average within the capitalist system.None of this has to due with Jews as a religion or as an ethnic group because racial science is false. Jews do not have higher IQ's on average than the IQ's of non-Jews on average due to the ethnic differences. And I don't believe this claim, regardless.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't think you actually "get" privilege. Like, nobody is "privileged" or "not" full stop - the idea is to engage with specificities. So, like, well off Asians are privileged because they're well enough, not because they're Asian (in fact, there are still Asians in North America who remember being forcibly relocated to concentration camps by Canadian and American gov'ts during world war two), poor Asians who deal with the stereotypes of being middle-class members of a model minority, etc.
Similarly, Jews are mostly privileged because they're white - not because they're Jewish. As mentioned above, where are the brown Jews in this equation (erased! surprise!)?

This ain't my first time to the rodeo pal. ;) "Privilege theory" is held up as something that's used to describe a general trend (esp. against people who say "oh but I know so-and-so who's white and poor"), and the advocates use things like poverty statistics and incarceration numbers to do this. In that sense Asians (who are in no way considered to be "white") are far more well-off than whites. Or are whites just privileged because they're well off, and not because they're white? :rolleyes:

Also, PT is used to describe an ongoing phenomenon, so talking about the Japanese concentration camps of WW2 or the Yellow Peril isn't entirely relevant to the discussion of PT as a modern phenomenon.

[Raúl Duke]

From what I understand, monetary success is commonly highly emphasized in Hindu families. At least this is what a friend of mine who was raised Hindu has told me. Her goal is to "make six figures" when she is older, because she says that's the only way she can satisfy her family.
Note: I'm not saying that this is what it's like for all Hindus, or Jews or any group, or even that this occurs the majority of the time. But it would be silly to say that all ethnic groups have, on the average, the exact same methods of raising their children. And the statistics which "median household income" is based off of, looks at averages.

That's true. I also noted it among muslim/Arab families (and even some hispanics, depending on class), although both are not as wealthy as a group (yet).

What's interesting is that all this discussion about Jews is kinda US-specific. Similar things can be said about Chinese minorities in certain pacific island nations, or Indians in the Carribbean vis-a-vis Afro-Caribbeans.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I remember once hearing that Judaism is the only Abrahamic religion that has never prohibited usury (Christianity regarded it as a sin in medieval times, and Islam still does today in some places), and therefore some Jews have historically used usury as a means of climbing socioeconomic ladders. I do not know if this is true though.

Yes, I don't know if it's the only religion, but as a socio-cultural group, Jews were early pioneers of usury, and perhaps this experience, combined with the relatively small number of jews around the world in tight-knit diaspora communities, has led to a sort of 'knowledge handed down through the generations' mentality. I don't know. It's hard to say, really, but Jews certainly have historically been identified from early on with usury.

[Skyhilist]

"privilege" theory doesnt mean that (in an western context) every white non-handicaped male etc etc is more successful, it doesn't even have to mean that as a group for examples "white" people are by definition more successful than an other group. It just means that their is an starting advantage based not on all those other variables like culture, class, education of the parents etc etc.
the fact that a discriminated group can still, or even thanks to, be on average more successful doesn't in anyway disprove that certain other groups have an unfair advantage based on societal, systematic and institutional bias.

I think that that's mainly due the fact that whites have been the majority, and therefore have established the largest presence in the ruling class. I personally see all races as being subtly racist against others. For example, one study showed that for similar crimes, black men served on the average a 20% longer prison sentence. However, I think that when if you stratified the judged by the judges by race, for example, this would break down. Blacks on the average would give blacks on the average shorter sentences than non-blacks. Hispanics on the average would give hispanics on the average shorter sentences than non-hispanics.Same goes for white, Asians, etc., although I think the racial gap in sentencing is also influenced based on the teachings that certain groups tend to be brought up with most frequently (Eurocentrism, for example, is certainly racist, or at least discriminatory). However, because judges are most commonly white in the Western world (due to establishing power when they represented the vast majority of 'free' people), the sentencing for whites is less harsh.

In the majority of cases I believe that this subtle form of racism is unintentional, permeating all races based on loads of other variables that affect different races on the average, slightly differently. I think that this subtle bias, combined with many other variables can make certain groups appear more "privileged" in modern-society. However, to say that it is a system such as capitalism alone that makes one group "privileged" (or even is the leading factor in doing so) I think, is overly determinist and unrealistic, not holding true when the variables mentioned earlier (upbringing, culture, etc.) based on unrelated things are significantly tweaked. So that's pretty much why I don't subscribe to the white privilege theory, or other similar privilege theories. They're way too simplistic and establish privilege as an inherent truth, assuming that trends in the most fundamental variables that affect and establish this "privilege" have stagnated, which they have not.

