Guns, Germs and Steel<\/a><\/em>\u2018s explanation, which is, as I recall, that Eurasia was advantaged by having a long stretch of traversable, similar-in-climate landmass that meant that cultural interchange could grow technology, whereas sub-Saharan Africa was cut off by the Sahara, is correct, or something else), there was a certain reasonableness, at the time, of people believing that Africans were less intelligent, and thus less deserving of basic human rights, if they were so far behind technologically.<\/p>\nAs slavery continued, slaveholders had an incentive to continue to believe this.\u00a0 Others, even without a financial motivation, might have their stereotypes confirmed because, after all, those slaves were, by and large, fieldworkers without the ability to learn a skilled trade, let alone get an education.\u00a0 And, yes, even at a time with images much less a part of daily life than now, those images did serve to reinforce the idea that \u201cblack people look like monkeys.\u201d\u00a0 Even Northerners who opposed slavery generally were of the belief that they should go back to Africa or, at any rate, not be a part of their own communities.<\/p>\n
And in the year 2018, the image of the black \u201cwelfare queen\u201d or gangbanger is reinforced anytime there\u2019s an inner-city shooting in the news, especially when the mother, or the female victim, is a young unmarried woman with multiple children.\u00a0 It\u2019s reinforced when, at work, management is white and support staff, black, and when, er, fashion styles are so different between those two groups of workers.<\/p>\n
And with respect to Mexicans and Central American immigrants, again, stereotypes of inferiority are reinforced when, as a middle-class white person, one encounters Hispanic immigrants more often as one\u2019s (next-door neighbor\u2019s) lawn-mowers than in the workplace.\u00a0 When said lawn-mower has a pockmarked face, or when the women and girls are short and chubby.\u00a0 When, in looking for a product at the local Walmart or Target, you ask the Hispanic employee and she gives you a pained \u201cI don\u2019t speak English\u201d look.\u00a0 When the Hispanic kids on the wall as \u201cstudents of the quarter\u201d are being recognized for great effort in their ESL, remedial, or vocational classes, in contrast to the white kids being recognized for outstanding Honors class work.\u00a0 When news reports, again, contain stories of gang violence, or when what\u2019s meant to be a tragic story of a longtime resident being at risk of deportation comes off a little less tragic when that longtime, supposedly fully-integrated resident can\u2019t even tell their tragic story in English, a language they haven\u2019t learned even after 20 or 30 years of residence.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s right to be prejudiced.<\/p>\n
My point is just that one can feel that it\u2019s somewhat natural to be prejudiced, seeing this, and that sometimes one must go against one\u2019s instincts in order not to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should I want black people living next to me?\u00a0 They\u2019ll just bring crime into the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should I hire [the black candidate]?\u00a0 You can tell she won\u2019t fit in here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should we allow immigration from Central America?\u00a0 They won\u2019t assimilate, they\u2019ll just bring down wages for low-skill jobs, send all their money back to their home country, and put their children on welfare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, I am not saying that these claims are justified, but that I can comprehend how, given current circumstances, people would act this way.<\/p>\n
But antisemitism makes no sense to me.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just incomprehensibly stupid.<\/strong><\/p>\nHow can someone (especially a white American) possibly believe that Jews are secretly controlling the world when there are no visible signs of it?\u00a0 If globalists are Jews seeking \u2014 well, whatever it is they\u2019re seeking \u2014 shouldn\u2019t they be inexplicably wealthy?\u00a0 Heck, it seems to me that even Holocaust-denying antisemites concede that they were imprisoned in concentration camps \u2014 they just deny that there was an active killing program vs. \u201cmerely\u201d deaths due to the \u201cinevitable\u201d harsh conditions of wartime, but how would world-dominating-Jewry have tolerated even that?\u00a0 How resentful can you be of communities which encourage education and who, by means of their education, benefit the wider society?\u00a0 When antisemites claim that \u201cJews dominate Hollywood,\u201d even if it were true, what would be the harm in a century of producing entertainment for America?<\/p>\n
What do you do with a prejudice so stupid that it\u2019s almost in itself grounds for believing a person is not altogether mentally well?<\/p>\n
And yes, I know all about the history of antisemitism, and the persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages, and the fact that they were confined to a narrow set of permissible occupations in many European countries, then resented as greedy moneylenders, etc.\u00a0 Intellectually I know the roots of antisemitism.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not utterly stupid.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:ReadingOfTheTorah.jpg; By Roylindman (Template:Roy Lindman) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0) or GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s Saturday, midafternoon, and the latest reports are that the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was, in fact, an antisemite of the Nazi (vs. Islamist) variety.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t have an opinion on the questions that so many are, or will be, opinioning on, both with respect to this and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[573],"class_list":["post-11481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-antisemitism"],"yoast_head":"\n
Antisemitism: the stupidest prejudice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's Saturday, midafternoon, and the latest reports are that the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was, in fact, an antisemite of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/10\/antisemitism-the-stupidest-prejudice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Antisemitism: the stupidest prejudice\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It's Saturday, midafternoon, and the latest reports are that the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was, in fact, an antisemite of the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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<\/p>\n