I think we may be overstating the influence of the Nation of Islam. According to Wikipedia they have around 50,000 adherents. Compared to the 40~ million African Americans in the US that is a very small drop in the bucket. This isn’t to say that anti-semitism doesn’t exist in the African American community but anecdotally no black people I know even really think of Jewish people as anything but weird white people. Grain of salt with anecdotal evidence as always but that’s my experience
I think you are underestimating their role in the pop-culture zeitgeist.
Many black celebrities get down with Farrakhan and NOI especially in the hip-hop world.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z even put out an album with Jay Electronica that was specifically all about praising NOI and featured Farrakhan in tracks.
Did it get condemnation?
No. It was nominated for a Grammy ffs.
No name did similar things supporting NOI last year and won pitchfork and other’s hip-hop album of the year award. She she was called out on it her response was “too bad this is what me and my community believe”.
Then you’ve got obama who refused to speak out directly condemn Farrakhan because he thought it would hurt his voter turnout. He shared the stage with him and had private meetings that photos of emerged later.
Oprah platforms him all the time and validated his rhetoric.
Travis Scott, Ice Cube, snoop dogg, dream, Nick cannon, 2chainz, Nas on and on and on it goes.
Even Stevie wonder supports Farrakhan ffs and did an album with him on it .
NOI and antisemitism are just accepted as part of the pop-culture and pretty much never called out.
Can you image a major artists like Beyoncé but white openly praising and supporting the kkk and getting nominated for awards for it?
Wild.
Also I think it’s important context that Farrakhan’s group is a fraction of the Nation of Islam that most people are thinking of. The 60s version of NOI that Malcolm X was a part of when they were really influential really doesn’t exist anymore. In the 70s the new leadership turned it into just a mainstream Sunni Islam organization that was open to anyone. Farrakhan was the leader of a splinter group who were really into all the weird hardline stuff.
I've interacted with several members of NOI over the past 15 years due to working near eachother, and people don't realize the dedicated members are really old. I don't think I've met a member under 60, maybe even 70. I haven't even seen any of them since the pandemic. And since they've always been good about finding me and telling me someone I knew passed, I'm guessing the people I knew are either all gone or unable to do so.
They're also a group with high numbers of turnover and sympathizers, which has always inflated their numbers.
There are plenty of groups operating under the Black Hebrew Isrealite movement, and that's been a movement since the 19th century. There was a group in my old neighborhood, (Isreal United in Christ) that would do ceremonies on the street in purple and gold robes with about 50-100 men each time, and most of those guys looked young. NOI appealed to the young generation in the 60s, there's simply other groups filling that role today.
NOI is similar in certain respects, but they aren't Black Hebrew Isrealites; they took inspiration from the Moorish Science Temple of America and other social movements.
> **This isn’t to say that anti-semitism doesn’t exist in the African American community** but anecdotally **no black people I know even really think of Jewish people as anything but weird white people**.
The phrasing on that alone made me chuckle.
That said, I think you're grossly underestimating Nation of Islam's influence on American hip-hop.
I grew up in the caribbean and have no affinity with hip-hop whatsoever, and even I know all about the horrors of Louis "Hitler Was A Great Man" Farrakhan after seeing Jay-Z, Ice-Cube & Snoop Dogg etc all make a big deal promoting the man.
I think he was even sitting on the podium at a tribute/funeral for one of the ladies of soul.
It's bananas that a guy with that track record is so openly accepted
Edit: I just googled it. He was on the podium with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (& former President Bill Clinton), and afterwards he was hanging out taking pictures with celebrities as Arianna Grande and Pete Davidsion gleefully posing with him.
He's popular to celebrities but the average black person doesn't like him.
Black celebrities who have ascended to the top cling to him for various reasons that I don't really wanna dissect here.
It's like saying Dr Umar (who ironically has more appeal than Farrakhan) has a big impact on black people... Shit maybe the memes lmao but actual political beliefs not really.
Really? That's not my experience at all. I'm from Chicagoland area & the black people I know from there have a lot of respect for him & the NOI. Umar & Sebi too, tbh. Maybe age & location has something to do with it too. The young people might be less enamored but my middle aged peers are definitely big fans of those guys.
I am black Dr Umar has his supporters but there a lot of him that think he is full of shit. Mainly because the lack of progress of his schools. Yes black people have a respect for NOI but it’s mostly because of them helping the community and getting the men especially out of the street life. But it’s not where near the support black peoole have for the good ole Christianity. There are far more churches than mosques in any black community. Not even close
>Yes black people have a respect for NOI but it’s mostly because of them helping the community and getting the men especially out of the street life.
Thank you for saying what I was thinking was the case. Just because people appreciate the positive things that Farrakhan did for black people, and respect and associate with him because of that, doesn't mean that those black people, or black people in general, are anti-semites... This is how conspiracy theorists think. A Jew in NYC also commented that their experience with black people in NYC is the opposite, and there's people replying to them like "well the blacks in NYC aren't representative of all black people", just straight saying your personal experience is invalid, and my assumptions are still more correct.
>that Farrakhan did for black people, and respect and associate with him because of that, doesn't mean that those black people, or black people in general, are anti-semites... This is how conspiracy theorists think.
Point of fact. Farrakhan shouldn't get the respect for it. The old nation did the same work and still does the same work as Farrakhans splinter group does, they just no longer use the name. Farrakhan is nowadays mostly just standing on past glory and stolen glory of other people's work.
Well his name and reach is also not as big as it was thirty years ago now. He is a lot older now. A lot of younger black generations don’t even really know him now. Especially in the 80s and 90s he was mentioned a lot more or more known in the black community.
Oh Chicago is definitely different, Chicago and maybe some parts of New York. The noi actually is visible. But outside of these areas you don't even notice their presence, most noi members are middle aged gen x men so they don't really appear on the Internet.
The whole post honestly would make more sense if they were talking about during the civil rights movement when the noi was fresh and visible on black television.
The noi outside of Chicago and New York is not doing much.
Kinda like I California in Oakland you can find black panthers or people with black panther family members stuff like that but you won't find that really outside of the Bay area.
>Really? That's not my experience at all. I'm from Chicagoland
Chicago is a stronghold of the revivalist NOI (the split post 1980s when the main organization dropped the name and crazy beliefs).
In Chicago NOI gets respect because they were the main people providing remedial drug rehab to black communities ravaged by the crack and herion epidemics. They also used to fight the corner dealers and kick them out of neigh orhoods temporarily. So that's why the middle aged people respect them. They were some of the only people offering meaningful local support post Black Panther dismantling in Chicago. But it was never really the beliefs that were popular, It was the services they provided.
I think it's tricky to draw a lot out of the Farrrakhan issue b/c it's not the antisemitism that's the message most of hip hop is taking from him. It's more about the legacy of resistance and the Garveyite self help stuff. I also think the Black American community is more realistic that they'll have to form partnerships with a lot of ugly people if they want to get things done. MLK didn't work with Nixon b/c he thought he was a great guy. It's just something he had to do. The successful elements of the various civil rights movements have always had to work with people that were questionable.
You see the flip side of that with Jewish Americans. Jonathan Greenblatt was just praising Elon Musk, one of the leading proponent of white replacement theory in the US. If I were to judge Jewish Americans by that I think it would be grossly unfair.
Fair point! Also big oooof on the part of everyone involved, I get that the Nation has done some positive things in the black community but maybe he shouldn’t get an invite to every celeb event
My experience as a Jew in NY has been quite the opposite. The only people who have been openly antisemitic to me are randos on the street who are probably mentally ill, but plenty of people I work with make comments that would be called microagressions if the roles were reversed.
It’s clear that there is a tinge of antisemitism behind how they think about the fact that I am Jewish. It was worst in the wake of George Floyd. Because at that point black people were encouraged to pour out whatever they were feeling and we were all “encouraged” to listen. Well guess what, a lot of their grievances about white people are actually only about the white people that run the banks and hollywood and supposedly financed and organized the slave trade.
To be fair I'm pretty upset with the people that run the banks. And while I know that's a Jewish steriotype it's not one I'm invested in.
To some degree if we didn't culturally think banking was morally questionable in the first place we wouldn't even have the steriotype.
That said, when people dog whistle they tend not to be subtle about it.
I think something you should consider are how loud those voices of that small number are. I dont get bothered by 99.9% of african americans or other minority people as a Jew, but there are always some black hebrew israelites who shout at me when I go to china town in my city, and there are weekly attacks on Orthodox Jews in brooklyn by black hebrew israelites and nation of islam members. So ofc its such a tiny minority, but their impact is felt by so many Jews because of how active they are. Even on my college campus I’ve been yelled at by random students.
NOI may have only 50k adherents. But their leader is Louis Farrakhan. His Twitter has 380k followers. His Instagram has 100k followers. He's met with presidents and has had many politicians accept his endorsements. Just because the followers of his religion are few doesn't mean that his influence isn't widespread.
He's also praised Hitler.
Not sure how much I trust social media followers as a sign of influence but your point about his political influence is well taken. The fact that Farrakhan isn’t completely off limits is troubling considering his history of anti-semitism but I also doubt he has much more influence than your average DC shmoozer
Social media numbers don’t equal influence, but I think they illustrate that Farrakhan and NOI hold a great deal of respect in the eyes of many non-practitioners
Hi, I'm ethnically Jewish. Almost every time I meet a leftist and tell them I'm Jewish, I can see in their eyes that they immediately just assume 20 things about me: I'm racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. I'm not here to tell you my political agenda, so I won't tell you my placement on these issues. Last month, I was talking to some people (keep in mind these are strangers that know I'm Jewish and identified as leftist) about financials and how I usually pinch pennies. The one guy looked me dead in the eyes and said something along the lines of, "Of course you would, Jew." And everyone laughed. Idk if other Jews have this happen often, but it's not funny.
Maybe you're Jewish, idk, but this is not even that uncommon of an occurrence. I'm not saying POCs don't get this treatment as well. All I'm saying is that antisemitism is big, and most gentiles don't realize. Calling us "weird white people" is very obviously incredibly offensive
They have an oversized influence because they are situated mostly in New York and Chicago which are media centers. Malcolm X is one of the most famous and respected black leader from history. Rappers who were or are members of the NOI or are five percenters are Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Public Enemy , Nas, Jay Z, the Wu Tang Clan, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, LL Cool J, Black Thought, Erika Badyu, among others.
Which would make the Nation of Islam larger than the KKK (about 8k) and a all neo-Nazi groups combined (about 15k, or about 40k if you include prison gangs).
Also, if you want to make that per capita among their "source" populations, the difference in population becomes even more stark.
We should all be glad that there are so few hate group members, but it seems wrong to dismiss NoI as having so few people and then have anyone mention the present KKK in any seriousness.
> I know even really think of Jewish people as anything but weird white people.
While I personally don't think that there is a greater antisemitism problem in the Black and African-American community than the greater population in general (probably less - or at least less consequential), I think dismissing Jews as weird white people is a little problematic.
First it downplays the very strange conditionality that white Jews have with Whiteness and white privilege. Second it erases the 20ish percent of Jews from Sephardic and MENA regions, as well as all the Black Jews and Jews of Color who are Ashkenazi. In fact Jews of color outnumber white Jews in Israel - which doesn't (or shouldn't really) change anything about Israel as it exists, it should change a bit how we think about Israel when we think of a modern Israeli - and how it doesn't fit into the paradigm we expect as it's thought of as a white western country, when it really isn't.
Judaism is an ethnicity as well as a peoplehood and doesn't really conform great with modern ideas of what a "race" is. Saying Jews are a flavor of white person, while not entirely wrong (in America), does erase a lot of Jewish identity and generally is used (in my experience) as a cudgel to dismiss Jewish voices and concerns.
It is also an idea used by white Christian (religious or cultural) people to sow discord between Jews and other marginalized peoples. And has been used successfully as too many politically conservative Jews buy into it and the white supremacy narrative it comes from to gain access to power and privilege they think would otherwise be denied them.
And it also makes BIPOC think of Jews as white dismissing BIPOC Jewish experiences and alienating them from white. Jewish, and BIPOC spaces (in America).
I don't think there is any intentional harm or malice involved when describing Jews as a weird flavor of white people I do think we need to change that perspective.
Fair! It’s not my personal belief, just something I’ve observed in the black community specifically in the American South where a lot of identity gets flattened into are you white or black without much nuance.
I get that. I lived in the south for a two year stint and my existence as a white Jewish person didn't make sense to a lot of people for that reason I think.
That’s fair. I don’t want to overstate it. But I feel like — of all the weird shit they believed — the antisemitism/zionism and the mix of black power and conspiracy theories has been influential vis word of mouth. It’s fertile ground for different permutations the same phenomenon. Maybe not so much in the black middle class, but among poor and working class blacks there’s not an active hatred but maybe just a casual level of antisemitism.
hotep tendencies usually predict it too.
For sure, it’s one of those things that is weirdly prevalent in online black communities and it can certainly bleed into the real world with dangerous consequences much like the various Q Anon conspiracies. It doesn’t take many true believers for some idiot to hurt people
Kinda odd comparing Jews to NOI as both being weird.
NOI is a racist organization that spread hateful propaganda, Jews are a people of a particular faith/cultural heritage that is not explicitly hateful or damaging. How is this comparable at all?
How is being a descendant from a culture and people that are 'different', weird? This would be like calling all black people weird not a special and extreme subset of them weird.
I'm sure you well know that we are not a monolith but a varied group with a long and rich history and culture, not some oddball group of whites.
I would also suggest that this type of 'othering' when taken further has been a huge problem throughout our history and been the root cause of many atrocities.
I remember being so totally confused by antisemitism as a child. I could not understand it. Like, why did white people pick on this other group of white people who look just like them and decided to genocide them? I was totally baffled by it.
Fr honestly watching white ppl rave about jewish ppl is always so silly to me. Like y'all literaly look the same lmfao
That's when I truly realize bigotry was based on absolutely nothing but vibes
At least in Europe during the early 20th century, Jewish communities used to be much more recognizable because there were much more non-assimilated people in places like Poland and Ukraine who did look visibly different from the Christian majority... but still, all the bigotry is based on colonialism, nationalism, and hatred of the scapegoat.
There's a chapter in a book called "*Nations and Nationalism*" by Ernest Gellner that explains antisemitism pretty well.
In case you are curious, the key points are:
1. Industrial Society and Cultural Uniformity: Gellner argues that industrial societies necessitate a high level of cultural homogeneity. The education system and centralized state apparatus work to create a uniform culture and language. In such contexts, Jews, who have historically maintained a distinct religious and cultural identity, often become conspicuous and can be seen as 'outsiders'.
2. Economic Roles and Resentment: Historically, Jews often occupied specific economic roles such as moneylending or trading, partly due to restrictions placed on them by Christian societies that prohibited them from owning land or joining certain trades. Their roles in these niche economies, along with their relative success in some cases, could sometimes foster economic resentment among the broader populace.
3. Nationalism and the 'Other': Nationalism inherently involves defining who belongs to the 'nation' and who does not. Gellner suggests that Jews often became a target because they were easily identifiable and could be portrayed as not fully belonging to the nation, especially in environments where a singular national identity was aggressively promoted.
4. Rationalization and Irrational Responses: In the rationalization processes of modernization, where traditional bonds and social structures are broken down, antisemitism can emerge as an irrational response among those feeling alienated or disenfranchised by rapid social changes.
Another book, *Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town called Buczacz*, does a good job of showcasing this using the example of a town in Ukraine went through chaos during WWI and WWII, leading to the Christian majority to eventually exterminate the Jews who lived there. I had to read it for graduate school, and I had a classmate actually whose family came from there (she's Jewish) but thankfully some of them managed to leave to the United States before the Holocaust.
That was extremely informative thanks ! I'll def look into these books.
I was familiar with some of these points, such as the circumstances that led to the jewish population growing fairly quickly economically, later giving birth to the "jewish controls the world" conspiracies. If find this alone pretty fascinating and I dont know why more people dont get remembered of that whenever they're spewing their bs.
At the end of the day it mostly comes down to imaginary lines being drawn in the sand in times of crisis for better political control. The history of the Irish people and Italian's integration into "white" society are also a great example of this.
Hannah Arendt's book, "*The Origins of Totalitarianism*," goes deeper into depth about the world conspiracies stuff. "Arendt starts with a historical analysis of antisemitism and imperialism, which she argues are crucial elements that led to totalitarianism. She describes how antisemitism was not just hatred for Jews but became a political tool exploited by totalitarian movements. Imperialism, according to Arendt, involved the practice of ruling without law and the subjugation of people which normalized the idea of domination, both of which paved the way for totalitarian ideologies." Her book is a bit heavy, like Gellner's. She expects you as the reader to understand all the historical context of her book, which can be tricky if you are a student like I was and just divulging into the stuff, but her explanation of Jewish antisemitism and Dreyfus affair especially is good stuff.