[l'Enfermé]

The modern, bourgeois democratic west isn't Tsarist Russia.
1. I was talking about the middle ages, not the modern west
2. "Pogrom" is also applicable to instantes of violence against Jews outside of the Russian Empire. The pogroms in Spain and Portugal, for example, or those in Switzerland and Germany in the 14 century and I've even heard it applied to the massacre and looting of civilian Jews and their property in Syria, Iraq, and North Africa, following WWII.

[Yuppie Grinder]

So? They're not rich because they're Jewish.
There are historical and perhaps cultural factors, but it's a bit relative (i.e. much of the Jewish immigration to the US actually were quite poor and also many happened to be leftists, thus fueling American nativist reactionary fears of "immigrant Jewish radicals" and leftism as a "Jewish plot"). I really doubt capitalism in the west has a "Jewish privilege" framework as there are for say white American protestants (in the case of the US).

Catholics haven't been ostracized in like a billion years.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

This ain't my first time to the rodeo pal. ;) "Privilege theory" is held up as something that's used to describe a general trend (esp. against people who say "oh but I know so-and-so who's white and poor"), and the advocates use things like poverty statistics and incarceration numbers to do this. In that sense Asians (who are in no way considered to be "white") are far more well-off than whites. Or are whites just privileged because they're well off, and not because they're white? :rolleyes:

Also, PT is used to describe an ongoing phenomenon, so talking about the Japanese concentration camps of WW2 or the Yellow Peril isn't entirely relevant to the discussion of PT as a modern phenomenon.

To be fair, privilege as deployed by irritating liberals is a thing, and your critique of it here is somewhat valid. That said, privilege, understood radically, isn't about general trends, but about understanding the interrelationship of systems of domination. Things like poverty and incarceration statistics can be useful in this regard as indicative of, for example, white supremacy, or statistics on sexual violence can be useful insofar as they point to patriarchy, but they are not those things in-and-of themselves.

So, why talk about yellow peril or the internments? Because both represented the massive primitive accumulation of capital and labour of Asians, and both have contemporary resonances. The construction of Asian identities is still shaped in relation to these historical phenomenon with very real (negative) implications. As recently as a few years ago, Canada's best selling news magazine was able to publish a cover article asking "Are our colleges too Asian?". 'Nuff said, y'know?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Also, insofar as "racism" is liberal double-speak for systematic and systemic white supremacy, "all races" are not "subtly racist". That's like saying "All genders are subtly sexist, because look at the way women treat men like rapists."

[Rottenfruit]

Whites have more privilege in the western world because of having an economic advantage in the past.

Jewish people are on the average richer because they are (on the average, statistically. Not trying to generalize here) 'better' at capitalism in that they are more likely to become wealthy due to things such as slightly higher IQ, etc.
This isn't to say that all Jews are rich or more intelligent than all non-Jews. But using averages (which obviously don't apply to everyone) they are better at 'white collar' labor and therefore wealthier on the average within the capitalist system.
Dude not cool you are stepping in racist territory garbage ,

[Regicollis]

I can see three reasons why it is claimed Jews are over-represented in some areas. Firstly there is the history of Jews being banned from joining guilds and owning land while Christians were banned from taking rents. This can explain a Jewish tradition for finance and banking. Secondly Jewish communities had stronger traditions for education. When most Christians were illiterate most Jewish boys learned how to read. Jewish communities also had a tradition of nurturing talents even though they came from poor families.
The third reason - and I'm really speculating here - could be the Holocaust. Jews with good finances would have had better chances of escaping, while the poor Jewish population of eastern Europe was almost completely eradicated.

But then again. Who cares about people being Jewish today?

[cynicles]

I think this has less to do with privilege and more to do with the end of systemic antisemitism in the west. The point about arab Jews seems tenuous at best though, there are many Jews from that background who don't look brown whatsoever, Seinfeld is of Syrian Jewish ancestry but you'd never know it unless you actually went out of your way.

[LOLseph Stalin]

I wouldn't say Jews are any more privileged than any other group, at least not in the modern world. Although I do know that Jews get many privileges through Israel, which offers plenty of benefits to them. My ex got free travel to Israel just for being a Jew(Birthright and some other program I think, which are only open to Jews) and I'm sure it doesn't stop at that.

[Luís Henrique]

There certainly is Jewish privilege in Israel. And Jews in the US or Brazil enjoy White privilege (and yes, at least in Brazil people of Japanese descent enjoy White privilege as well, albeit not being White. Perhaps a better name would be "non-Black privilege", or "free ancestors privilege". But then starfishes are neither fishes nor stars).

