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Jewish privilege is a myth Today's obsession with 'whiteness' ignores the complexities of race

There are many ways of being Jewish (Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

There are many ways of being Jewish (Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)


February 18, 2021   5 mins

It’s only recently that I came across the idea of “Schrödinger’s whites”. This is the notion that Jews are considered to be white or non-white depending on the political perspective of the viewer. To those on the murkier reaches of the far-Right, Jews are not white; indeed their non-whiteness is considered a threat to the purity of whiteness. But to those on the progressive Left, Jews are often considered archetypally white — powerful, privileged, wealthy. Whether you see a Jewish person as white or BAME has more to do with you than it does with them. It’s a matter of perspective.

Which brings me to a question about my youngest son. At eighteen months, he has an extraordinary crop of luminous golden hair. His cheeks are pink. He comes from a comfortably middle-class family, complete with all the advantages of a household full of books and two parents with PhD’s. The only signals that give away the fact that he’s not unquestionably a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) are the Hebrew words that he uses to describe the four corners of his world. Mummy is “ima”. Home is “bayit”. Milk is “halavi”. Sleep is “lishon”.

So where does he fit in with the “progressive” view of whiteness? Is he BAME?

David Baddiel’s new book, Jews Don’t Count, is a broadside against the widespread progressive assumption that Jews don’t fit in with the “minority ethnic” framework of today’s identity politics. In a culture where you can receive considerable censure for misgendering a transgender person, the refusal to count Jews as belonging to an ethnic minority is widely unnoticed.

Baddiel opens with an example from a recent book review in The Observer, which reprimands the narrator for operating from a “white-male-cis-het perspective”. Yet the character in question is called B Rosenberg. He wears a tie that proclaims “100% Kosher”. People shout things like “Fuck you, Hebrew” at him. It cannot be that the reviewer failed to notice any of this. Nonetheless, the book is still apparently written from the perspective of “white-male-cis-het” privilege.

I sat in my church and, in one sitting, read Baddiel list example after example of this sort of blindness, my indignation rising with his. Back in 2019, for example, Sajid Javid was widely hailed as the first BAME Chancellor of the Exchequer, totally ignoring — and thinking it irrelevant — that Nigel Lawson had been appointed to that role back in 1983, his paternal grandfather having changed the family name from Leibson to Lawson in 1925 (as my family changed it from Friedeberg in 1917). Likewise in 2017, progressives were up in arms that not a single BAME person was on the list of the BBC’s highest paid broadcasters — even though it included Vanessa Feltz and Claudia Winkleman. Apparently, Jews don’t count.

Part of the issue here is that Jews are widely perceived to be wealthy and powerful, and so not so deserving of the attention of anti-racists. They seem to forget, of course, that it is also one of those standard anti-Semitic tropes beloved of the racist far Right. It also fails to explain why my son’s prosperous ancestors, who ran a factory in Lodz (my side) and were well-heeled doctors in Lvov (my wife’s), were still dispatched by the Nazis to the camps to be murdered.

The church also rightly comes in for criticism. In July of last year, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the current Archbishop of York declared that “Jesus was a black man”. Now it is indeed extremely important that our perception of the historical Jesus is reclaimed from those who have depicted him as fair and white. He was very probably dark skinned. But nowhere in the ensuing discussion was the most obvious point about his ethnicity even touched upon: Jesus was Jewish. Perhaps this was just assumed. But given that the church has, since the earliest of times, sought to distance itself from the Jewishness of Jesus, I am not convinced.

And it is here that Baddiel skates over an important issue. For while he is very clear that, as an atheist, he has little use for religion as a category through which to understand Jewishness, it’s a connection which simply can’t be ignored.

Yet this is becoming increasingly common. In March last year, for example, a report published by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research recommended: “For the purposes of representation we should adopt an inclusive definition of the Jewish people and present ourselves as an ethnic minority.” In response, The Independent ran an article — under the headline “British Jews are urged to ‘rebrand’ as ethnic minority” — that offered the following observation: “After 5,000 years of believing they are God’s chosen people, a high-powered committee of British Jews has ruled that being Jewish has little to do with religion.”

There was so much wrong with the article that I find it hard to know where to begin. The idea that Jews were “rebranding” themselves as an ethnic minority suggests that it was a duplicitous ploy, something invented to gain some sort of advantage. It’s a take on Jews being shifty.

But it also misunderstands the nature of religion itself, as well as the origins of the very concept of Jewishness. As the best scholarship on this issue makes clear — see Shaye Cohen’s masterful The Beginnings of Jewishness — before the second century BCE it makes little sense to talk of “Jewishness” but rather of “Judeanness”; those who come from Judea.

The Greek word Ioudaioi originally referred to the ethnos of Judeans in Judea. In other words, the idea of Jewishness, of being a Jew, begins not with something we might now call “religion” or “belief” but in ethno-geography. Indeed, it might even be said that the very idea of belief as constituting the essence of a religion is an originally Christian idea.

Nonetheless, by about the first century BCE, the idea of Jewishness became rooted in religion and included everyone who worshipped in the Jerusalem Temple, whatever their ethnic or geographical origins. In other words, being Jewish came to be seen in various terms: ethnic, geographical and, most importantly, religious.

We tend to separate out these categories in ways that did not exist in the ancient world. So Baddiel’s desire to understand being Jewish as something ethnic shouldn’t be seen as some new invention, nor even a response to the renewed focus on the status of ethnic minorities in the light of Black Lives Matter. But that doesn’t mean it should become the only way to isolate Jewishness.

After all, the trouble with associating being Jewish exclusively with ethnicity also ignores the generally accepted Rabbinic law that the child of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father are not half-Jews but fully Jewish. Jewish law does not have any equivalent to being mixed-race. The Rabbis may not get to define Jewishness exclusively. But neither can they be ignored.