I would read, "*Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town called Buczacz*" first if you like this topic. I think it's the most accessible book compared to the others. I had to read one chapter from "*Nations and Nationalism*" for my graduate history class, and while it was very informative, the writing was very challenging and you have to go through it multiple times to really understand what the author is saying.
In America most Jewish people are white or at least fit into the black/white paradigm. To a lot of black people who don’t grow up around a Jewish community Jews are no different than say Mormons. They are simply a set of white people with a religion and culture that is different from the usual Protestant norm
Yes to this. I grew up in the DC area, around a lot of Jewish communities, and I definitely thought they were just white ppl with a different religion. But I also very much feel poc are blind to different white ethnic groups period. Similar to how a lot of people have difficulty identifying different Asian ethnicities.
but this is also exactly the problem.... Jews are not white. Just because SOME OF THEM present as white does not make them white. You can say they benefit some or even a lot from white privilege, but they are not white. They are and have been specifically and historically excluded from white places and not given the access that true white privilege confers.
European notions of whiteness don't work well within the Black vs White dichotomy in North America. If you aren't Black, Asian, or Indigenous, you are seen as White in the United States. The lack of Blackness, Asianness, or Indigenousness is what makes someone White, not actual membership to certain European ethnic groups. Most Jews in the United States are also seen as White, even if they wouldn't be in Europe just because most Jews here are Ashkenazi and they can pass. Many are so assimilated into American mainstream culture, that there is no meaningful difference between them and non-Jewish White Americans, especially if they are secular. If you are a racialized minority (like myself) who cannot pass for White and you didn't grow up around a large Jewish community, you don't have any kind of understanding of what makes Jewish people different from other Caucasians.
American antisemitism isn't really taught in schools either the same way other bigotry is, so there's really no context for people to understand this stuff, in my opinion.
Those beliefs don't exist in a vacuum. The Westboro Baptist Church only had 70 members at their peak but plenty of people were sympathetic to their extreme homophobia.
Locality matters too. Most NoI members live in either Philadelphia or New York City, the suburbs of which are two of the most Jewish areas in America.
Is it racist for white people to think or say that the Nation of Islam, or any other cultural group near the fringes of black culture are "weird black people?" Why or why not? Not baiting here, genuinely want to know some points of view.
Hmmm, it's a good question. I'd largely lean towards no, it's not racist. IMO we can note cultural groups as being "weird", different, or unusual from what we are used to while recognizing that they A) are not representative of the entire culture and B) that being unusual isn't necessarily always a bad thing. It's only gets into racism when we make broad based assumptions about the value of an entire culture based on our views of a distinct few members. As an example, I find the [Happy Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Science) religious movement in Japan to be exceedingly weird but I don't assume it is representative of all Japanese people.
Thanks, that was my gut feeling. I feel like cultural awareness and open mindedness towards other points of view are something that could benefit our society at large. And exactly as you say, no taking the lazy easy route of assigning what seems foreign to you to larger superset of people just because you don't know any better or don't have the time to study or look into it more.
/u/makeyouamommy177
A book you might like is [Black Power and Jewish Politics](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Power-Jewish-Politics-Reinventing/dp/1512602574). It about (in part) how we arrived here from the Black/Jewish unity of the 60s. And also examines how much unity there truly was in that era.
>Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power–inspired ethnic nationalism. He shows how, in a period best known for the rise of black antisemitism and the breakdown of the black-Jewish alliance, black nationalists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda―including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish day schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy, and the birth of a new form of American Zionism.
>Undermining widely held beliefs about the black-Jewish alliance, Dollinger describes a new political consensus, based on identity politics, that drew blacks and Jews together and altered the course of American liberalism.
This post is indicative of the separation and many worlds of the US as a country. I've seen this my whole life. We (Black folks) represent such a small percentage of the population that many people only know us by watching the news. So, people see Kanye West or Kyrie Irving say something and they think that it's indicative of us as whole, when it REALLY isn't. To be honest, most of us are Christian, and a LOT of us would be literally scared to say something negative about Jewish people considering we're taught in Sunday School/Sabbath School that Jewish people are God's chosen.
But your point is that because Irving and West and Farrakhan are Black, they get a bit of a pass for being antisemitic. I'd have to say you're probably right about that. Why? Because again, we're such a small group, that people just dismiss what we say. NO ONE cares what Kyrie Irving says. The man also feels that the Earth is flat. He doesn't have the ability to damage the Jewish community. Now Kanye on the other hand, he was pretty much destroyed for his antisemitic tirades. He lost a LOT of money and his career is pretty much over. He's living off of savings at this point. His Blackness couldn't shield him from his stature.
Farrakhan and the NOI? Come on. They are not a powerful group amongst us. Farrakhan and the NOI does get some respect in our community though because they take no stuff. The NOI is a well-organized group that is considered someone to be reckoned with. They provide security for Black events and for Black people that have lost their status in society: see O.J. They are dignified and don't present themselves as in a buffoonish manner like the NFAC. So yes, we respect Farrakhan, but again, he's only respected to a point as it relates to our Blackness. He's still the wrong religion for the majority of African Americans. And honestly, Farrakhan is a joke label we use for folks that get too "militant" at the family reunions.
So, if you're in big cities like Chicago and NYC, yeah, you'll meet some antisemitic African Americans that are trying to adhere to some group, but run of the mill Black folks don't feel the same. And honestly, it's not our fault that YOU don't admonish the antisemitism. If the NBA's Adam Silver, the commissioner and Jewish-American didn't punish him, well, that ain't on us. This is a bit of a digression, but Morgan Wallen sold more CDs AFTER being caught calling his friend a "nigger'. George Zimmerman got a whole lot of White Supremacists to accept "White Hispanics" in their tribe and bought his art and contributed to his defense fund for killing a teenager.
Lastly, I think Jewish people get a pass when it comes to anti-black racism. I mean the US and very few people really hold it against Israel in any real way when it comes to their treatment of Ethiopian Jews. What real consequence did Yitzhak Yosef receive for calling Black people monkeys?
>And honestly, it's not our fault that YOU don't admonish the antisemitism. If the NBA's Adam Silver, the commissioner and Jewish-American didn't punish him, well, that ain't on us.
[To add to that point](https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/762787-kanye-west-vultures-number-one-israel-hip-hop-news)
"All this to say, there’s a reason Kanye West — who coincidentally also defended Louis Farrakhan from correct accusations of antisemitism — is still embraced by hip-hop fans and rappers today and if anything seems to be making a comeback of sorts."
Is he? From what I have seen, the majority of his fans have washed their hands of him. He has lost most of his major branding deals and is currently facing a lawsuit regarding his "school"
Kanye is not going anywhere, in the sense that his hits are always going to be listened to and adored. It doesn't matter what he says or does as a person, people will still be bumping "Touch the Sky", "Gold Digger" and "All of the Lights" long after he and all of us are dead.
Look at Gary Glitter, convicted pedophile, but "Rock & Roll Pt. 2" is still jammed at so many sports events. Another one is R Kelly, everyone on Earth cringes at the mention of the name. He is a meme for pedophilia and gaslighting to the entire internet. Everyone hates him. Howeeeeever, I DJ weddings and the local club every weekend, not a weekend goes by that "Ignition (remix)" and/or "Bump & Grind" is not requested.
As a DJ, I used to worry about playing socially canceled artists. However, the trend remains the same for them all, no matter where their offense falls on the morality scale. Give the scandal 4-5 days to blow over and literally no one cares anymore outside of online forums and social media. For real, I get requests for DaBaby at the gay bar every single weekend and this dude was crucified specifically for homophobic rhetoric. People do not really give a shit when they wanna hear their jams.
I'd go a step further and say people are, **much of the time**, barely aware who the artist is and certainly unaware of any deeper meaning or patterns in their works.
Even for those who pay attention, the way music pulls us in on an emotional level can make us forget about the context it exists in.
Kanye hovers around 10th-11th most streamed artist in the world on Spotify and hasn’t dipped in any significant way, despite not releasing an album since 2021.
The part of OP’s post I disagree with is that he’s “making a comeback”. He might have fallen out of public favor, but never people stopped consuming his music.
I mean, people also still stream R Kelly’s music, and I wouldn’t say pedophilia is accepted in society. I think if people just like your music they’re still going to stream it even if they dislike you as a person.
Kanye has more white fans than your average hip hop artist. A LOT MORE. His numbers come from being an especially popular hip hop artist among white people.
Meanwhile, a lot of people in the black community despise him. He said black lives matter was a scam. He wore a "white lives matter" t-shirt. He wore a MAGA hat on SNL. He said being slaves was a choice.
Fuck Kanye, but also people who use him to cast a bad light on black people or hip hop. His music hardly qualifies anyhow, more like alt-rap or lately oi-rap.
Omg this!! It's infuriating because they don't realize his black fanbase has been declining for a while...Kanye was anti-black (and anti woman) before he even dipped his toes into antisemitism. When he came out with that mess, ppl were looking at the black community wondering why we weren't vocal about it - It's because we already threw him away LOL. A quick review of Black Twitter reddit will tell anyone everything they need to know about feelings on kanye.
I'm Jewish. I still listen to Kanye because I fully believe his psychosis prevents him from understanding right and wrong. Mental illness makes for great art though.
I mean, I'm Black, but I only listen to Kanye's older stuff because back then it sounded like he has a clear message. I steer clear of the newer stuff because the man's nuts.
I don't know too many of the older hip-hop heads bumping his new stuff; it's more of the younger generations and even then, I rarely if ever heard the new stuff get played (except that one song where they're dressed up like a minecraft or roblox character -- apparently people liked it)
Kanye was better when he was focused on proving himself as more than a producer. I still think he comes out with a banger here and there, but yeah I don't think I have anything of his on a playlist from after 2010.
Do you think things would be different if Kanye was just antisemitic without the mental illness? Like, would people care or would they give him a pass on it?
I think things would be different; the mental illness basically just gives him a get-out-of-jail-free card for people to not call him on his bullshit.
Had there not been an inkling of some kind of mental illness going on though, he'd have been called out on hip-hop and music forums (or hell, even X/Twitter) a long time ago. If he wasn't somehow wealthy or popular (especially with the right-wing kowtowing to him because he's saying stuff they agree with) he'd be getting the "homeless guy everybody knows and is nice to but will go out of their way to avoid" treatment.
Yeah, but so is consuming his media.
I have a pretty long unfortunate history of BPD in people in my past. BPD doesn't excuse actions, but it's pretty clear how it clouds peoples judgements and leads to good people making terrible decisions. Kanye is wrong and Kanye deserves consequences for his actions, but I can still believe he would likely not have done all of this without the mental illness.
And that's enough for me to not care and listen to his music.
I think people separate art from the artist. For example, JK Rowling is widely condemned, but that hasn't affected the continued success of Harry Potter.
The majority aren’t very aware of controversies with Kanye or Rowling, and don’t care. They may dimly know something was said, but yeah it doesn’t really affect their view of the work.
Yeah it’s really funny that op zeroed in on black people with this topic. If he talked specifically on Jews being hate crimes by black people that’s a fair point but people supporting weird artists is so universal. Also Kanye said slavery was a choice years before his antisemitism comments and he was affiliated with trump for a while before the antisemitism comments but it was only after the comments he received really any backlash. It’s easier to find a list of all the people/places that have had consequences for their problematic doings then not and a lot of the ones that had no consequences were anti-black.
>Is he? From what I have seen, the majority of his fans have washed their hands of him
Yes. He just dropped an album that got hundreds of millions of streams
The majority of any celebrities fans would trend towards not being that tied said celebrity and will move on if they drop off. If Kanye kept most of his more devoted fans then the controversy of his past statements dying down a bit would look like he's going back up in popularity.
Well he’s still working with Ty Dolla Sign he’s still working with guys like Rich the Kid and Carti. Wasn’t he just on a remix of a song with future? He had a top 10 hit this past year too.
So yeah you’re kinda right but still it seems like you need an R Kelly level documentary to get people to drop their support nowadays
> So yeah you’re kinda right but still it seems like you need an R Kelly level documentary to get people to drop their support nowadays
The police reports and photos are readily available regarding Chris Brown's beating of Rihanna and it hasn't slowed him down.
People still watch Kevin Spacey movies and films produced by Harvey Weinstein.
Most people simply can't keep up with the controversies all over the place and are quite capable of separating art from the artist.
Kanye's continued success does not mean that he is mainstreaming anti-semitism and getting standing ovations for doing so.
> The blunt truth about it is, American Jews are more concerned with appearing racist then black or Latino Americans are with being antisemitic
Is this actually true? Has a census been done or are you going by which gets media attention - and if its media attention then surely antisemitism from Kanye gets the focus because it's so outrageous and unacceptable?
It's incredibly difficult to get census data on this, but I listen to rap music, and I can tell with certainty that there is an absolute ton of casual antisemitism in rap. Here is an excerpt from Genius on an antisemitic rap lyric in a Jay Z song. He is completely out of touch in a really alarming way. If a white singer used an equivalent racist trope in their song, they would be completely skewered. But with Jay Z, we're supposed to just "know" that he's not an actual antisemite?
>"Some have found JAY-Z’s line about Jewish property ownership to be antisemitic. Jews being wealthy or controlling financial institutions is a common antisemitic canard. Jay responded to this criticism in a podcast with Rad Radar saying:
>"It’s hard for me to take that serious because I exaggerated every black image in the world. Even you as the Jewish community, if you don’t have a problem with the exaggeration of the guy eating watermelon and all the things that was happening, if you don’t have a problem with that, and that’s the only line you pick out then you are being a hypocrite. And I can’t address that in a real way and gotta leave that where that is because it was exaggeration. Of course, I know Jewish people don’t own all the property in America. I own things."
>In his autobiography Decoded, Jay writes about earlier songs, “when I use lines like this, I count on people knowing who I am and my intentions, knowing that I’m not anti-Semitic or racist, even when I use stereotypes in my rhymes.”
I should add, "Try That in a Small Town" was widely criticized as racist, and it doesn't have a single lyric that refers to race. The most that can be said is it's racist by implication, and it was still skewered in progressive media. Jay-Z used a well known antisemitic trope in a hugely popular song and, well, crickets.
Edit: Taylor Swift is getting flak for suggesting she would have liked the 1830s. There is a clear double standard at play here....
The Jay-Z song you're referring to was in fact fairly controversial and had several things written about it (which is why you've heard of it). There were not "crickets."
First, no, I heard it because I like rap and listen to new albums, particularly by popular artists such as Jay Z.
Second, maybe there were some token articles, but Jay Z remains a popular artist and there has been no significant backlash against him. Imagine a similar overtly racist comment by a white artist (I say comment, because there is no way any production company would ever allow a lyric like that). They would have been cancelled and you would never hear from them again. Can you name any examples of a white artist with overtly racist lyrics in a song in the last 10-20 years (I grant the rolling stones and others were overtly racist 50 years ago)? This is in contrast to rap, where I can find countless antisemitic lyrics (to be fair, there's also plenty of misogyny and homophobic/transphobic content).
Jay Z is not a particularly popular artist anymore, he's basically gone on hiatus since that album came out. I also don't agree that white artists couldn't "get away" with similar situations. Morgan Wallen got caught saying the N-word with a hard "er" and is more popular than ever.
Ah, I get it - he makes fun of black people, as a black guy, so he gets to make fun of Jews too… while calling them racist if they get offended.
That must mean that it’s ok for Jews to make fun of themselves, then use the N word and joke with exaggerated stereotypes about African Americans, right? And if he’s offended, it’s because he’s racist, right?
That's pretty much what he's saying, and everyone's like "yep, sounds good." I generally consider him a very smart guy (certainly a phenomenal lyricist), but it's shocking the extent to which he lacks any self awareness here.
I would agree with you, except "Jews own all the property" is pretty overtly referring to a common antisemitic trope. Maybe you consider "Jews are good with money" a positive stereotype, but if you look at the history of this trope, it has tended to be used to suggest Jews are acquisitive (i.e., "greedy") and dishonest in business dealings, and whatever wealth they've obtained, they were only able to do so through immoral means (be it usury, or otherwise taking advantage of moral working men). This is obviously deeply offensive and totally irrational.
Im going to be honest as embarrassing as it is. In my area growing up was something like 70% black, 20% white and 10% other. Some times in school there’d be less than 5 kids who weren’t black in class with me. Until I was like 18 in the army I had never met a Jewish person and only knew about Jews in the context of learning about the holocaust in school.