The peculiarities of social inequalities regarding any social group - racial, religious, national, linguistic - must be understood within a historical frame. For instance, Cuban Americans are on average much more well-off than Salvadorean Americans. It has nothing to do with any peculiar advantage of Cubans regarding Salvadoreans, but with the fact that a considerable part of the Cuban elite fled to the US due to the Cuban Revolution, while El Salvador's constant state of poverty made many poor Salvadoreans flee to the US. This probably reflects on religious groups, as for instance many Buddhists in the US are of Vietnamese or Chinese ancestry, and it is this historic origin that explains their social situation, rather than their religion.

Hitler murdered so many poor Jews it shouldn't come as a surprise that the remaining ones were the well-of...

Luís Henrique

[Chaos316]

I don't believe it. New York City has almost 200,000 homeless jews.

[Luís Henrique]

I don't believe it. New York City has almost 200,000 homeless jews.

And how many non-Jewish homeless Whites?

Luís Henrique

[Thelonious]

I don't believe it. New York City has almost 200,000 homeless jews.

Your statistic is wrong. Whatever source one would like to quote on the subject puts the number anywhere between 2,000 and 4,000. Can you please provide a link to your source which claims the number is 200,000. I would like to see that. I have been involved in helping the homeless in NYC for over 20 years.

Your claim of "200,000 homeless jews" in NYC is so outrageous that I am inclined to think you were being sarcastic.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/29/nyregion/about-new-york-first-problem-is-homelessness-2d-is-denial.html

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think that that's mainly due the fact that whites have been the majority, and therefore have established the largest presence in the ruling class. I personally see all races as being subtly racist against others. For example, one study showed that for similar crimes, black men served on the average a 20% longer prison sentence. However, I think that when if you stratified the judged by the judges by race, for example, this would break down. Blacks on the average would give blacks on the average shorter sentences than non-blacks. Hispanics on the average would give hispanics on the average shorter sentences than non-hispanics.Same goes for white, Asians, etc., although I think the racial gap in sentencing is also influenced based on the teachings that certain groups tend to be brought up with most frequently (Eurocentrism, for example, is certainly racist, or at least discriminatory). However, because judges are most commonly white in the Western world (due to establishing power when they represented the vast majority of 'free' people), the sentencing for whites is less harsh.

In the majority of cases I believe that this subtle form of racism is unintentional, permeating all races based on loads of other variables that affect different races on the average, slightly differently. I think that this subtle bias, combined with many other variables can make certain groups appear more "privileged" in modern-society. However, to say that it is a system such as capitalism alone that makes one group "privileged" (or even is the leading factor in doing so) I think, is overly determinist and unrealistic, not holding true when the variables mentioned earlier (upbringing, culture, etc.) based on unrelated things are significantly tweaked. So that's pretty much why I don't subscribe to the white privilege theory, or other similar privilege theories. They're way too simplistic and establish privilege as an inherent truth, assuming that trends in the most fundamental variables that affect and establish this "privilege" have stagnated, which they have not.

I don't agree with Privilage Theory as an academic theory (I think it tends to have an updise-down view of oppression in society) but I think the inequalities it describes are definately real factors in life. And these inequalities are systemic and often pointed, not just the sum of antagonisms that arise out of the competative nature of society under capitalism. So, for your example, first off, most people who are arrested never go before a judge - in fact most are guilty and cop a plea. This is because policing in the US is focused on pretext stops where people are pulled over or stoped and searched and most are let go - those who aren't had some drugs or a weapon or a parole violation and get sent to jail. This happens irregardless of the race of the officers involved - and I'd guess of the Judge involved if it goes before a judge. This "round-up" method of policing is incentivised by the way federal police funding happens in the neo-liberal ere and so departments compete for arrests to get new gadgets (tanks, helicoptors, drones) from the feds and more money from the states. But it wouldn't work if everyone had decent access to lawyers who could ask "how did you say... 'can I search your pockets'?" So it's the poor and powerless who are targeted.

On top of that is the ideological (racist) arguments in our society about specific groups that justify both repression by the state against them ("those people are just violent") as well often their poverty and cuts to social programs ("those immigrants don't even want to learn english" say the bigots years after states cut public education in other languages for non-native speakers). As a consaquence when I grew up in a downwardly moble working class area with racial tensions between whites and latinos mostly I heard white people say bigoted things about blacks... and now when I live in Oakland, I often hear black folks say variations on the same argument! Bill Cosby and Obama probably popularized as many racist arguments as Limbaugh (not for lack of trying on Rush's part, he just doesn't reach the wide audience of Cosby or Obama).

