Privilege Talk and Antisemitism
“Who would have expected even a generation ago that it would be acceptable for a liberal magazine to pose the question, ‘Are Jews white?’ This wasn’t National Geographic a century ago, but The Atlantic magazine in 2016. The question arose because of the dispute over where Jews might come in the oppression hierarchy that is being assembled. Should Jews be regarded as being high up in the oppression stakes, or can they be seen as benefiting from some privileges of their own? Do they benefit from white privilege or not? Once such questions start to get asked is it surprising that some people will come up with ugly answers? At the University of Illinois in Urbana some leaflets turned up on campus in 2017 which offered their own answer. They presented a hierarchical pyramid, at the bottom of which were the ‘99 per cent’ who were oppressed by the alleged top 1 per cent. But the leaflets asked whether the top 1 per cent oppressing everyone else were ‘straight white men’ or ‘is the 1 per cent Jewish?’ The authors seemed to know the answer, arguing that Jews were the primary holders of ‘privilege’, concluding that ‘Ending white privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege.’ Are those who engage in endless assertions about ‘privilege’ absolutely sure that their movement and analysis will not stampede in directions like this? Are they certain that after not just releasing resentment but encouraging it, such a basic human sentiment will not run free? What are their crash barriers to prevent this?”—Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds (2019)
Although it seems obvious to me that the over-representation, or under-representation, of certain groups in our institutions is to some extent a function of discrimination; it does not seem obvious to me that a fair and just society would necessarily eradicate all of these differences. It doesn’t seem obvious to me, for instance, that in a fair and just society, with a level playing field, Jews, who are a mere 2% of the American population, would constitute close to 2% of our doctors, lawyers, journalists, editors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Jews would, I suspect, continue to punch far above their weight in all of those fields—for reasons that have little or nothing to do with systemic racism.
We often assume that if there’s an unequal outcome it must be because someone’s putting their thumb on the scale. But that fails to explain some rather bizarre outliers. The Jews are perhaps the most obvious example. But they’re by no means the only one (e.g., Coptic Christians, Mormons, Han Chinese, Hindu South Asians, Nigerians, etc.). A statement like “we need to do something about white privilege” is made palatable, in part, by conveniently gerrymandering “Jews” into the broad category of “Whites”. If you separate “Jewish” from “White”, the story gets considerably messier. Consider, for example, how utterly different these two statements sound:
(1) It really bothers me that we live in a world where publishing is largely decided by a bunch of white guys in suits. Because they feel more comfortable with and understand other white guys in suits, and white people in general. We need to diversify the American media. And this means, in practice, that white men should no longer be over-represented. At present, white men constitute about 30% of the American population. As such, I propose that we limit the percentage of white men in news organizations to 30%.
(2) It really bothers me that we live in a world where publishing is largely decided by a bunch of Jewish men. Because they feel more comfortable with and understand other Jewish men, and Jewish people in general. We need to diversify the American media. And this means, in practice, that Jews should no longer be so ridiculously over-represented. At present, Jews constitute 2% of the American population. As such, I propose that we limit the percentage of Jews in news organizations to 2%.
The second statement would, I hope, make the vast majority of the people who approve of the first one cringe. But it’s actually truer and more accurate than the first. Jews are vastly over-represented in journalism, law, medicine, academia, entrepreneurship, and much else. And you don’t need to go to some crazy neo-Nazi site for those stats, Wikipedia will suffice.
Does pursuing social justice and equality of result mean we have to bring back Jewish quotas? That would seem to follow. Because Jews were over-represented in many of these fields even when antisemitism was still a potent force to be reckoned with. Indeed, McGill University instituted Jewish quotas back in the day precisely because Jews were doing so well. If a program of mandatory equality of result were implemented tomorrow, no group would lose more than the Jews. If this doesn’t give progressives pause, they really haven’t thought it through.
—John Faithful Hamer, Social Media Land (2020)