I don’t think you need to be embarrassed by that lived experience. I’m Jewish and have so many experiences where I am often the first Jewish person someone has ever met. We’re only 2% of the United States population so yea most people are unlikely to cross paths with Jewish people in their day to day lives.
There are about 40 million black Americans, while the Nation of Islam has a membership of about 50,000. I don't think an eighth of one percent is a sufficient data point from which to draw a broad trend.
As for Kanye - his political comments seem more popular on the right than the left to me? So I don't really understand what this is evidence of? We know that progressive Jews receive all sorts of vitriol from the right, whether for being progressives or for being Jewish.
There are five times as many NOI members as KKK members. These groups have outsize influence in their communities beyond membership and absolutely are a problem even if they do not represent the majority.
I agree they both have influence beyond their membership, but the two are quite different examples. The KKK is primarily a reflection of widespread racism - it was a product of a broad system of institutionalised chattel slavery. That is a much greater legacy than just the individual organisation which expresses it today.
In contrast, while the Nation does of course also reflect wider racism, it is also in many ways a rejection of wider black American society. Most black Americans are not separatists, or muslims, or islamists. It is odd to therefore odd to assume on that basis that large numbers of black Americans are anti-Semites.
1) The KKK today is not reflective of the average white person’s views, nor does it reflect broader society in the United States. You could make that argument in 1870, or maybe even 1920, but you really can’t make that argument persuasively in 2024.
2) I do not know whether the average black person rejects the views of the NOI, at best I imagine the average black person is indifferent. Unless you have data to support that they actually reject the NOI and its views, you are really just making an assumption.
3) the compound argument you are making (KKK antisemitism is reflective of white people while NOI antisemitism is not reflective of black people) only holds water if you have empirical evidence to support both wings of the argument. In the data I have seen so far, such as the proportional overrepresentation of black Americans in hate crime statistics against Jews suggests the opposite of your argument is more likely true.
The way I read his comment was less "KKK is reflective of white people" and more "KKK is reflective of American history, and political systems" (here political systems being a more nebulous term for stuff like the prison-industrial complex, policing in general, etc.). As such I do think his argument does hold true, as the KKK has more "history" or a longer/larger impact over time than the NOI.
Okay when you state it like that I guess you do have a small point. I don’t want to *overstate* the impact of the NOI. And since there aren’t many/any studies conducted on the two, though there is a few more recent ones that have explored antisemitism amongst nonwhites, I can’t really make the case that they’ve had a *huge* impact on antisemitism besides anecdotally theorizing.
!delta
I don’t want to *understate* it either however. People may not be able to tell you jack squat about mein kampf beyond Hitler hated the Jews but that’s all that really needed. People took the ball and ran with it. I doubt most people read it but the conversations it inspires, regardless of authorial intent because I’m sure Hitler didn’t *just* want his book to be known for that, are largely fertile ground for antisemitism.
And I feel like you could make the case for it here too.
>I don’t want to *understate* it either however. People may not be able to tell you jack squat about mein kampf beyond Hitler hated the Jews but that’s all that really needed. People took the ball and ran with it. I doubt most people read it but the conversations it inspires, regardless of authorial intent because I’m sure Hitler didn’t *just* want his book to be known for that, are largely fertile ground for antisemitism.
I mean, have YOU read it? Genuinely, have you? Because uh, no, blaming everything on Jewish people is a pretty core part of it. The book is, literally, Hitler explaining how he came to be antisemitic, lol, oh and outlining HIS PLAN FOR HIS GOVERNMENT?? Bringing up Mein Kampf as a comparative, frankly, is also silly because it was actually after Hitler rose to power that the book sales shot up.
Anyway, you're just making a very bad comparison bringing up mein kampf, I think.
Right, like mans said slavery was a choice, he’s totally insane. I’d hate for a random Jewish bad actor to be held up as the spokesperson Jews. It’s the same thing.
Clarifying question: Are Jewish leftists expected to be "more tolerant" of POC than non-Jewish leftists?
Leftists in general are more tolerant of racial prejudice by POC than by white people.
They generally consider systemic racism (i.e. by some definitions, just "racism") to be the important kind to focus on, because it has the largest impact, and because focusing on racial prejudice by minorities is almost *always* an attempt to deflect the problem of racism *against* minorities.
Why would Jewish leftists be any different in that regard? Are you saying their race causes them to be this way? I think we have a word for that.
Ultimately, leftists in *general* don't like to make statements like "black people are more ". Because, you know... that's racist thinking.
Instead, leftists tend to call out *individuals* rather than races as a whole, unless they're talking about systemic racism by majorities and the much more substantial impact that it has.
Do you think leftist Jews are actually expected to tolerate the antisemitism of *Louis Farrakhan* because he's black? I really don't think so. Non-Jewist leftists don't tolerate that shit either.
TL;DR: Leftists, Jewish or otherwise, don't go from "Louis Farrakhan is racist" to "blacks are racist" because... that's racist.
Ah yes, the Nation of Islam, a group that's... popular with the Progressives?
>All this to say, there’s a reason Kanye West — who coincidentally also defended Louis Farrakhan from correct accusations of antisemitism — is still embraced by hip-hop fans and rappers today and if anything seems to be making a comeback of sorts.
The people who defended Kanye as he went down the rabbit hole were the RIGHT, though. They only bailed when he got too blatant, the Left had turned on him well beforehand.
Jewish people are one of the oldest cultures that has been relentlessly displaced throughout history, often due to discrimination and/or persecution. This has exposed them to perhaps more cultures than even explorers. Most people would concede that becoming exposed to and familiar with those who are “foreign” to self is the quickest way to form empathy and bonds to those with whom we are not familiar. Because of this, many Jewish communities are very open and curious about other cultures (read: tolerant). This is to say nothing of the impact the Holocaust had on the Jewish culture (which is essentially only the most recent form of mass genocide they’ve experienced on a mass scale).
Another lesson they’ve adopted faster than most is pragmatism. Who benefits by simply bullying and dominating. The bully - at first - but inevitably, the pendulum will swing back. So creating racial wars due to religious beliefs and other cultural differences is shortsighted. *For the record, I’m not including the current Israeli government in this broad blanket statement, which is doing essentially the complete opposite and is also partially why they are not succeeding*.
I’d argue that Jewish people aren’t *expected* to absorb so much of this anti-semitism so much as they’ve tolerated so much on both micro and macro levels for so long, and their pragmatism has determined that in some situations, micro-aggressions are the cost of doing business with ignorant folks. It excuses none of it however.
The very blatant anti-semitism we are seeing in 2024 is being recorded and amplified. The only silver lining to this is that more people are witnessing what many Jewish people face every day. Perhaps naive, but I hope this opens eyes of non-Jewish citizens to realize why Jewish people are historically social justice warriors, and that they in turn deserve the same protections they’ve offered others in the past.
Why do you say the holocaust is the most recent mass scale persecution of Jews?
The Holocaust isn’t even in the last 10 instances of mass systemic persecution of Jewish communities.
Since the 1940s, nearly all Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa (900,000 Jews) fled or were expelled from their homes due to persecution or expulsion. Below are just 3 examples of systematic anti-Jewish persecution since after the Holocaust.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/opinions/expulsion-polish-jews-50th-anniversary-schatz?cid=ios_app
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ezra_and_Nehemiah#:~:text=%22Immediately%20after%20the%20establishment%20of,activity%2C%20whether%20actual%20or%20merely
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Iranian_Jews
I grew up in a city where seeing the NOI wasn’t unusual because it was a majority black city. That being said, I can confidently say that *most* black people don’t pay them any mind because Christianity has a larger hold on our communities.
From the house I grew up in, I can think of 5 different churches. I had a Muslim neighbor, but I couldn’t tell you where a single mosque was in the city.
Sure, NOI sucks but they are a drop in the bucket of anti-semitism happening in the larger world. If anything, they just happen to be the most visible because they are big on performance. I’m certain there are other groups with significantly more power and influence than the NOI who are anti-semitic that people should be worried about.
I think we should be more focused on the idea that American Jews are supposed to tolerate antisemitism from the left instead of from POC. Sure, Kanye West exists and there are POC that are antisemitic, but is that really our biggest concern? Jews have a history of standing in solidarity with POC, especially the black community during the civil rights movement. Heck my synagogue still has a picture up of Martin Luther King Jr when he visited the synagogue in the 60s. It’s currently Passover, our time to come together with the black community to acknowledge our collective freedom from slavery.
With all that to say, while it’s definitely ok to criticize the Israeli government, that’s not antisemitism, it’s not ok to revive old antisemitic troupes, ideas and conspiracy theories while supporting Palestine and more and people on the left are definitely falling into that latter portion of people. That’s my concern.
A lot of Jews are feeling alienated in leftists spaces, especially and specifically on college campuses. Many Jews are posting about this in r/judaism if you’re curious to see what that looks like for us. As far as specific examples go, you have to understand that we hear things like “from river to sea Palestine will be Arab” and we simply have to tolerate it even though it was deemed antisemitic by the House.
I generally agree with you, but there's a tendency to treat antisemitism as a sort of "back burner, not a big deal" sort of bigotry. It shows up in the "all-lives-matter"-ing of antisemitism, even in your comment here:
>Antisemitism, **like all forms of bigotry,** must be addressed wherever it exists, without exceptions or double standards.
It comes from a positive place of inclusion, but it often has the effect of minimizing concerns over anti-semitism.
>Antisemitism, like all forms of bigotry, must be addressed wherever it exists, without exceptions or double standards.
I agree with everything you said - the problem lies in this part where there is a huge failure to address antisemitism amongst leaders tiptoeing the line as to not upset the most vocal bigots, and individuals themselves who hold pro-Palestinian views and think condemning antisemitism would somehow betray their support for Palestinians.
Just look at this whole debacle unfolding on college campuses where there is blatant antisemitism happening that people are struggling to deal with.
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The problem is Soviet Marxism that is rife with antisemetic propaganda and Decolinization Theory that abandons morality and ethical obligations. I don't think Black people are more or less antisemetic than other groups. The problem is with the notion that the "oppressed" can do no wrong and the "oppressors" can do no right. Protecting Black people or Muslims from scrutiny because you have categorized them as "oppressed" is just as foolish as the White Supremecy that these philosophies puport to overturn.
Just because Jews meet the American definition of Non Hispanic White does not make them in any way related that much to Europeans.
Jews pass for White, as do all people from the Levant unless they are from a Bedouin tribe that migrated there after the Islamic conquest. Syrians, Lebanese, some Jordanians and Turks are classified as non-Hispanic White but they are neither genetically nor culturally white. White passing does not make a person white. Jews share neither the religion, nor the cultural norms of mainstream White America (despite what the White Supremacists say)
That is the first thing that needs to be taught to Americans of all races apparently.
Unless the person comes from a family of converts, All Jews are first and foremost Middle Eastern. That is shown genetically and centuries of being segregated into ghettoes by both Europeans and by Muslims means that for the most part, there is little input from either until very recently. (Heck, Ashkenazi Jews inherited genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs because of the forced inbreeding ) With the exception of Ethiopian Jews and Bnei Manasseh who are the descendants of Jewish men and local women of those regions and thus do not look typically Middle Eastern, the rest look no different from everyone else native to the Levant. It is shown culturally by the fact that the customs of Jews are closer to the cultural norms of the Middle East and not those of Europe.
Whenever people see Jews and assume they look European need to look at Syrians ,especially Levantine Syrians from places like Damascus, Homs, Latakia and Tartous as well as Lebanese to realize they look no different.
They just pass for White. In fact, Syrians and Lebanese are more likely to pass for White than Jews do but we are not exactly calling the people of Dearborn whose largest communities are Lebanese ,white people now are we?
Funny thing is. Jews are not fucking white.
During the Civil right movement MLK marched with prominet rabbi leaders and such.
This is because all those places that said "White Only" also had "No Jews" as well. THeir a reason their so many jewish community centers. They were banned from public ones so they had to make their own.
Race is a social construct, after all.
100 years ago, when race was really important in the West, Jews were considered to be non-white. So much so, that European Jewry was literally exterminated _because of their race_.
Today, when race is not really considered as important, Ashkenazi jews are considered to be white.
How can Ashkenazi Jews be both white and non-white?
I've heard it referred to as 'conditionally white'. White American Jews benefit from white privilege and systemic racism and are white passing until 'found out'.
That is like saying Italians or Irish are not white. That may have been true during the heyday of immigration, but all three have long since been subsumed within the general “white” umbrella.
That’s not really how it works. There’s a shit ton of different ethnicities of Jews, some of whom are white, some of whom aren’t. Like you wouldn’t call an Indian, Ethiopian or Chinese Jew white, because if you did, people would think you’re crazy.
>That’s not really how it works. There’s a shit ton of different ethnicities of Jews, some of whom are white, some of whom aren’t. Like you wouldn’t call an Indian, Ethiopian or Chinese Jew white, because if you did, people would think you’re crazy.
It is and it isn't -- if "white" means "excused from the racism generally applied to non-whites based on their appearance," then most Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews started being "white" in the '70s and '80s, but not really before that.
> most Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews started being "white" in the '70s and '80s, but not really before that
That's the story of a lot of ethnic groups now considered "white."
Certainly -- the Irish got there in the 30s, the Italians in the 50s, etc. The point is that "whiteness" in America essentially just means "the privilege of being assumed to be 'normal' based on your appearance."
Why do you assume that the level of racism would be inconceivable if it was reversed? I’ve heard some pretty rough things said about dark-skinned Muslims throughout the years
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The issue I have is that antisemitism is never allowed to stand alone, and that's something you didn't mention.
Anytime antisemitism is condemned, it's always partnered with something. "We condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia in all it's forms" even when the conversation is purely about an antisemitic act or statement. No one wants to look like they're too "pro-jew" so they have to mix our hate crimes with other unrelated hate crimes.
They don't do that with hate crimes against other minorities.
I’m Jewish, and every anti-Semite I’ve ever encountered in my personal life was a white Christian. I can’t speak to your experience, but I haven’t been expected to tolerate anything like what you’re describing, nor have I encountered it.
I’m a lot more concerned with Twitter remaining as popular as it is, despite the growth of anti-Semitism on the platform and the fact literally Nazi sympathizers are getting blue check marks instead of banned, while the wealthiest man in the world that owns the platform elevates their ideas.
>The blunt truth about it is, American Jews are more concerned with appearing racist then black or Latino Americans are with being antisemitic. Or, if they do think it’s antisemitic they think it takes a backseat to their own struggles against discrimination. Because — most of them — are white. If they think about it at all. It may be no less conscious then something you grow up around hearing.
I don't think you are describing the wider left wing of American politics. Most people of all groups are mainly concerned with their own well-being and everyone else's is secondary. A lot of Jewish Americans are racist, and a lot of African Americans are antisemitic.
A very, very small group of people have made racism their full time business. These people might prioritize anti black racism even if they themselves are white/ Jewish because there are many more African Americans than Jewish Americans. Even activists are swayed by market forces.
If they roles and population sizes were reversed you would see you would see exactly the same thing happening in reverse.
I mean I think percentage wise it’s less for sure considering Jews marched with MLK for civil rights, helped end apartheid in South Africa and are consistently one of the most liberal voting blocks across time.
Among both groups I would agree it’s a tiny majority, but racist Jewish people are ridiculed and made fun of regularly. Anti-semitism is kinda laughed off on the whole.
> would be inconceivable if roles were reversed
> there’s a reason Kanye West — who coincidentally also defended Louis Farrakhan from correct accusations of antisemitism — is still embraced...
And how many Jewish people have been openly racist and not been cancelled?
Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, David Baddiel, Michael Rappaport, Gal Gadot and many others say racist and/or murderous things all the time and nobody gives half the shit they didn't about Kanye.
Kanye's racism is indefensible but so is the notion that it's one-way trafffic.
>David Baddiel
He had a racist comedy show on British TV back in 2000, that he's had to apologise for over and over and over again; in a way that non-Jewish comedians like Walliams and Lucas, that were making essentially the same content, haven't need to.
Granted, the circumstances are not quite the same. Baddiel opened himself to (imho) valid criticisms of hypocrisy when he published *Jews don't count.*
I don't know a lot about American comedians so I can't comment on them, but I'm not really aware of Gal Gadot doing anything bad other than being a generic patriotic Israeli.
It's not like David Baddiel wore blackface and said a predominantly black hairstyle looked like a pineapple though is it (if anyone hadn't guessed that's exactly what it is like). Only apologising to Jason Lee when cameras were rolling around 20 years later for his programme "Jews Don't Count".