At any rate I don't think racism is just "animosity" or "bigotry" but something much bigger and deeper in society that doesn't need outright "racists" to promote these ideas.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I agree with folks here who say there is no such thing as "Jewish privilage". Jew still face bigotry for being jewish in the US. What's changed since mid-century are two things: the Holocost and WWII liberal populism made the kind of antisemitism that was accepted in the US through the 1930s distasteful for much of the population. After the war, the holocost and NAZI antisemitism became the retroactive justification of the US's "liberatory role" - at the time it was more about "saving the US" than saving other people, but after the a-bomb I think the US was trying to find some humanitarian cred for its involvement in the war. So I don't think either party really tolerated opely antisemetic language in their mainstream after that point - though it did still exist culturally and with the old prodestant right-wing.

After the US began to support Israel as it's main pillar in the Middle East, there was another ideological reason to highlight "antisemitism" and for the political mainstream to not allow antisemetic politics like in the US past. The new religious right is apocolyptically supportive of Israel (they talk about supporting the country as "God's plan" and as hastening the return of Christ).

So the absense of antisemitism IMO is because of political changes which have made it an untenable position in US mainstream politics. But I don't think there's anything that can be described as "Jewish Privilage". First I think it doesn't work to compare the white Jewish US population to "white people generally". I think a better way to see Jews in the US is in comparison with other "white ethnics" all of whom suffered some level of xenopobia or anti-immigrant "racism". In the post-war era of "labor peace" whole layers of the white immigrant (and children of immigrants) working class were able to benifit from the class struggles of the generation before and a global situation where the US ruling class was willing to give up wages and spend money socially to ensure peace while the US was reorganizing the world imperial order. In this context, politicians played white ethnic groups against new layers of immigrants as well as the recently migrated black populations in the industrial cities. I personally would not use the term "privilaging" to describe this, I think it was more "divide and rule" because the ruling class needed to recover profitability (the start of neoliberalism) and the best way to do that was to attack recent social gains from the black liberation movement and try and prevent new layers of workers from expecting the sorts of social wages and workplace benifits that the previous generation of workers enjoyed and the generation before had fought for.

At any rate so I don't think there is "Jewish Privilage" or "Polish Privilage" - there may be favoratism and bigoted protectionism in areas where Polish people (have been historically a big part of the local working class and) make up the union beurocracy and chauvanistically defend polish workers while neglecting Puerto Rican migrants or something. But in the US there is no systemic "benifit" for being Jewish any more than other white ethnic groups who immigrated in large numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s and lived in enclaves or ghettos.

[hatzel]

Interestingly enough, as somebody with a few Jamaicans in the family, I've actually often imagined what might be the result if we were to pick up Kingston's notably multiracial Sha'are Shalom synagogue (http://www.ucija.org/) and drop it a couple of thousand miles north in, say, the Brooklyn area...

http://ucija.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/group.png

Doing so would be an interesting little experiment, and might go some way to demonstrating how ethnic and religious relationships and communal histories interact with one another and with their general social context in a variety of settings, giving markedly different results, I'm sure.

[garrus]

A bit off-topic: when you say "Jews" , do you mean people following Judaism or Israelis?
Or both?

I've always wondered.

[Rurkel]

"Who's a Jew 101" is a difficult course, but in general, when people want to say "Israelis" they say "Israelis".

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Damn I think I may have relatives from Europe who were Jewish. I'd better flex my ancient banker IQ genes! I'm going to exploit the fuck out of you!

[Geiseric]

The modern, bourgeois democratic west isn't Tsarist Russia.

Umm anti semitism happened in a lot more places than Russia and Eastern Europe. As far back as 1600 in england, there were countries kicking out every jew, on top of things like the inquisition.

This led to close knit, interdependent, obviously seperated from catholic and protestant, jewish communities. Meaning networking generationally with other jews became very very important even for survival. Sometimes this might mean that successful jews would be apt to hire or train other poorer jews over non jews, which there's really nothing wrong with. But seriously jews and gypsies are completely scapegoated basically wherever they go.

My hypothesis is that this networking simply carried on, and the anti semitism from white folks carried on as well, seeing as jews were unable to enter in many white working class things like unions.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Damn I think I may have relatives from Europe who were Jewish. I'd better flex my ancient banker IQ genes! I'm going to exploit the fuck out of you!

My relatives were possibly Russian Jews who fled Tsarist persecution. Yet I'm poor. Why are my banker genes not working? :(

[Luís Henrique]

jews were unable to enter in many white working class things like unions.

Citation needed...