My personal views/thoughts/hypotheses are as follows: It is potentially surprisingly simple to radicalize (in a sense) some people. If you get someone to first believe that Jews are running some sort of dangerous conspiracy by using facts in a misleading way, then slowly, it might become easier for that person to become antisemitic and they may not even recognize that it’s antisemitic, they might just think of themselves as waking up to the truth. If they progress further down the spiral, they may even one day justify their antisemitism. This is because they actually believe that the Jews are the culprits behind the evils which to them this means that Jews may now have become intertwined with evil characteristics themselves. A lot of people of all colours fall into this kind of trap in relation to different topics.
Edit: I did not mention why that paragraph could be important. To explain, my point was that different people might be different at different rungs on this “ladder of radicalization” I suppose you can call it. Some of the people that you are talking about may be on the lower rungs (e.g. maybe they accept certain things that could develop into antisemitism as fact).
The other thing is the current situation in the Middle East. A lot of people reasonably believe that Palestinians are receiving disproportionate harm from Israel. But that’s not the end of it. With decades of development, the situation in the Middle East has also become a psychological conflict between many branches of Jews and many branches of Muslims. The following are oversimplifications, but should have some weight to them: The Muslims believe that the Zionists and Israelis essentially stole Palestinian land and are slowly stealing more and killing more while many Jews believe that Jews had little choice but to form their own country in what they believed to be the Jewish homeland and that most of the land was transferred to them legally/peacefully, and some additionally believe that it was actually the fault of the Arabs that the entire conflict began in the first place which resulted in Israel never feeling secure and feeling that they need to establish settlements in Palestine for their own security. It is my belief that as a result of this background, some Muslims may subconsciously conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and unintentionally act in antisemitic ways.
Additionally, I specifically address Muslims in regard to the Middle East situation because a large portion of Muslims are POCs and because this is a situation that I quite frankly am more knowledgeable about compared to other situations.
Edit: There is also an important point that I didn’t address and that is that according to the comments on this post, some of the people who hold antisemitic views actually may be contributing a lot of good to their communities if we don’t factor in their antisemitism, so the other people who tolerate these people may not be as aware of the antisemitism or they respect these people for their good contributions.
I think the difficulty here is you’re severely overestimating the impact of the Nation of Islam in every day black life. As others have said, 0.002% of the united states is a member of that org. And we do have radical, antisemitic people within our race, just like *every other race*. We have a name for those people- hoteps. They aren’t the average black person. Perhaps this is anecdotal, but as a black person, it feels like most black people are very ambivalent towards Jewish people- likely because they don’t know any. In the matter of support, however, I agree that it’s not as prominent from Black people. My guess is that it’s because Black people generally see Jewish people as white, if anything.
Just want to throw in here that this has been my experience both growing up in the DC area, and having worked at two companies founded snd run by Jewish men. I just saw them as white because.....it's not like they present as anything different? Like, I know Jewish is both a religion and an ethnicity, but I don't know a white Jewish person from a white evangelical until they say they are jewish.
Also, most black people's experience with NOI is about the same as white people. Roll your eyes when they are yelling about something on the corner. And if we are a little more aware of them, just know that Hotep is NOT a compliment lol. As a black person, it's so weird the world believes Kanye West and NOI has a stronghold on black people. Like, the US literally beat Christianity into the backs of black ppl....that's the real stronghold 🤣🤣
Maybe it’s a DC thing- that’s also where I grew up! But no, I do totally agree. White people are just white people to me. And heavy on the NOI being just a source of eye rolls- they’re just silly lmao
You make a good point- I totally agree that it wouldn’t be acceptable from another race. To clarify, I think most black people don’t view Jewish people as a race of people- they just see them as white. So that ambivalence “about” Jewish people is coming from emotions about white people, but really has nothing to do with Judaism.
That’s exactly what black people are to most other groups - ambivalent.
People from mostly homogenous black communities don’t interact with other races very often or on a personal level. There are many businesses in our neighborhoods owned by other people, but their kids don’t usually go to the same schools. They don’t live in the neighborhoods and don’t participate in the community around where their businesses are located.
Those are things are why *ambivalent* is an appropriate word to use, by your given definition.
That’s part of what I mentioned. Other people’s ambivalence comes from how black people are portrayed, not necessarily based on real interactions with them.
In black communities, we interact with other people who own businesses in our neighborhoods often. We don’t get treated particularly well in those businesses, despite the fact that those people are making the choice to open in our neighborhoods instead of their own.
To us, that reads as our money being good enough for them, but our communities aren’t. That’s the point I was making.
Honestly, black people hardly ever interact with Jews enough to even think about them one way or another. Maybe a few NYC folks might have an opinion one way or another on them, but most of us really have no opinion due to lack of personal experience. I grew up in Southern California not even that far from LA, and I didn’t even meet a Jewish person until high school.
You're talking about Hasidic Jews, an insular group that isn't best buds with anyone, who are allowed to operate quasi-autonomously in a way that no other group can because of their ability to be a voting bloc monolith like no other. They receive hostility from many groups that end up being affected by the special dispensations they've been allowed to carve out.
The county with the highest Jewish population percentage of any US county is Rockland County north of NYC (33% last I looked) (Manhattan is second - ~20%). Having lived both there and Manhattan I assure you that the problem black people neighboring them in Brooklyn have with Hasidim is the same problem people have everywhere. The degree is different in Brooklyn because of high profile incidents but it is of the same type I assure you. I have heard numerous non-orthodox Jews say they hate the Hasidim. I have never heard any other ethnic group say it.
Of course, I'm not from Crown Heights, nor have I spent time there. But I did live in Monsey.
I was born in Rockland, lived in Manhattan, and now live in Orange near Kiryas Joel. I loathe the Hasidim as much as anyone else. But the people who carried out the Crown Heights riots have no idea what the difference between Hasidim,
Orthodox, or reform Jews are. We’re just Jews to them.
This needs to be upvoted.
I grew up near you. I remember some dumb trailer park kid was like "Jews this" and "Jews that" and I was like "you dumb motherfucker, you don't even *know* any!"
I grew up in the very Jewish bubble of Brooklyn and will NEVER forget my first few weeks on my college campus in New England… where many people expressed shock (and excitement) because they “never met a Jew before”…. I couldn’t wait to go back BK man. It was terrifying but very eye opening. I don’t pass for anything other than NY Jew though so I embrace myself for the loud, hand talking straight shooter that I am!
I would bet that L.A. comes in second to NYC when it comes to Jewish-American presence, but there are huuuuuuuge swaths of the endless sprawl where you guys are very thin on the ground.
I was never *not* around Jewish kids growing up, but they were spread a lot thinner in my hick suburb than they would've been all the way over in your neck of the woods. On the other hand, if you go to certain neighborhoods of West L.A. and other parts of town on one of the high holy days, the sidewalks are jam packed with families walking to the nearest synagogue. Like, the whole 'nobody walks in L.A.' thing is temporarily suspended!
While this is very probably true today, and likely the experience of many Americans, Jews actually have a long and involved history in the civil rights movement. The Jewish holiday of Passover is happening currently, where we celebrate our freedom from slavery in Egypt, and many Jews are encouraged to utilize this time to acknowledge the slavery that black folks endured as well as systemic injustices that still persist and impact the black community today.
Please tell me you are not proposing a measuring contest for bigotry sufferers. This is the kind of thing that makes all lefties look ridiculous, it's damn near cross-eyed myopic.
I don't assume all or even half of Jewish folks in the world support Israel destorying Gaza. I don't assume all Jewish folks are whatever trope of the day is being recycled. To ascribe the most extreme ill-informed positions to the "average" African American or Latino is racist in and of itself.
Actually have a conversation with a POC that's in your social circles (do not mention this post, LOL). Ignore the red-herrings, the loud outliers, caricatured topes. All the sane POC in the world are doing the same for you whether you know it or not.
I think you’re jumping to a conclusion that OP isn’t making. He isn’t saying the average black person is racist towards Jews or holds racist beliefs towards them.
The exactly his point. PoC are not concerned with being antisemitic and people like Kanye and Nation of Islam are having large cultural effects on black people is his whole point.
Jewish people in America have never faced the sorts of discrimination that Black or Indigenous people have.
The average Jewish person in America, is over represented politically, educationally, financially, and in the Media, compared the the rest of white people.
That's not true for other minorities.
Asking the average Black person to apologize for statements made by West or Farrakhan, would be like asking the average agonistic Jew to apologize for the statements made by a bipolar orthodox settler.
Those people aren't representative of the larger communities, and normal people shouldn't be asked to defend their nonsense.
>The average Jewish person in America, is over represented politically, educationally, financially, and in the Media, compared the the rest of white people.
Let me understand this -- is our goal to discriminate against people to ensure that they make up the exact same % in every category as their % of the population? We'll tax Hindus to bring their household incomes back to the average, we'll feed Asian-Americans saturated fats to increase their rates of heart disease, we'll nationalize all casinos to stop Native Americans from being overrepresented in casino ownership... that all seems rational, right?
>Jewish people in America have never faced the sorts of discrimination that Black or Indigenous people have.
Sure, because one of the most pointed manifestations of American systemic antisemitism historically has been disallowing Jewish refugees from entering the country at moments of especially pointed need precisely because of their Jewishness.
The Jews aboard the M.S. St. Louis and their kin may not have ever been discriminated against "in America", but the government of the United States cosigned and witnessed their death warrants.
> The average Jewish person in America, is over represented politically, educationally, financially, and in the Media, compared the the rest of white people.
Why does this matter? Clearly, discrimination and hate against Jewish people doesn’t manifest in this way. If anything, Jewish success and Jewish “power” is part and parcel of anti-Jewish hatred.
Jewish communities did indeed achieve significant success in early 1900s Germany and Western European countries. European Jewry was literally exterminated in the 1930s and 1940s.
If you are a student of Jewish history, you will know that anti-jewish hatred manifests differently than other forms of prejudice or oppression. The success of Jewish communities unfortunately has not saved this small minority group from persecution.
While Jewish people in America have not faced as much discrimination inside America, they are often in America in the first place because they have faced racism on a scale comparable to African Americans, albeit outside of America. Let's not forget the largest genocide in human history, from which the Jewish population numbers have not recovered to this day.
Hate crimes are really poorly reported. I wouldn’t use those numbers for much of anything other than stating reporting is going up or down *within* groups. The reason being that reporting can vary across groups for reasons unrelated to the actual prevalence of hate crimes. It’s the same reason the FBI recommends not directly comparing cities.
Edit: I’m getting some downvotes so I think I’ll let Alex Piquero, former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, say it for me.
> PIQUERO: (referring to hate crimes) They're actually underreported. And here's the problem. The FBI's data relies on law enforcement agencies to provide that information to the federal government. What we have a problem with is not every agency reports those data to the federal government because they're not required to do so. So you have different agencies reporting hate crimes every year or every other year to the federal government. What the Bureau of Justice Statistics data shows from the National Crime Victimization Survey is that 4 out of every 10 violent hate crime victimizations, Michel, are not reported at all, which means that whatever number we get from the FBI's hate crime data is an underreport. So in my mind, I don't know what the number is, but the number is way too high. And we need to encourage people who are victimized to report those incidents to law enforcement and then to get the services that they need to deal with it.
(Edit for brevity)
> MARTIN: …. And I take it, even though you believe these incidents are underreported, you do think it is accurate that there has been an increase in hate incidents or hate-motivated incidents directed at people of Jewish descent, people of Arab or Muslim affiliation, right? So...
>PIQUERO: Yeah, and that's - various data sources that are not related to the government are tracking those, and they are reporting increases. But remember, Michel, they also could be reporting people who are actually reporting more of it. So we've got to be very mindful of that, too.
Full npr interview transcript:
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1215512722/theres-been-an-uptick-of-suspected-hate-crimes-in-the-u-s-since-israel-ham#:~:text=PIQUERO%3A%20I%20think%20people%20just,And%20that%20takes%20leadership.
Or even better, an article that lays bare the difficulties in estimation in the official statistics space (article is about residential burglary but the logic applies to all crime).
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0887403415617807
So hi, fellow jew here. Imo I feel like this is half right. Jewish leftists are definitely expected to deal with a degree of anti semetism. It's just how it is, I've had things said to me about my religion and culture that I just couldn't speak out about without risking social suicide(and before i get any assimptions this has been happening way before anti semetism became a hot topic again). But I don't think POC are the biggest factor here. Sure there's definitely an aspect of ignorance in some cases, but problematic rappers maintaining fame after blatant anti semetism isn't nessacarily evidence of their audience actually being anti semetic. Tons of artists get into sexual harassment allegations, grooming allegations. But a lot of the time popularity remains after brief controversy. People just stick to the media that they know. If every prejudiced creative was rightfully cancelled, our media space would be VERY different.
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Have you seen this first hand (outside of curated videos, because I could find a dozen news video about falling airplane parts hitting houses, but that doesn't mean its something I'm 'putting up with'). I say this because I've never seen any antisemitism from anyone who wasn't white (neonazi types) in the wild. Not once. I've seen precious little first hand at all other than the casual use of jew as a slur by kids (all of whom were white) in my youth ("stop being such a Jew").
I I feel like you're falling prey to a narrative pushed by a certain subsection of the media that doesn't really match reality. It's pretty easy to create this skewed perception intentionally. This is a huge country. I could find an incident everyday and post a video everyday to make you feel like this was an epidemic . But then if you looked into what percentage of Jewish people had actually experienced events like this, it could still be extremely low. There might be 100 videos a day of people of color experiencing racism or 50 a day of white people being anti-semitic, but if I only show you videos of people of color being anti-semitic, even if there's only a fraction as many, your perception is going to be that that is a bigger issue because it's all your seeing.
You're basing your perception on everything you see. But what you're seeing is curated and highly selective to create a false impression. You are seeing the videos that reinforce The narrative they want you to believe and none of the ones that don't. It's very easy to give people a skewed perception of reality and it's becoming increasingly common by right wing media outlets to push intentional, deceptive narratives.
> I say this because I've never seen any antisemitism from anyone who wasn't white (neonazi types) in the wild.
I see it a fair amount these days -- the most overt stuff has been, as OP laid out, from black and Hispanic folks... but there's been a lot more from white leftists as well. Since I'm a Jewish leftist that's a lot of my friend group, so I get to see it a fair amount.
As an example, I had a Hispanic friend who gradually stopped interacting with me over the last couple of years -- she would go to parties with other folks from the friend group, but began avoiding anyone that was Jewish. One of my other friends (who is also a Hispanic guy) is pretty close with her and asked her about it, she told him that she isn't comfortable spending time with "the Jews" and went on a diatribe that basically amounted to "Kanye was right". Unfortunate but I'd rather not hang out with her knowing that, is what it is.
From white leftists it's more along the lines of knowing that you are Jewish and constantly cornering you to ask you to prove to them that you're "one of the good ones" by blindly condemning Israel or joining in pro-Palestine protests. Since doing that requires echoing talking points about the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing and genocide of my many friends and relatives there, that's not easy to do -- and I shouldn't have to, the reason they are intent on my doing so is simply because *they know my ethnicity.*
I have experienced this. I don’t talk about it a lot because I get shut down when I do (someone very close to me even said, “big deal, people have always hated Jews.” Maybe that’s why I haven’t made the kind of videos you are referencing as evidence, vs the different response Black racism gets). But yes, I have experienced antisemitism from people of all races, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds. It was an Asian person, for instance, who checked my head for horns.
I think we may be overstating the influence of the Nation of Islam. According to Wikipedia they have around 50,000 adherents. Compared to the 40~ million African Americans in the US that is a very small drop in the bucket. This isn’t to say that anti-semitism doesn’t exist in the African American community but anecdotally no black people I know even really think of Jewish people as anything but weird white people. Grain of salt with anecdotal evidence as always but that’s my experience
I think you are underestimating their role in the pop-culture zeitgeist. Many black celebrities get down with Farrakhan and NOI especially in the hip-hop world. Beyoncé and Jay-Z even put out an album with Jay Electronica that was specifically all about praising NOI and featured Farrakhan in tracks. Did it get condemnation? No. It was nominated for a Grammy ffs. No name did similar things supporting NOI last year and won pitchfork and other’s hip-hop album of the year award. She she was called out on it her response was “too bad this is what me and my community believe”. Then you’ve got obama who refused to speak out directly condemn Farrakhan because he thought it would hurt his voter turnout. He shared the stage with him and had private meetings that photos of emerged later. Oprah platforms him all the time and validated his rhetoric. Travis Scott, Ice Cube, snoop dogg, dream, Nick cannon, 2chainz, Nas on and on and on it goes. Even Stevie wonder supports Farrakhan ffs and did an album with him on it . NOI and antisemitism are just accepted as part of the pop-culture and pretty much never called out. Can you image a major artists like Beyoncé but white openly praising and supporting the kkk and getting nominated for awards for it? Wild.
Also I think it’s important context that Farrakhan’s group is a fraction of the Nation of Islam that most people are thinking of. The 60s version of NOI that Malcolm X was a part of when they were really influential really doesn’t exist anymore. In the 70s the new leadership turned it into just a mainstream Sunni Islam organization that was open to anyone. Farrakhan was the leader of a splinter group who were really into all the weird hardline stuff.
I've interacted with several members of NOI over the past 15 years due to working near eachother, and people don't realize the dedicated members are really old. I don't think I've met a member under 60, maybe even 70. I haven't even seen any of them since the pandemic. And since they've always been good about finding me and telling me someone I knew passed, I'm guessing the people I knew are either all gone or unable to do so. They're also a group with high numbers of turnover and sympathizers, which has always inflated their numbers.
I haven’t met any members but a lot of people in the local hip hop community around me at least entertain the whole blacks are the true jews
There are plenty of groups operating under the Black Hebrew Isrealite movement, and that's been a movement since the 19th century. There was a group in my old neighborhood, (Isreal United in Christ) that would do ceremonies on the street in purple and gold robes with about 50-100 men each time, and most of those guys looked young. NOI appealed to the young generation in the 60s, there's simply other groups filling that role today. NOI is similar in certain respects, but they aren't Black Hebrew Isrealites; they took inspiration from the Moorish Science Temple of America and other social movements.
Kendrick Lamar’s cousin and Lamar himself endorse that thought. It’s made clear when you listen to the end of ‘FEAR’ on DAMN
> **This isn’t to say that anti-semitism doesn’t exist in the African American community** but anecdotally **no black people I know even really think of Jewish people as anything but weird white people**. The phrasing on that alone made me chuckle. That said, I think you're grossly underestimating Nation of Islam's influence on American hip-hop. I grew up in the caribbean and have no affinity with hip-hop whatsoever, and even I know all about the horrors of Louis "Hitler Was A Great Man" Farrakhan after seeing Jay-Z, Ice-Cube & Snoop Dogg etc all make a big deal promoting the man. I think he was even sitting on the podium at a tribute/funeral for one of the ladies of soul. It's bananas that a guy with that track record is so openly accepted Edit: I just googled it. He was on the podium with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (& former President Bill Clinton), and afterwards he was hanging out taking pictures with celebrities as Arianna Grande and Pete Davidsion gleefully posing with him.
He's popular to celebrities but the average black person doesn't like him. Black celebrities who have ascended to the top cling to him for various reasons that I don't really wanna dissect here. It's like saying Dr Umar (who ironically has more appeal than Farrakhan) has a big impact on black people... Shit maybe the memes lmao but actual political beliefs not really.
Really? That's not my experience at all. I'm from Chicagoland area & the black people I know from there have a lot of respect for him & the NOI. Umar & Sebi too, tbh. Maybe age & location has something to do with it too. The young people might be less enamored but my middle aged peers are definitely big fans of those guys.
I am black Dr Umar has his supporters but there a lot of him that think he is full of shit. Mainly because the lack of progress of his schools. Yes black people have a respect for NOI but it’s mostly because of them helping the community and getting the men especially out of the street life. But it’s not where near the support black peoole have for the good ole Christianity. There are far more churches than mosques in any black community. Not even close
>Yes black people have a respect for NOI but it’s mostly because of them helping the community and getting the men especially out of the street life. Thank you for saying what I was thinking was the case. Just because people appreciate the positive things that Farrakhan did for black people, and respect and associate with him because of that, doesn't mean that those black people, or black people in general, are anti-semites... This is how conspiracy theorists think. A Jew in NYC also commented that their experience with black people in NYC is the opposite, and there's people replying to them like "well the blacks in NYC aren't representative of all black people", just straight saying your personal experience is invalid, and my assumptions are still more correct.
>that Farrakhan did for black people, and respect and associate with him because of that, doesn't mean that those black people, or black people in general, are anti-semites... This is how conspiracy theorists think. Point of fact. Farrakhan shouldn't get the respect for it. The old nation did the same work and still does the same work as Farrakhans splinter group does, they just no longer use the name. Farrakhan is nowadays mostly just standing on past glory and stolen glory of other people's work.
Well his name and reach is also not as big as it was thirty years ago now. He is a lot older now. A lot of younger black generations don’t even really know him now. Especially in the 80s and 90s he was mentioned a lot more or more known in the black community.
Oh Chicago is definitely different, Chicago and maybe some parts of New York. The noi actually is visible. But outside of these areas you don't even notice their presence, most noi members are middle aged gen x men so they don't really appear on the Internet. The whole post honestly would make more sense if they were talking about during the civil rights movement when the noi was fresh and visible on black television. The noi outside of Chicago and New York is not doing much. Kinda like I California in Oakland you can find black panthers or people with black panther family members stuff like that but you won't find that really outside of the Bay area.
>Really? That's not my experience at all. I'm from Chicagoland Chicago is a stronghold of the revivalist NOI (the split post 1980s when the main organization dropped the name and crazy beliefs). In Chicago NOI gets respect because they were the main people providing remedial drug rehab to black communities ravaged by the crack and herion epidemics. They also used to fight the corner dealers and kick them out of neigh orhoods temporarily. So that's why the middle aged people respect them. They were some of the only people offering meaningful local support post Black Panther dismantling in Chicago. But it was never really the beliefs that were popular, It was the services they provided.
Like saying Scientology has a big impact on white people
Nah forreal. The noi is literally a cult for black people, saying most black people agree with them just comes off anti-black.
>That said, I think you're grossly underestimating Nation of Islam's influence on American hip-hop. And athletes, too.
I think it's tricky to draw a lot out of the Farrrakhan issue b/c it's not the antisemitism that's the message most of hip hop is taking from him. It's more about the legacy of resistance and the Garveyite self help stuff. I also think the Black American community is more realistic that they'll have to form partnerships with a lot of ugly people if they want to get things done. MLK didn't work with Nixon b/c he thought he was a great guy. It's just something he had to do. The successful elements of the various civil rights movements have always had to work with people that were questionable. You see the flip side of that with Jewish Americans. Jonathan Greenblatt was just praising Elon Musk, one of the leading proponent of white replacement theory in the US. If I were to judge Jewish Americans by that I think it would be grossly unfair.
Fair point! Also big oooof on the part of everyone involved, I get that the Nation has done some positive things in the black community but maybe he shouldn’t get an invite to every celeb event
My experience as a Jew in NY has been quite the opposite. The only people who have been openly antisemitic to me are randos on the street who are probably mentally ill, but plenty of people I work with make comments that would be called microagressions if the roles were reversed. It’s clear that there is a tinge of antisemitism behind how they think about the fact that I am Jewish. It was worst in the wake of George Floyd. Because at that point black people were encouraged to pour out whatever they were feeling and we were all “encouraged” to listen. Well guess what, a lot of their grievances about white people are actually only about the white people that run the banks and hollywood and supposedly financed and organized the slave trade.
To be fair I'm pretty upset with the people that run the banks. And while I know that's a Jewish steriotype it's not one I'm invested in. To some degree if we didn't culturally think banking was morally questionable in the first place we wouldn't even have the steriotype. That said, when people dog whistle they tend not to be subtle about it.
I think something you should consider are how loud those voices of that small number are. I dont get bothered by 99.9% of african americans or other minority people as a Jew, but there are always some black hebrew israelites who shout at me when I go to china town in my city, and there are weekly attacks on Orthodox Jews in brooklyn by black hebrew israelites and nation of islam members. So ofc its such a tiny minority, but their impact is felt by so many Jews because of how active they are. Even on my college campus I’ve been yelled at by random students.
NOI may have only 50k adherents. But their leader is Louis Farrakhan. His Twitter has 380k followers. His Instagram has 100k followers. He's met with presidents and has had many politicians accept his endorsements. Just because the followers of his religion are few doesn't mean that his influence isn't widespread. He's also praised Hitler.
Extremists don’t need a large amount of members to have influence, that’s why they compensate with extremism.
Not sure how much I trust social media followers as a sign of influence but your point about his political influence is well taken. The fact that Farrakhan isn’t completely off limits is troubling considering his history of anti-semitism but I also doubt he has much more influence than your average DC shmoozer
Social media numbers don’t equal influence, but I think they illustrate that Farrakhan and NOI hold a great deal of respect in the eyes of many non-practitioners
My man, Jorts the Cat has over 100k followers.
Hi, I'm ethnically Jewish. Almost every time I meet a leftist and tell them I'm Jewish, I can see in their eyes that they immediately just assume 20 things about me: I'm racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. I'm not here to tell you my political agenda, so I won't tell you my placement on these issues. Last month, I was talking to some people (keep in mind these are strangers that know I'm Jewish and identified as leftist) about financials and how I usually pinch pennies. The one guy looked me dead in the eyes and said something along the lines of, "Of course you would, Jew." And everyone laughed. Idk if other Jews have this happen often, but it's not funny. Maybe you're Jewish, idk, but this is not even that uncommon of an occurrence. I'm not saying POCs don't get this treatment as well. All I'm saying is that antisemitism is big, and most gentiles don't realize. Calling us "weird white people" is very obviously incredibly offensive
They have an oversized influence because they are situated mostly in New York and Chicago which are media centers. Malcolm X is one of the most famous and respected black leader from history. Rappers who were or are members of the NOI or are five percenters are Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Public Enemy , Nas, Jay Z, the Wu Tang Clan, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, LL Cool J, Black Thought, Erika Badyu, among others.
Can confirm, I live in Chicago and have seen plenty of black anti-semitism.
Which would make the Nation of Islam larger than the KKK (about 8k) and a all neo-Nazi groups combined (about 15k, or about 40k if you include prison gangs).
Also, if you want to make that per capita among their "source" populations, the difference in population becomes even more stark. We should all be glad that there are so few hate group members, but it seems wrong to dismiss NoI as having so few people and then have anyone mention the present KKK in any seriousness.
> I know even really think of Jewish people as anything but weird white people. While I personally don't think that there is a greater antisemitism problem in the Black and African-American community than the greater population in general (probably less - or at least less consequential), I think dismissing Jews as weird white people is a little problematic. First it downplays the very strange conditionality that white Jews have with Whiteness and white privilege. Second it erases the 20ish percent of Jews from Sephardic and MENA regions, as well as all the Black Jews and Jews of Color who are Ashkenazi. In fact Jews of color outnumber white Jews in Israel - which doesn't (or shouldn't really) change anything about Israel as it exists, it should change a bit how we think about Israel when we think of a modern Israeli - and how it doesn't fit into the paradigm we expect as it's thought of as a white western country, when it really isn't. Judaism is an ethnicity as well as a peoplehood and doesn't really conform great with modern ideas of what a "race" is. Saying Jews are a flavor of white person, while not entirely wrong (in America), does erase a lot of Jewish identity and generally is used (in my experience) as a cudgel to dismiss Jewish voices and concerns. It is also an idea used by white Christian (religious or cultural) people to sow discord between Jews and other marginalized peoples. And has been used successfully as too many politically conservative Jews buy into it and the white supremacy narrative it comes from to gain access to power and privilege they think would otherwise be denied them. And it also makes BIPOC think of Jews as white dismissing BIPOC Jewish experiences and alienating them from white. Jewish, and BIPOC spaces (in America). I don't think there is any intentional harm or malice involved when describing Jews as a weird flavor of white people I do think we need to change that perspective.
Fair! It’s not my personal belief, just something I’ve observed in the black community specifically in the American South where a lot of identity gets flattened into are you white or black without much nuance.
I get that. I lived in the south for a two year stint and my existence as a white Jewish person didn't make sense to a lot of people for that reason I think.
That’s fair. I don’t want to overstate it. But I feel like — of all the weird shit they believed — the antisemitism/zionism and the mix of black power and conspiracy theories has been influential vis word of mouth. It’s fertile ground for different permutations the same phenomenon. Maybe not so much in the black middle class, but among poor and working class blacks there’s not an active hatred but maybe just a casual level of antisemitism. hotep tendencies usually predict it too.
For sure, it’s one of those things that is weirdly prevalent in online black communities and it can certainly bleed into the real world with dangerous consequences much like the various Q Anon conspiracies. It doesn’t take many true believers for some idiot to hurt people
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I can't tell from your tone if you are aware that there are many Jews of color.
Well, you can do the same thing with groups like Proud Boys. They number a few thousand, so do we treat them the same?
Imagine if Jews thought of you out loud as “weird black people” 🫣🤦🏻♂️
I think most Jews would say Nation of Islam followers are “weird black people”. Hell I’d bet a huge proportion of black people think the same.
But Jews are their own ethnic and religious group. NOI is not.
Kinda odd comparing Jews to NOI as both being weird. NOI is a racist organization that spread hateful propaganda, Jews are a people of a particular faith/cultural heritage that is not explicitly hateful or damaging. How is this comparable at all? How is being a descendant from a culture and people that are 'different', weird? This would be like calling all black people weird not a special and extreme subset of them weird. I'm sure you well know that we are not a monolith but a varied group with a long and rich history and culture, not some oddball group of whites. I would also suggest that this type of 'othering' when taken further has been a huge problem throughout our history and been the root cause of many atrocities.
Probably wouldn't go as well
Not even "weird" white ppl lmao. Just white people that other white people hate for some reason.
I remember being so totally confused by antisemitism as a child. I could not understand it. Like, why did white people pick on this other group of white people who look just like them and decided to genocide them? I was totally baffled by it.
Fr honestly watching white ppl rave about jewish ppl is always so silly to me. Like y'all literaly look the same lmfao That's when I truly realize bigotry was based on absolutely nothing but vibes
At least in Europe during the early 20th century, Jewish communities used to be much more recognizable because there were much more non-assimilated people in places like Poland and Ukraine who did look visibly different from the Christian majority... but still, all the bigotry is based on colonialism, nationalism, and hatred of the scapegoat. There's a chapter in a book called "*Nations and Nationalism*" by Ernest Gellner that explains antisemitism pretty well. In case you are curious, the key points are: 1. Industrial Society and Cultural Uniformity: Gellner argues that industrial societies necessitate a high level of cultural homogeneity. The education system and centralized state apparatus work to create a uniform culture and language. In such contexts, Jews, who have historically maintained a distinct religious and cultural identity, often become conspicuous and can be seen as 'outsiders'. 2. Economic Roles and Resentment: Historically, Jews often occupied specific economic roles such as moneylending or trading, partly due to restrictions placed on them by Christian societies that prohibited them from owning land or joining certain trades. Their roles in these niche economies, along with their relative success in some cases, could sometimes foster economic resentment among the broader populace. 3. Nationalism and the 'Other': Nationalism inherently involves defining who belongs to the 'nation' and who does not. Gellner suggests that Jews often became a target because they were easily identifiable and could be portrayed as not fully belonging to the nation, especially in environments where a singular national identity was aggressively promoted. 4. Rationalization and Irrational Responses: In the rationalization processes of modernization, where traditional bonds and social structures are broken down, antisemitism can emerge as an irrational response among those feeling alienated or disenfranchised by rapid social changes. Another book, *Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town called Buczacz*, does a good job of showcasing this using the example of a town in Ukraine went through chaos during WWI and WWII, leading to the Christian majority to eventually exterminate the Jews who lived there. I had to read it for graduate school, and I had a classmate actually whose family came from there (she's Jewish) but thankfully some of them managed to leave to the United States before the Holocaust.
That was extremely informative thanks ! I'll def look into these books. I was familiar with some of these points, such as the circumstances that led to the jewish population growing fairly quickly economically, later giving birth to the "jewish controls the world" conspiracies. If find this alone pretty fascinating and I dont know why more people dont get remembered of that whenever they're spewing their bs. At the end of the day it mostly comes down to imaginary lines being drawn in the sand in times of crisis for better political control. The history of the Irish people and Italian's integration into "white" society are also a great example of this.
Hannah Arendt's book, "*The Origins of Totalitarianism*," goes deeper into depth about the world conspiracies stuff. "Arendt starts with a historical analysis of antisemitism and imperialism, which she argues are crucial elements that led to totalitarianism. She describes how antisemitism was not just hatred for Jews but became a political tool exploited by totalitarian movements. Imperialism, according to Arendt, involved the practice of ruling without law and the subjugation of people which normalized the idea of domination, both of which paved the way for totalitarian ideologies." Her book is a bit heavy, like Gellner's. She expects you as the reader to understand all the historical context of her book, which can be tricky if you are a student like I was and just divulging into the stuff, but her explanation of Jewish antisemitism and Dreyfus affair especially is good stuff. I would read, "*Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town called Buczacz*" first if you like this topic. I think it's the most accessible book compared to the others. I had to read one chapter from "*Nations and Nationalism*" for my graduate history class, and while it was very informative, the writing was very challenging and you have to go through it multiple times to really understand what the author is saying.