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

My relatives were possibly Russian Jews who fled Tsarist persecution. Yet I'm poor. Why are my banker genes not working? :(

You quite certainly got only the Bolshevik genes. That's what you get for being a Mischling.

Luís Henrique

[Jimmie Higgins]

This led to close knit, interdependent, obviously seperated from catholic and protestant, jewish communities. Meaning networking generationally with other jews became very very important even for survival. Sometimes this might mean that successful jews would be apt to hire or train other poorer jews over non jews, which there's really nothing wrong with. But seriously jews and gypsies are completely scapegoated basically wherever they go.

Networking through family and neighborhood connections is probably the explaination for certain fields or industries and this phenomena was simmilar for other immigrant groups in the US. The whole "Jews control Hollywood" stereotype happened because of conditions of ghettoization - immigrant shop-owners started setting up neighborhood movie theaters when it was still considered a risky venture (and controlled by pattens by Edison, so these small theaters were semi-"illegal" or "pirate" operations). As the entertainment form grew, some of these owners (many of whom were jewish) relocated to Los Angeles (supposedly to avoid the reach of Edison).

There are parallels with other immigrant groups who came to be over-represented in an occupation or as owners in an industry. Irish created networks in municipal occupations because they were a large ethnic immigrant group at the time when US cities were developing into modern idustrial cities and so nepotism allowed exculded Irish to find employment. Under conditions of some level of social oppression, a lot of these communities either gained mobility through class struggle or through becoming petit-bourgois owners by finding market niches open to them in part because of larger bigotry and neglect.

[Aristophenes McTwitch]

I agree with folks here who say there is no such thing as "Jewish privilage" [sic].


yeah i'm fucking loaded on my jewish wage labour. I'm so privileged.

So is my wage labour mum, my under-employed dad, my made-redundant grandpa, my wage labour gran and my communist great-grandpa.

Fuckin' joke.



I think most people here are misunderstanding OP's original point; That is to say, Jews benefit from a "privilege" (at least in the United States and a handful of other nations such as Israel and Canada) in society that, while not the same as "white privilege", is still a privilege regardless.

Also, relate the Jewish experience to the Palestinian struggle against the apartheid Zionist Regime: Antisemitism has fallen dramatically since the end of the Shoah, and much of the "anti-semitic" acts you see in the news are simply disagreement with Jewish privilege in Palestine (the "Jewish character" of the state is enshrined in Israel's Declaration of Independence, for example, thus eliminating any chance of reconciliation with the indigenous population), yet opposition to this is seen as "calling for the destruction of Israel", ergo, it is "anti-semitic".

One can not deny there is a huge privilege that exists among Jews in America on par with American whites, seeing how effective the Israeli lobby is in persuading America to continue supporting the Zionist Regime.

For some Jewish perspective, here is a quotation from a that I found interesting, from anti-apartheid activist Phillip Weiss:


Of course Assange denied he had spoken about [Jewish influence in the media], but people think about these things and they have a right to discuss them, if only for the effect they've had on our Middle East policy. The last social order was described by one prominent American Jewish writer as the "Episcopacy," and a member of it, E. Digby Baltzell, helped to bring it down in the 1960s by exposing the anti-Semitism in that order and urging his kinsmen to open the boardrooms to Jewish talent. My generation clambered aboard, god bless us. We called ourselves a meritocracy; and still, I wonder how much of the Jewish presence in important jobs has to do with Jewish kinship networks, i.e., we discriminated in favor of other Jews. I reflect that my journalism career was propelled by many Jewish editor friends (and yes, a few non-Jewish ones too), and our religious identity was important to all of us. Just as Jewish identity was a central element to the neoconservatives, who Jacob Heilbrunn has written were propelled by their ethnic "resentment" against being excluded from prestige positions by the WASPs.

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03/jewish-privilege.html

Jews indeed have suffered horrendous past suffering: but the past is the past; the reality on the ground is, Palestinians are being crushed and an invasion is prepared against peace-loving Iran as we still discuss politicized antisemitism (Why can't the Star of David be used as a symbol for Israel if it's on the Nation's flag? Stars and Stripes are always used to represent America, right?) while sipping tea and watching the world burn around us.

[Aristophenes McTwitch]

Really, so white privilege means white people are rich?

Most people on here do not seem to understand how White Privilege works. Just because you may be poor, does not mean you still don't benefit from priviledge granted to you from society on account of your heritage, and lets face it: in America, pogroms against Jews don't exist, Jews are represented much higher in government than blacks or hispanics on per capita...It's safe to say that Jews in America (since I can only speak for America, as an American) are almost on par with "White".

In America, Jews faced discrimination on par with Catholics: they never had it as bad as minorities such as Asians, blacks, and Amerindians.