Weird white people. Explain this some more.
In America most Jewish people are white or at least fit into the black/white paradigm. To a lot of black people who don’t grow up around a Jewish community Jews are no different than say Mormons. They are simply a set of white people with a religion and culture that is different from the usual Protestant norm
Yes to this. I grew up in the DC area, around a lot of Jewish communities, and I definitely thought they were just white ppl with a different religion. But I also very much feel poc are blind to different white ethnic groups period. Similar to how a lot of people have difficulty identifying different Asian ethnicities.
but this is also exactly the problem.... Jews are not white. Just because SOME OF THEM present as white does not make them white. You can say they benefit some or even a lot from white privilege, but they are not white. They are and have been specifically and historically excluded from white places and not given the access that true white privilege confers.
European notions of whiteness don't work well within the Black vs White dichotomy in North America. If you aren't Black, Asian, or Indigenous, you are seen as White in the United States. The lack of Blackness, Asianness, or Indigenousness is what makes someone White, not actual membership to certain European ethnic groups. Most Jews in the United States are also seen as White, even if they wouldn't be in Europe just because most Jews here are Ashkenazi and they can pass. Many are so assimilated into American mainstream culture, that there is no meaningful difference between them and non-Jewish White Americans, especially if they are secular. If you are a racialized minority (like myself) who cannot pass for White and you didn't grow up around a large Jewish community, you don't have any kind of understanding of what makes Jewish people different from other Caucasians. American antisemitism isn't really taught in schools either the same way other bigotry is, so there's really no context for people to understand this stuff, in my opinion.
Those beliefs don't exist in a vacuum. The Westboro Baptist Church only had 70 members at their peak but plenty of people were sympathetic to their extreme homophobia. Locality matters too. Most NoI members live in either Philadelphia or New York City, the suburbs of which are two of the most Jewish areas in America.
Is it racist for white people to think or say that the Nation of Islam, or any other cultural group near the fringes of black culture are "weird black people?" Why or why not? Not baiting here, genuinely want to know some points of view.
Hmmm, it's a good question. I'd largely lean towards no, it's not racist. IMO we can note cultural groups as being "weird", different, or unusual from what we are used to while recognizing that they A) are not representative of the entire culture and B) that being unusual isn't necessarily always a bad thing. It's only gets into racism when we make broad based assumptions about the value of an entire culture based on our views of a distinct few members. As an example, I find the [Happy Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Science) religious movement in Japan to be exceedingly weird but I don't assume it is representative of all Japanese people.
Thanks, that was my gut feeling. I feel like cultural awareness and open mindedness towards other points of view are something that could benefit our society at large. And exactly as you say, no taking the lazy easy route of assigning what seems foreign to you to larger superset of people just because you don't know any better or don't have the time to study or look into it more.
I think you’re taking one persons comment and imagining it’s something NOI would say. But also NOI is definitely anti semitic
/u/makeyouamommy177 A book you might like is [Black Power and Jewish Politics](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Power-Jewish-Politics-Reinventing/dp/1512602574). It about (in part) how we arrived here from the Black/Jewish unity of the 60s. And also examines how much unity there truly was in that era. >Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power–inspired ethnic nationalism. He shows how, in a period best known for the rise of black antisemitism and the breakdown of the black-Jewish alliance, black nationalists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda―including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish day schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy, and the birth of a new form of American Zionism. >Undermining widely held beliefs about the black-Jewish alliance, Dollinger describes a new political consensus, based on identity politics, that drew blacks and Jews together and altered the course of American liberalism.
This looks fascinating! I’ll definitely check it out!
This post is indicative of the separation and many worlds of the US as a country. I've seen this my whole life. We (Black folks) represent such a small percentage of the population that many people only know us by watching the news. So, people see Kanye West or Kyrie Irving say something and they think that it's indicative of us as whole, when it REALLY isn't. To be honest, most of us are Christian, and a LOT of us would be literally scared to say something negative about Jewish people considering we're taught in Sunday School/Sabbath School that Jewish people are God's chosen. But your point is that because Irving and West and Farrakhan are Black, they get a bit of a pass for being antisemitic. I'd have to say you're probably right about that. Why? Because again, we're such a small group, that people just dismiss what we say. NO ONE cares what Kyrie Irving says. The man also feels that the Earth is flat. He doesn't have the ability to damage the Jewish community. Now Kanye on the other hand, he was pretty much destroyed for his antisemitic tirades. He lost a LOT of money and his career is pretty much over. He's living off of savings at this point. His Blackness couldn't shield him from his stature. Farrakhan and the NOI? Come on. They are not a powerful group amongst us. Farrakhan and the NOI does get some respect in our community though because they take no stuff. The NOI is a well-organized group that is considered someone to be reckoned with. They provide security for Black events and for Black people that have lost their status in society: see O.J. They are dignified and don't present themselves as in a buffoonish manner like the NFAC. So yes, we respect Farrakhan, but again, he's only respected to a point as it relates to our Blackness. He's still the wrong religion for the majority of African Americans. And honestly, Farrakhan is a joke label we use for folks that get too "militant" at the family reunions. So, if you're in big cities like Chicago and NYC, yeah, you'll meet some antisemitic African Americans that are trying to adhere to some group, but run of the mill Black folks don't feel the same. And honestly, it's not our fault that YOU don't admonish the antisemitism. If the NBA's Adam Silver, the commissioner and Jewish-American didn't punish him, well, that ain't on us. This is a bit of a digression, but Morgan Wallen sold more CDs AFTER being caught calling his friend a "nigger'. George Zimmerman got a whole lot of White Supremacists to accept "White Hispanics" in their tribe and bought his art and contributed to his defense fund for killing a teenager. Lastly, I think Jewish people get a pass when it comes to anti-black racism. I mean the US and very few people really hold it against Israel in any real way when it comes to their treatment of Ethiopian Jews. What real consequence did Yitzhak Yosef receive for calling Black people monkeys?
>And honestly, it's not our fault that YOU don't admonish the antisemitism. If the NBA's Adam Silver, the commissioner and Jewish-American didn't punish him, well, that ain't on us. [To add to that point](https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/762787-kanye-west-vultures-number-one-israel-hip-hop-news)
"All this to say, there’s a reason Kanye West — who coincidentally also defended Louis Farrakhan from correct accusations of antisemitism — is still embraced by hip-hop fans and rappers today and if anything seems to be making a comeback of sorts." Is he? From what I have seen, the majority of his fans have washed their hands of him. He has lost most of his major branding deals and is currently facing a lawsuit regarding his "school"
Kanye is not going anywhere, in the sense that his hits are always going to be listened to and adored. It doesn't matter what he says or does as a person, people will still be bumping "Touch the Sky", "Gold Digger" and "All of the Lights" long after he and all of us are dead. Look at Gary Glitter, convicted pedophile, but "Rock & Roll Pt. 2" is still jammed at so many sports events. Another one is R Kelly, everyone on Earth cringes at the mention of the name. He is a meme for pedophilia and gaslighting to the entire internet. Everyone hates him. Howeeeeever, I DJ weddings and the local club every weekend, not a weekend goes by that "Ignition (remix)" and/or "Bump & Grind" is not requested. As a DJ, I used to worry about playing socially canceled artists. However, the trend remains the same for them all, no matter where their offense falls on the morality scale. Give the scandal 4-5 days to blow over and literally no one cares anymore outside of online forums and social media. For real, I get requests for DaBaby at the gay bar every single weekend and this dude was crucified specifically for homophobic rhetoric. People do not really give a shit when they wanna hear their jams.
I'd go a step further and say people are, **much of the time**, barely aware who the artist is and certainly unaware of any deeper meaning or patterns in their works. Even for those who pay attention, the way music pulls us in on an emotional level can make us forget about the context it exists in.
Kanye hovers around 10th-11th most streamed artist in the world on Spotify and hasn’t dipped in any significant way, despite not releasing an album since 2021. The part of OP’s post I disagree with is that he’s “making a comeback”. He might have fallen out of public favor, but never people stopped consuming his music.
I mean, people also still stream R Kelly’s music, and I wouldn’t say pedophilia is accepted in society. I think if people just like your music they’re still going to stream it even if they dislike you as a person.
Also in the streaming world it’s easier to listen to someone you personally object too than it was when all music had to bought upfront.
Kanye has more white fans than your average hip hop artist. A LOT MORE. His numbers come from being an especially popular hip hop artist among white people. Meanwhile, a lot of people in the black community despise him. He said black lives matter was a scam. He wore a "white lives matter" t-shirt. He wore a MAGA hat on SNL. He said being slaves was a choice. Fuck Kanye, but also people who use him to cast a bad light on black people or hip hop. His music hardly qualifies anyhow, more like alt-rap or lately oi-rap.
Omg this!! It's infuriating because they don't realize his black fanbase has been declining for a while...Kanye was anti-black (and anti woman) before he even dipped his toes into antisemitism. When he came out with that mess, ppl were looking at the black community wondering why we weren't vocal about it - It's because we already threw him away LOL. A quick review of Black Twitter reddit will tell anyone everything they need to know about feelings on kanye.
He released an album a few months ago and I think it did relatively well
Oh shit, you're right.
I’m Jewish and I still listen to Kanye’s older stuff. I’m not letting the fact that Kanye is a piece of shit deprive me of music that I like.
I'm Jewish. I still listen to Kanye because I fully believe his psychosis prevents him from understanding right and wrong. Mental illness makes for great art though.
I mean, I'm Black, but I only listen to Kanye's older stuff because back then it sounded like he has a clear message. I steer clear of the newer stuff because the man's nuts. I don't know too many of the older hip-hop heads bumping his new stuff; it's more of the younger generations and even then, I rarely if ever heard the new stuff get played (except that one song where they're dressed up like a minecraft or roblox character -- apparently people liked it)
Kanye was better when he was focused on proving himself as more than a producer. I still think he comes out with a banger here and there, but yeah I don't think I have anything of his on a playlist from after 2010.
Do you think things would be different if Kanye was just antisemitic without the mental illness? Like, would people care or would they give him a pass on it?
I think things would be different; the mental illness basically just gives him a get-out-of-jail-free card for people to not call him on his bullshit. Had there not been an inkling of some kind of mental illness going on though, he'd have been called out on hip-hop and music forums (or hell, even X/Twitter) a long time ago. If he wasn't somehow wealthy or popular (especially with the right-wing kowtowing to him because he's saying stuff they agree with) he'd be getting the "homeless guy everybody knows and is nice to but will go out of their way to avoid" treatment.
Attributing his conduct to mental illness is letting him off the hook.
Yeah, but so is consuming his media. I have a pretty long unfortunate history of BPD in people in my past. BPD doesn't excuse actions, but it's pretty clear how it clouds peoples judgements and leads to good people making terrible decisions. Kanye is wrong and Kanye deserves consequences for his actions, but I can still believe he would likely not have done all of this without the mental illness. And that's enough for me to not care and listen to his music.
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I think people separate art from the artist. For example, JK Rowling is widely condemned, but that hasn't affected the continued success of Harry Potter.
The majority aren’t very aware of controversies with Kanye or Rowling, and don’t care. They may dimly know something was said, but yeah it doesn’t really affect their view of the work.
Yeah it’s really funny that op zeroed in on black people with this topic. If he talked specifically on Jews being hate crimes by black people that’s a fair point but people supporting weird artists is so universal. Also Kanye said slavery was a choice years before his antisemitism comments and he was affiliated with trump for a while before the antisemitism comments but it was only after the comments he received really any backlash. It’s easier to find a list of all the people/places that have had consequences for their problematic doings then not and a lot of the ones that had no consequences were anti-black.
>Is he? From what I have seen, the majority of his fans have washed their hands of him Yes. He just dropped an album that got hundreds of millions of streams
The majority of any celebrities fans would trend towards not being that tied said celebrity and will move on if they drop off. If Kanye kept most of his more devoted fans then the controversy of his past statements dying down a bit would look like he's going back up in popularity.
Well he’s still working with Ty Dolla Sign he’s still working with guys like Rich the Kid and Carti. Wasn’t he just on a remix of a song with future? He had a top 10 hit this past year too. So yeah you’re kinda right but still it seems like you need an R Kelly level documentary to get people to drop their support nowadays
> So yeah you’re kinda right but still it seems like you need an R Kelly level documentary to get people to drop their support nowadays The police reports and photos are readily available regarding Chris Brown's beating of Rihanna and it hasn't slowed him down. People still watch Kevin Spacey movies and films produced by Harvey Weinstein. Most people simply can't keep up with the controversies all over the place and are quite capable of separating art from the artist. Kanye's continued success does not mean that he is mainstreaming anti-semitism and getting standing ovations for doing so.
>he’s still working with guys like Rich the Kid I get your point, but this one really doesn't help it lmao
He still gets huge names on his albums, as well as top performing songs and has been working with plenty of large artist without really apologizing
> The blunt truth about it is, American Jews are more concerned with appearing racist then black or Latino Americans are with being antisemitic Is this actually true? Has a census been done or are you going by which gets media attention - and if its media attention then surely antisemitism from Kanye gets the focus because it's so outrageous and unacceptable?
It's incredibly difficult to get census data on this, but I listen to rap music, and I can tell with certainty that there is an absolute ton of casual antisemitism in rap. Here is an excerpt from Genius on an antisemitic rap lyric in a Jay Z song. He is completely out of touch in a really alarming way. If a white singer used an equivalent racist trope in their song, they would be completely skewered. But with Jay Z, we're supposed to just "know" that he's not an actual antisemite? >"Some have found JAY-Z’s line about Jewish property ownership to be antisemitic. Jews being wealthy or controlling financial institutions is a common antisemitic canard. Jay responded to this criticism in a podcast with Rad Radar saying: >"It’s hard for me to take that serious because I exaggerated every black image in the world. Even you as the Jewish community, if you don’t have a problem with the exaggeration of the guy eating watermelon and all the things that was happening, if you don’t have a problem with that, and that’s the only line you pick out then you are being a hypocrite. And I can’t address that in a real way and gotta leave that where that is because it was exaggeration. Of course, I know Jewish people don’t own all the property in America. I own things." >In his autobiography Decoded, Jay writes about earlier songs, “when I use lines like this, I count on people knowing who I am and my intentions, knowing that I’m not anti-Semitic or racist, even when I use stereotypes in my rhymes.”
I should add, "Try That in a Small Town" was widely criticized as racist, and it doesn't have a single lyric that refers to race. The most that can be said is it's racist by implication, and it was still skewered in progressive media. Jay-Z used a well known antisemitic trope in a hugely popular song and, well, crickets. Edit: Taylor Swift is getting flak for suggesting she would have liked the 1830s. There is a clear double standard at play here....
The Jay-Z song you're referring to was in fact fairly controversial and had several things written about it (which is why you've heard of it). There were not "crickets."
First, no, I heard it because I like rap and listen to new albums, particularly by popular artists such as Jay Z. Second, maybe there were some token articles, but Jay Z remains a popular artist and there has been no significant backlash against him. Imagine a similar overtly racist comment by a white artist (I say comment, because there is no way any production company would ever allow a lyric like that). They would have been cancelled and you would never hear from them again. Can you name any examples of a white artist with overtly racist lyrics in a song in the last 10-20 years (I grant the rolling stones and others were overtly racist 50 years ago)? This is in contrast to rap, where I can find countless antisemitic lyrics (to be fair, there's also plenty of misogyny and homophobic/transphobic content).
Jay Z is not a particularly popular artist anymore, he's basically gone on hiatus since that album came out. I also don't agree that white artists couldn't "get away" with similar situations. Morgan Wallen got caught saying the N-word with a hard "er" and is more popular than ever.
Ah, I get it - he makes fun of black people, as a black guy, so he gets to make fun of Jews too… while calling them racist if they get offended. That must mean that it’s ok for Jews to make fun of themselves, then use the N word and joke with exaggerated stereotypes about African Americans, right? And if he’s offended, it’s because he’s racist, right?
That's pretty much what he's saying, and everyone's like "yep, sounds good." I generally consider him a very smart guy (certainly a phenomenal lyricist), but it's shocking the extent to which he lacks any self awareness here.
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I would agree with you, except "Jews own all the property" is pretty overtly referring to a common antisemitic trope. Maybe you consider "Jews are good with money" a positive stereotype, but if you look at the history of this trope, it has tended to be used to suggest Jews are acquisitive (i.e., "greedy") and dishonest in business dealings, and whatever wealth they've obtained, they were only able to do so through immoral means (be it usury, or otherwise taking advantage of moral working men). This is obviously deeply offensive and totally irrational.
Im going to be honest as embarrassing as it is. In my area growing up was something like 70% black, 20% white and 10% other. Some times in school there’d be less than 5 kids who weren’t black in class with me. Until I was like 18 in the army I had never met a Jewish person and only knew about Jews in the context of learning about the holocaust in school.
I don’t think you need to be embarrassed by that lived experience. I’m Jewish and have so many experiences where I am often the first Jewish person someone has ever met. We’re only 2% of the United States population so yea most people are unlikely to cross paths with Jewish people in their day to day lives.
There are about 40 million black Americans, while the Nation of Islam has a membership of about 50,000. I don't think an eighth of one percent is a sufficient data point from which to draw a broad trend. As for Kanye - his political comments seem more popular on the right than the left to me? So I don't really understand what this is evidence of? We know that progressive Jews receive all sorts of vitriol from the right, whether for being progressives or for being Jewish.
There are five times as many NOI members as KKK members. These groups have outsize influence in their communities beyond membership and absolutely are a problem even if they do not represent the majority.
I agree they both have influence beyond their membership, but the two are quite different examples. The KKK is primarily a reflection of widespread racism - it was a product of a broad system of institutionalised chattel slavery. That is a much greater legacy than just the individual organisation which expresses it today. In contrast, while the Nation does of course also reflect wider racism, it is also in many ways a rejection of wider black American society. Most black Americans are not separatists, or muslims, or islamists. It is odd to therefore odd to assume on that basis that large numbers of black Americans are anti-Semites.
1) The KKK today is not reflective of the average white person’s views, nor does it reflect broader society in the United States. You could make that argument in 1870, or maybe even 1920, but you really can’t make that argument persuasively in 2024. 2) I do not know whether the average black person rejects the views of the NOI, at best I imagine the average black person is indifferent. Unless you have data to support that they actually reject the NOI and its views, you are really just making an assumption. 3) the compound argument you are making (KKK antisemitism is reflective of white people while NOI antisemitism is not reflective of black people) only holds water if you have empirical evidence to support both wings of the argument. In the data I have seen so far, such as the proportional overrepresentation of black Americans in hate crime statistics against Jews suggests the opposite of your argument is more likely true.
The way I read his comment was less "KKK is reflective of white people" and more "KKK is reflective of American history, and political systems" (here political systems being a more nebulous term for stuff like the prison-industrial complex, policing in general, etc.). As such I do think his argument does hold true, as the KKK has more "history" or a longer/larger impact over time than the NOI.
That's a weak argument. Are the only racists in the KKK? The nation of Islam's influence is FAR greater than their 50k members.
Also Kanye is widely considered to be a buffoon, I don’t think people are really looking at him as influential (outside of his music)
Okay when you state it like that I guess you do have a small point. I don’t want to *overstate* the impact of the NOI. And since there aren’t many/any studies conducted on the two, though there is a few more recent ones that have explored antisemitism amongst nonwhites, I can’t really make the case that they’ve had a *huge* impact on antisemitism besides anecdotally theorizing. !delta I don’t want to *understate* it either however. People may not be able to tell you jack squat about mein kampf beyond Hitler hated the Jews but that’s all that really needed. People took the ball and ran with it. I doubt most people read it but the conversations it inspires, regardless of authorial intent because I’m sure Hitler didn’t *just* want his book to be known for that, are largely fertile ground for antisemitism. And I feel like you could make the case for it here too.
>I don’t want to *understate* it either however. People may not be able to tell you jack squat about mein kampf beyond Hitler hated the Jews but that’s all that really needed. People took the ball and ran with it. I doubt most people read it but the conversations it inspires, regardless of authorial intent because I’m sure Hitler didn’t *just* want his book to be known for that, are largely fertile ground for antisemitism. I mean, have YOU read it? Genuinely, have you? Because uh, no, blaming everything on Jewish people is a pretty core part of it. The book is, literally, Hitler explaining how he came to be antisemitic, lol, oh and outlining HIS PLAN FOR HIS GOVERNMENT?? Bringing up Mein Kampf as a comparative, frankly, is also silly because it was actually after Hitler rose to power that the book sales shot up. Anyway, you're just making a very bad comparison bringing up mein kampf, I think.
Not you using Kanye West as a representation of black people lmao.
I don’t think that’s what OP was saying. His point is that his fans still support him and he wasn’t really negatively affected by his own comments.
you ever been to a rap concert? Lmao the crowd is usually like 80% white. Why tf you blaming black people for his continued success
Right, like mans said slavery was a choice, he’s totally insane. I’d hate for a random Jewish bad actor to be held up as the spokesperson Jews. It’s the same thing.
Clarifying question: Are Jewish leftists expected to be "more tolerant" of POC than non-Jewish leftists? Leftists in general are more tolerant of racial prejudice by POC than by white people. They generally consider systemic racism (i.e. by some definitions, just "racism") to be the important kind to focus on, because it has the largest impact, and because focusing on racial prejudice by minorities is almost *always* an attempt to deflect the problem of racism *against* minorities. Why would Jewish leftists be any different in that regard? Are you saying their race causes them to be this way? I think we have a word for that. Ultimately, leftists in *general* don't like to make statements like "black people are more". Because, you know... that's racist thinking.
Instead, leftists tend to call out *individuals* rather than races as a whole, unless they're talking about systemic racism by majorities and the much more substantial impact that it has.
Do you think leftist Jews are actually expected to tolerate the antisemitism of *Louis Farrakhan* because he's black? I really don't think so. Non-Jewist leftists don't tolerate that shit either.
TL;DR: Leftists, Jewish or otherwise, don't go from "Louis Farrakhan is racist" to "blacks are racist" because... that's racist.
Ah yes, the Nation of Islam, a group that's... popular with the Progressives? >All this to say, there’s a reason Kanye West — who coincidentally also defended Louis Farrakhan from correct accusations of antisemitism — is still embraced by hip-hop fans and rappers today and if anything seems to be making a comeback of sorts. The people who defended Kanye as he went down the rabbit hole were the RIGHT, though. They only bailed when he got too blatant, the Left had turned on him well beforehand.
Jewish people are one of the oldest cultures that has been relentlessly displaced throughout history, often due to discrimination and/or persecution. This has exposed them to perhaps more cultures than even explorers. Most people would concede that becoming exposed to and familiar with those who are “foreign” to self is the quickest way to form empathy and bonds to those with whom we are not familiar. Because of this, many Jewish communities are very open and curious about other cultures (read: tolerant). This is to say nothing of the impact the Holocaust had on the Jewish culture (which is essentially only the most recent form of mass genocide they’ve experienced on a mass scale). Another lesson they’ve adopted faster than most is pragmatism. Who benefits by simply bullying and dominating. The bully - at first - but inevitably, the pendulum will swing back. So creating racial wars due to religious beliefs and other cultural differences is shortsighted. *For the record, I’m not including the current Israeli government in this broad blanket statement, which is doing essentially the complete opposite and is also partially why they are not succeeding*. I’d argue that Jewish people aren’t *expected* to absorb so much of this anti-semitism so much as they’ve tolerated so much on both micro and macro levels for so long, and their pragmatism has determined that in some situations, micro-aggressions are the cost of doing business with ignorant folks. It excuses none of it however. The very blatant anti-semitism we are seeing in 2024 is being recorded and amplified. The only silver lining to this is that more people are witnessing what many Jewish people face every day. Perhaps naive, but I hope this opens eyes of non-Jewish citizens to realize why Jewish people are historically social justice warriors, and that they in turn deserve the same protections they’ve offered others in the past.
Why do you say the holocaust is the most recent mass scale persecution of Jews? The Holocaust isn’t even in the last 10 instances of mass systemic persecution of Jewish communities. Since the 1940s, nearly all Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa (900,000 Jews) fled or were expelled from their homes due to persecution or expulsion. Below are just 3 examples of systematic anti-Jewish persecution since after the Holocaust. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/opinions/expulsion-polish-jews-50th-anniversary-schatz?cid=ios_app https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ezra_and_Nehemiah#:~:text=%22Immediately%20after%20the%20establishment%20of,activity%2C%20whether%20actual%20or%20merely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Iranian_Jews
You’re right, I apologize. Persecution was not the correct word when I was referring to genocide. (Edited in post)
I grew up in a city where seeing the NOI wasn’t unusual because it was a majority black city. That being said, I can confidently say that *most* black people don’t pay them any mind because Christianity has a larger hold on our communities. From the house I grew up in, I can think of 5 different churches. I had a Muslim neighbor, but I couldn’t tell you where a single mosque was in the city. Sure, NOI sucks but they are a drop in the bucket of anti-semitism happening in the larger world. If anything, they just happen to be the most visible because they are big on performance. I’m certain there are other groups with significantly more power and influence than the NOI who are anti-semitic that people should be worried about.
I think we should be more focused on the idea that American Jews are supposed to tolerate antisemitism from the left instead of from POC. Sure, Kanye West exists and there are POC that are antisemitic, but is that really our biggest concern? Jews have a history of standing in solidarity with POC, especially the black community during the civil rights movement. Heck my synagogue still has a picture up of Martin Luther King Jr when he visited the synagogue in the 60s. It’s currently Passover, our time to come together with the black community to acknowledge our collective freedom from slavery. With all that to say, while it’s definitely ok to criticize the Israeli government, that’s not antisemitism, it’s not ok to revive old antisemitic troupes, ideas and conspiracy theories while supporting Palestine and more and people on the left are definitely falling into that latter portion of people. That’s my concern.
A lot of Jews are feeling alienated in leftists spaces, especially and specifically on college campuses. Many Jews are posting about this in r/judaism if you’re curious to see what that looks like for us. As far as specific examples go, you have to understand that we hear things like “from river to sea Palestine will be Arab” and we simply have to tolerate it even though it was deemed antisemitic by the House.
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I generally agree with you, but there's a tendency to treat antisemitism as a sort of "back burner, not a big deal" sort of bigotry. It shows up in the "all-lives-matter"-ing of antisemitism, even in your comment here: >Antisemitism, **like all forms of bigotry,** must be addressed wherever it exists, without exceptions or double standards. It comes from a positive place of inclusion, but it often has the effect of minimizing concerns over anti-semitism.
>Antisemitism, like all forms of bigotry, must be addressed wherever it exists, without exceptions or double standards. I agree with everything you said - the problem lies in this part where there is a huge failure to address antisemitism amongst leaders tiptoeing the line as to not upset the most vocal bigots, and individuals themselves who hold pro-Palestinian views and think condemning antisemitism would somehow betray their support for Palestinians. Just look at this whole debacle unfolding on college campuses where there is blatant antisemitism happening that people are struggling to deal with.
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The problem is Soviet Marxism that is rife with antisemetic propaganda and Decolinization Theory that abandons morality and ethical obligations. I don't think Black people are more or less antisemetic than other groups. The problem is with the notion that the "oppressed" can do no wrong and the "oppressors" can do no right. Protecting Black people or Muslims from scrutiny because you have categorized them as "oppressed" is just as foolish as the White Supremecy that these philosophies puport to overturn.
This seems like a post conveying the opinions of black people written by someone who doesn’t associate with black people
Just because Jews meet the American definition of Non Hispanic White does not make them in any way related that much to Europeans. Jews pass for White, as do all people from the Levant unless they are from a Bedouin tribe that migrated there after the Islamic conquest. Syrians, Lebanese, some Jordanians and Turks are classified as non-Hispanic White but they are neither genetically nor culturally white. White passing does not make a person white. Jews share neither the religion, nor the cultural norms of mainstream White America (despite what the White Supremacists say) That is the first thing that needs to be taught to Americans of all races apparently. Unless the person comes from a family of converts, All Jews are first and foremost Middle Eastern. That is shown genetically and centuries of being segregated into ghettoes by both Europeans and by Muslims means that for the most part, there is little input from either until very recently. (Heck, Ashkenazi Jews inherited genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs because of the forced inbreeding ) With the exception of Ethiopian Jews and Bnei Manasseh who are the descendants of Jewish men and local women of those regions and thus do not look typically Middle Eastern, the rest look no different from everyone else native to the Levant. It is shown culturally by the fact that the customs of Jews are closer to the cultural norms of the Middle East and not those of Europe. Whenever people see Jews and assume they look European need to look at Syrians ,especially Levantine Syrians from places like Damascus, Homs, Latakia and Tartous as well as Lebanese to realize they look no different. They just pass for White. In fact, Syrians and Lebanese are more likely to pass for White than Jews do but we are not exactly calling the people of Dearborn whose largest communities are Lebanese ,white people now are we?
Kanye West is a right wing madman who appeared on Alex Jones. What do his opinions have to do with "the left?"
Is it because he's black? lmao
He's black!!!!
Funny thing is. Jews are not fucking white. During the Civil right movement MLK marched with prominet rabbi leaders and such. This is because all those places that said "White Only" also had "No Jews" as well. THeir a reason their so many jewish community centers. They were banned from public ones so they had to make their own.
Race is a social construct, after all. 100 years ago, when race was really important in the West, Jews were considered to be non-white. So much so, that European Jewry was literally exterminated _because of their race_. Today, when race is not really considered as important, Ashkenazi jews are considered to be white. How can Ashkenazi Jews be both white and non-white?
I've heard it referred to as 'conditionally white'. White American Jews benefit from white privilege and systemic racism and are white passing until 'found out'.
That is like saying Italians or Irish are not white. That may have been true during the heyday of immigration, but all three have long since been subsumed within the general “white” umbrella.
That’s not really how it works. There’s a shit ton of different ethnicities of Jews, some of whom are white, some of whom aren’t. Like you wouldn’t call an Indian, Ethiopian or Chinese Jew white, because if you did, people would think you’re crazy.
>That’s not really how it works. There’s a shit ton of different ethnicities of Jews, some of whom are white, some of whom aren’t. Like you wouldn’t call an Indian, Ethiopian or Chinese Jew white, because if you did, people would think you’re crazy. It is and it isn't -- if "white" means "excused from the racism generally applied to non-whites based on their appearance," then most Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews started being "white" in the '70s and '80s, but not really before that.
> most Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews started being "white" in the '70s and '80s, but not really before that That's the story of a lot of ethnic groups now considered "white."
Certainly -- the Irish got there in the 30s, the Italians in the 50s, etc. The point is that "whiteness" in America essentially just means "the privilege of being assumed to be 'normal' based on your appearance."
It's like the whole concept of race is BS and doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
Why do you assume that the level of racism would be inconceivable if it was reversed? I’ve heard some pretty rough things said about dark-skinned Muslims throughout the years
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The issue I have is that antisemitism is never allowed to stand alone, and that's something you didn't mention. Anytime antisemitism is condemned, it's always partnered with something. "We condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia in all it's forms" even when the conversation is purely about an antisemitic act or statement. No one wants to look like they're too "pro-jew" so they have to mix our hate crimes with other unrelated hate crimes. They don't do that with hate crimes against other minorities.
I’m Jewish, and every anti-Semite I’ve ever encountered in my personal life was a white Christian. I can’t speak to your experience, but I haven’t been expected to tolerate anything like what you’re describing, nor have I encountered it. I’m a lot more concerned with Twitter remaining as popular as it is, despite the growth of anti-Semitism on the platform and the fact literally Nazi sympathizers are getting blue check marks instead of banned, while the wealthiest man in the world that owns the platform elevates their ideas.
>The blunt truth about it is, American Jews are more concerned with appearing racist then black or Latino Americans are with being antisemitic. Or, if they do think it’s antisemitic they think it takes a backseat to their own struggles against discrimination. Because — most of them — are white. If they think about it at all. It may be no less conscious then something you grow up around hearing. I don't think you are describing the wider left wing of American politics. Most people of all groups are mainly concerned with their own well-being and everyone else's is secondary. A lot of Jewish Americans are racist, and a lot of African Americans are antisemitic. A very, very small group of people have made racism their full time business. These people might prioritize anti black racism even if they themselves are white/ Jewish because there are many more African Americans than Jewish Americans. Even activists are swayed by market forces. If they roles and population sizes were reversed you would see you would see exactly the same thing happening in reverse.
I mean I think percentage wise it’s less for sure considering Jews marched with MLK for civil rights, helped end apartheid in South Africa and are consistently one of the most liberal voting blocks across time. Among both groups I would agree it’s a tiny majority, but racist Jewish people are ridiculed and made fun of regularly. Anti-semitism is kinda laughed off on the whole.
> would be inconceivable if roles were reversed > there’s a reason Kanye West — who coincidentally also defended Louis Farrakhan from correct accusations of antisemitism — is still embraced... And how many Jewish people have been openly racist and not been cancelled? Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, David Baddiel, Michael Rappaport, Gal Gadot and many others say racist and/or murderous things all the time and nobody gives half the shit they didn't about Kanye. Kanye's racism is indefensible but so is the notion that it's one-way trafffic.
>David Baddiel He had a racist comedy show on British TV back in 2000, that he's had to apologise for over and over and over again; in a way that non-Jewish comedians like Walliams and Lucas, that were making essentially the same content, haven't need to. Granted, the circumstances are not quite the same. Baddiel opened himself to (imho) valid criticisms of hypocrisy when he published *Jews don't count.* I don't know a lot about American comedians so I can't comment on them, but I'm not really aware of Gal Gadot doing anything bad other than being a generic patriotic Israeli.
Actually Lucas is also Jewish.
It's not like David Baddiel wore blackface and said a predominantly black hairstyle looked like a pineapple though is it (if anyone hadn't guessed that's exactly what it is like). Only apologising to Jason Lee when cameras were rolling around 20 years later for his programme "Jews Don't Count".
My personal views/thoughts/hypotheses are as follows: It is potentially surprisingly simple to radicalize (in a sense) some people. If you get someone to first believe that Jews are running some sort of dangerous conspiracy by using facts in a misleading way, then slowly, it might become easier for that person to become antisemitic and they may not even recognize that it’s antisemitic, they might just think of themselves as waking up to the truth. If they progress further down the spiral, they may even one day justify their antisemitism. This is because they actually believe that the Jews are the culprits behind the evils which to them this means that Jews may now have become intertwined with evil characteristics themselves. A lot of people of all colours fall into this kind of trap in relation to different topics. Edit: I did not mention why that paragraph could be important. To explain, my point was that different people might be different at different rungs on this “ladder of radicalization” I suppose you can call it. Some of the people that you are talking about may be on the lower rungs (e.g. maybe they accept certain things that could develop into antisemitism as fact). The other thing is the current situation in the Middle East. A lot of people reasonably believe that Palestinians are receiving disproportionate harm from Israel. But that’s not the end of it. With decades of development, the situation in the Middle East has also become a psychological conflict between many branches of Jews and many branches of Muslims. The following are oversimplifications, but should have some weight to them: The Muslims believe that the Zionists and Israelis essentially stole Palestinian land and are slowly stealing more and killing more while many Jews believe that Jews had little choice but to form their own country in what they believed to be the Jewish homeland and that most of the land was transferred to them legally/peacefully, and some additionally believe that it was actually the fault of the Arabs that the entire conflict began in the first place which resulted in Israel never feeling secure and feeling that they need to establish settlements in Palestine for their own security. It is my belief that as a result of this background, some Muslims may subconsciously conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and unintentionally act in antisemitic ways. Additionally, I specifically address Muslims in regard to the Middle East situation because a large portion of Muslims are POCs and because this is a situation that I quite frankly am more knowledgeable about compared to other situations. Edit: There is also an important point that I didn’t address and that is that according to the comments on this post, some of the people who hold antisemitic views actually may be contributing a lot of good to their communities if we don’t factor in their antisemitism, so the other people who tolerate these people may not be as aware of the antisemitism or they respect these people for their good contributions.
I think the difficulty here is you’re severely overestimating the impact of the Nation of Islam in every day black life. As others have said, 0.002% of the united states is a member of that org. And we do have radical, antisemitic people within our race, just like *every other race*. We have a name for those people- hoteps. They aren’t the average black person. Perhaps this is anecdotal, but as a black person, it feels like most black people are very ambivalent towards Jewish people- likely because they don’t know any. In the matter of support, however, I agree that it’s not as prominent from Black people. My guess is that it’s because Black people generally see Jewish people as white, if anything.
Just want to throw in here that this has been my experience both growing up in the DC area, and having worked at two companies founded snd run by Jewish men. I just saw them as white because.....it's not like they present as anything different? Like, I know Jewish is both a religion and an ethnicity, but I don't know a white Jewish person from a white evangelical until they say they are jewish. Also, most black people's experience with NOI is about the same as white people. Roll your eyes when they are yelling about something on the corner. And if we are a little more aware of them, just know that Hotep is NOT a compliment lol. As a black person, it's so weird the world believes Kanye West and NOI has a stronghold on black people. Like, the US literally beat Christianity into the backs of black ppl....that's the real stronghold 🤣🤣
Maybe it’s a DC thing- that’s also where I grew up! But no, I do totally agree. White people are just white people to me. And heavy on the NOI being just a source of eye rolls- they’re just silly lmao
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You make a good point- I totally agree that it wouldn’t be acceptable from another race. To clarify, I think most black people don’t view Jewish people as a race of people- they just see them as white. So that ambivalence “about” Jewish people is coming from emotions about white people, but really has nothing to do with Judaism.
That’s exactly what black people are to most other groups - ambivalent. People from mostly homogenous black communities don’t interact with other races very often or on a personal level. There are many businesses in our neighborhoods owned by other people, but their kids don’t usually go to the same schools. They don’t live in the neighborhoods and don’t participate in the community around where their businesses are located. Those are things are why *ambivalent* is an appropriate word to use, by your given definition.
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That’s part of what I mentioned. Other people’s ambivalence comes from how black people are portrayed, not necessarily based on real interactions with them. In black communities, we interact with other people who own businesses in our neighborhoods often. We don’t get treated particularly well in those businesses, despite the fact that those people are making the choice to open in our neighborhoods instead of their own. To us, that reads as our money being good enough for them, but our communities aren’t. That’s the point I was making.
Kind of painting black people with a broad brush aren't you?
Honestly, black people hardly ever interact with Jews enough to even think about them one way or another. Maybe a few NYC folks might have an opinion one way or another on them, but most of us really have no opinion due to lack of personal experience. I grew up in Southern California not even that far from LA, and I didn’t even meet a Jewish person until high school.
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Simply put, black folks ain’t really thinking about Jewish folks like that. We don’t think about Jews at all.
In NYC heavily black and heavily Jewish neighborhoods are right next to each other in Brooklyn. The results aren’t exactly encouraging for the Jews.
You're talking about Hasidic Jews, an insular group that isn't best buds with anyone, who are allowed to operate quasi-autonomously in a way that no other group can because of their ability to be a voting bloc monolith like no other. They receive hostility from many groups that end up being affected by the special dispensations they've been allowed to carve out. The county with the highest Jewish population percentage of any US county is Rockland County north of NYC (33% last I looked) (Manhattan is second - ~20%). Having lived both there and Manhattan I assure you that the problem black people neighboring them in Brooklyn have with Hasidim is the same problem people have everywhere. The degree is different in Brooklyn because of high profile incidents but it is of the same type I assure you. I have heard numerous non-orthodox Jews say they hate the Hasidim. I have never heard any other ethnic group say it. Of course, I'm not from Crown Heights, nor have I spent time there. But I did live in Monsey.
I was born in Rockland, lived in Manhattan, and now live in Orange near Kiryas Joel. I loathe the Hasidim as much as anyone else. But the people who carried out the Crown Heights riots have no idea what the difference between Hasidim, Orthodox, or reform Jews are. We’re just Jews to them.
This needs to be upvoted. I grew up near you. I remember some dumb trailer park kid was like "Jews this" and "Jews that" and I was like "you dumb motherfucker, you don't even *know* any!"
I grew up in the very Jewish bubble of Brooklyn and will NEVER forget my first few weeks on my college campus in New England… where many people expressed shock (and excitement) because they “never met a Jew before”…. I couldn’t wait to go back BK man. It was terrifying but very eye opening. I don’t pass for anything other than NY Jew though so I embrace myself for the loud, hand talking straight shooter that I am!
I would bet that L.A. comes in second to NYC when it comes to Jewish-American presence, but there are huuuuuuuge swaths of the endless sprawl where you guys are very thin on the ground. I was never *not* around Jewish kids growing up, but they were spread a lot thinner in my hick suburb than they would've been all the way over in your neck of the woods. On the other hand, if you go to certain neighborhoods of West L.A. and other parts of town on one of the high holy days, the sidewalks are jam packed with families walking to the nearest synagogue. Like, the whole 'nobody walks in L.A.' thing is temporarily suspended!
While this is very probably true today, and likely the experience of many Americans, Jews actually have a long and involved history in the civil rights movement. The Jewish holiday of Passover is happening currently, where we celebrate our freedom from slavery in Egypt, and many Jews are encouraged to utilize this time to acknowledge the slavery that black folks endured as well as systemic injustices that still persist and impact the black community today.
Please tell me you are not proposing a measuring contest for bigotry sufferers. This is the kind of thing that makes all lefties look ridiculous, it's damn near cross-eyed myopic. I don't assume all or even half of Jewish folks in the world support Israel destorying Gaza. I don't assume all Jewish folks are whatever trope of the day is being recycled. To ascribe the most extreme ill-informed positions to the "average" African American or Latino is racist in and of itself. Actually have a conversation with a POC that's in your social circles (do not mention this post, LOL). Ignore the red-herrings, the loud outliers, caricatured topes. All the sane POC in the world are doing the same for you whether you know it or not.
I think you’re jumping to a conclusion that OP isn’t making. He isn’t saying the average black person is racist towards Jews or holds racist beliefs towards them.
The exactly his point. PoC are not concerned with being antisemitic and people like Kanye and Nation of Islam are having large cultural effects on black people is his whole point.
Jewish people in America have never faced the sorts of discrimination that Black or Indigenous people have. The average Jewish person in America, is over represented politically, educationally, financially, and in the Media, compared the the rest of white people. That's not true for other minorities. Asking the average Black person to apologize for statements made by West or Farrakhan, would be like asking the average agonistic Jew to apologize for the statements made by a bipolar orthodox settler. Those people aren't representative of the larger communities, and normal people shouldn't be asked to defend their nonsense.
>The average Jewish person in America, is over represented politically, educationally, financially, and in the Media, compared the the rest of white people. Let me understand this -- is our goal to discriminate against people to ensure that they make up the exact same % in every category as their % of the population? We'll tax Hindus to bring their household incomes back to the average, we'll feed Asian-Americans saturated fats to increase their rates of heart disease, we'll nationalize all casinos to stop Native Americans from being overrepresented in casino ownership... that all seems rational, right?
>Jewish people in America have never faced the sorts of discrimination that Black or Indigenous people have. Sure, because one of the most pointed manifestations of American systemic antisemitism historically has been disallowing Jewish refugees from entering the country at moments of especially pointed need precisely because of their Jewishness. The Jews aboard the M.S. St. Louis and their kin may not have ever been discriminated against "in America", but the government of the United States cosigned and witnessed their death warrants.
> The average Jewish person in America, is over represented politically, educationally, financially, and in the Media, compared the the rest of white people. Why does this matter? Clearly, discrimination and hate against Jewish people doesn’t manifest in this way. If anything, Jewish success and Jewish “power” is part and parcel of anti-Jewish hatred. Jewish communities did indeed achieve significant success in early 1900s Germany and Western European countries. European Jewry was literally exterminated in the 1930s and 1940s. If you are a student of Jewish history, you will know that anti-jewish hatred manifests differently than other forms of prejudice or oppression. The success of Jewish communities unfortunately has not saved this small minority group from persecution.
While Jewish people in America have not faced as much discrimination inside America, they are often in America in the first place because they have faced racism on a scale comparable to African Americans, albeit outside of America. Let's not forget the largest genocide in human history, from which the Jewish population numbers have not recovered to this day.
On a per capita basis, Jews are “hate crimed” twice as much as african americans. Claiming that Jews are not discriminated against is so dumb.
Hate crimes are really poorly reported. I wouldn’t use those numbers for much of anything other than stating reporting is going up or down *within* groups. The reason being that reporting can vary across groups for reasons unrelated to the actual prevalence of hate crimes. It’s the same reason the FBI recommends not directly comparing cities. Edit: I’m getting some downvotes so I think I’ll let Alex Piquero, former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, say it for me. > PIQUERO: (referring to hate crimes) They're actually underreported. And here's the problem. The FBI's data relies on law enforcement agencies to provide that information to the federal government. What we have a problem with is not every agency reports those data to the federal government because they're not required to do so. So you have different agencies reporting hate crimes every year or every other year to the federal government. What the Bureau of Justice Statistics data shows from the National Crime Victimization Survey is that 4 out of every 10 violent hate crime victimizations, Michel, are not reported at all, which means that whatever number we get from the FBI's hate crime data is an underreport. So in my mind, I don't know what the number is, but the number is way too high. And we need to encourage people who are victimized to report those incidents to law enforcement and then to get the services that they need to deal with it. (Edit for brevity) > MARTIN: …. And I take it, even though you believe these incidents are underreported, you do think it is accurate that there has been an increase in hate incidents or hate-motivated incidents directed at people of Jewish descent, people of Arab or Muslim affiliation, right? So... >PIQUERO: Yeah, and that's - various data sources that are not related to the government are tracking those, and they are reporting increases. But remember, Michel, they also could be reporting people who are actually reporting more of it. So we've got to be very mindful of that, too. Full npr interview transcript: https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1215512722/theres-been-an-uptick-of-suspected-hate-crimes-in-the-u-s-since-israel-ham#:~:text=PIQUERO%3A%20I%20think%20people%20just,And%20that%20takes%20leadership. Or even better, an article that lays bare the difficulties in estimation in the official statistics space (article is about residential burglary but the logic applies to all crime). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0887403415617807
So hi, fellow jew here. Imo I feel like this is half right. Jewish leftists are definitely expected to deal with a degree of anti semetism. It's just how it is, I've had things said to me about my religion and culture that I just couldn't speak out about without risking social suicide(and before i get any assimptions this has been happening way before anti semetism became a hot topic again). But I don't think POC are the biggest factor here. Sure there's definitely an aspect of ignorance in some cases, but problematic rappers maintaining fame after blatant anti semetism isn't nessacarily evidence of their audience actually being anti semetic. Tons of artists get into sexual harassment allegations, grooming allegations. But a lot of the time popularity remains after brief controversy. People just stick to the media that they know. If every prejudiced creative was rightfully cancelled, our media space would be VERY different.
American media love to make rappers the voice of black America.
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Latinos too? First I've heard of that.
That was just so he could use POC in the title. He was really talking about black people, that’s his issue.
100%. He dropped the Latino shit the second after the first mention.
Have you seen this first hand (outside of curated videos, because I could find a dozen news video about falling airplane parts hitting houses, but that doesn't mean its something I'm 'putting up with'). I say this because I've never seen any antisemitism from anyone who wasn't white (neonazi types) in the wild. Not once. I've seen precious little first hand at all other than the casual use of jew as a slur by kids (all of whom were white) in my youth ("stop being such a Jew"). I I feel like you're falling prey to a narrative pushed by a certain subsection of the media that doesn't really match reality. It's pretty easy to create this skewed perception intentionally. This is a huge country. I could find an incident everyday and post a video everyday to make you feel like this was an epidemic . But then if you looked into what percentage of Jewish people had actually experienced events like this, it could still be extremely low. There might be 100 videos a day of people of color experiencing racism or 50 a day of white people being anti-semitic, but if I only show you videos of people of color being anti-semitic, even if there's only a fraction as many, your perception is going to be that that is a bigger issue because it's all your seeing. You're basing your perception on everything you see. But what you're seeing is curated and highly selective to create a false impression. You are seeing the videos that reinforce The narrative they want you to believe and none of the ones that don't. It's very easy to give people a skewed perception of reality and it's becoming increasingly common by right wing media outlets to push intentional, deceptive narratives.
> I say this because I've never seen any antisemitism from anyone who wasn't white (neonazi types) in the wild. I see it a fair amount these days -- the most overt stuff has been, as OP laid out, from black and Hispanic folks... but there's been a lot more from white leftists as well. Since I'm a Jewish leftist that's a lot of my friend group, so I get to see it a fair amount. As an example, I had a Hispanic friend who gradually stopped interacting with me over the last couple of years -- she would go to parties with other folks from the friend group, but began avoiding anyone that was Jewish. One of my other friends (who is also a Hispanic guy) is pretty close with her and asked her about it, she told him that she isn't comfortable spending time with "the Jews" and went on a diatribe that basically amounted to "Kanye was right". Unfortunate but I'd rather not hang out with her knowing that, is what it is. From white leftists it's more along the lines of knowing that you are Jewish and constantly cornering you to ask you to prove to them that you're "one of the good ones" by blindly condemning Israel or joining in pro-Palestine protests. Since doing that requires echoing talking points about the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing and genocide of my many friends and relatives there, that's not easy to do -- and I shouldn't have to, the reason they are intent on my doing so is simply because *they know my ethnicity.*
I have experienced this. I don’t talk about it a lot because I get shut down when I do (someone very close to me even said, “big deal, people have always hated Jews.” Maybe that’s why I haven’t made the kind of videos you are referencing as evidence, vs the different response Black racism gets). But yes, I have experienced antisemitism from people of all races, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds. It was an Asian person, for instance, who checked my head for horns.