I also wish Baddiel had more to say about the discrimination Jews experience as followers of God in a world increasingly suspicious of belief. And I worry about Baddiel’s attitude towards Israel. Baddiel is, of course, absolutely correct to highlight the ways in which all Jews are often held responsible for the politics of the Israeli government in ways that other people are never held responsible for theirs.

But I do get a little bit twitchy when he writes: “Israelis aren’t very Jewish anyway, as far as my relationship with Jewishness is concerned.” Too macho, too ripped and aggressive and confident. As one of the characters in a film he wrote puts it: “Jews without angst, without guilt. So not really Jews at all”.

I admit it: I laughed. And, being married to an Israeli myself, I do recognise that he is on to something about the very different ways people are Jewish in Israel and in Britain. In fact, Israel has to be one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world; with Arab Jews and originally European Jews, Ethiopian Jews and so on. But I do feel that there is an absence of solidarity here — not least because Baddiel acknowledges that being “being white” has become a euphemism for “being safe”.

And that, after all, is why my little lad is “minority ethic”, notwithstanding his appearance. The Nazis produced a nasty little book called The Poisonous Mushroom, explaining to children that while some mushrooms may look edible, they can be, despite their deceptive looks, poisonous. Given the prevalence of this type of thinking, “safe”, for my little boy, will always also mean Israel. That indeed is the very purpose of its existence.

The report published by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research was called “A Community of Communities”. It’s a fitting title; there are various ways in which Jewish identity is expressed — secular and religious, national and international. Baddiel rightly highlights one particular aspect of this surprisingly fluid identity. But there are other ways of being Jewish. And Jews have been made to pay for all of them.


Giles Fraser is a journalist, broadcaster and Vicar of St Anne’s, Kew.

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Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago

It would be a terrible shame if the Jews were to position themselves as a separate group, just another example of the Identify-Grievance-Complex. On the other hand, given the hate they get from the left, the far right, and one particular religious group, they could not be blamed for doing so.
I do wish the right, in particular, would get over their anti-semitism. The Jews are pretty much the most hard working, entrepreneurial and useful people in the world. I wouldn’t expect the left to like or respect that, but surely even the nutters on the far right can respect Jews for the jobs they create and the fact that they are rarely dependant on the state for their livelihood.

Simon Cummins
Simon Cummins
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

From my own experience, I would say that the vast majority of casual anti-Semitic remarks I read or hear come from left-leaning people (and not far-left either). From a group who often make a big noise over discrimination, I find this puzzling.

Last edited 3 years ago by Simon Cummins
Daisy D
Daisy D
3 years ago
Reply to  Simon Cummins

I’ve experienced the same, Simon Cummings. And they often do so under the guise of “criticizing Israel”, a country they know next to nothing about … Oddly, the most virulent Israel haters I know are Left wing Jews, and some of the most ardent admirers of Israel I know are Conservatives (both Christian and Jewish).
Then again, it’s the Left that’s come up w/the trope, “White Privilege”. Under the auspices of White Privilege, financially successful Conservative blacks as well as impoverished whites – or Jews belonging to any social strata – can morph into that despised category. Conversely, Leftist whites can shed the dreaded White Privilege designation by claiming enough points on the victim scale (female, gay, real or imaginary handicaps of any sort).
Anyway, here in the USA, w/Jews making up, at most, 3% of the population (as opposed to, say, woman, who are granted minority status by the Left even as they constitute 51% of the population, or blacks, who make up more than 13% of the population) do have actual minority status. For whatever that’s worth.

Geoff Cooper
Geoff Cooper
3 years ago
Reply to  Daisy D

Yes, scratch an ‘anti-Zionist’ and you’ll invariably find an anti-Semite underneath.

Rob Alka
Rob Alka
3 years ago
Reply to  Geoff Cooper

Do you mean I can’t be the former without automatically being the latter?

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Geoff Cooper

Not possible since neither Zionism or Zionist Israel represent Jews or Judaism, so the capacity for anti-semitism, i.e. hatred of Jews does not exist. More so because many Israelis call themselves Jews, but as atheist/secular cannot be.
No religion can have atheist followers. It is impossible.
Valid criticism of a State, and Zionism is a non-religious political movement, does not automatically translate to its major religion or anyone criticising the US would automatically be anti-Christian.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Wilfully ignorant assertions based on the writer’s prejudice, nothing more. She completely misunderstands Jewish history and equates Jews — a tiny minority with Christians, who dominate dozens of states. She doesn’t understand that Jews CAN be atheists because being Jewish is an ethnicity as well as a religion — life can be complex. And the obsessive criticism of “zionism,” may theoretically not be due to antisemitism, but in practical terms, usually is, as evidenced by this comment.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

If being Jewish is an ethnicity then all religions would have such status. They do not.
Beyond religious metaphor, no religion is ethnicity.
An Ethiopian Jew and American Jew have exactly the same in common as an Ethiopian Christian and American Christian – THE RELIGION.
A Jew cannot be an atheist anymore than a Christian can be an atheist. It is impossible. It is delusion.
All Zionists are not Jews and all Jews are certainly not Zionists. Zionism is an atheist political movement which exploits Judaism. Valid criticism of Zionist Israel never reflects on Judaism and only reflects on those Jews who support the apartheid state. This is why increasing numbers of Jews are rejecting the Zionist State, including many Americans and young Israelis who are sickened by its actions and returning to the countries their parents and grandparents left to colonise Palestine.
One of the biggest communities is in Berlin so Germany clearly trumps Israel which says a lot.

Last edited 3 years ago by Athena Jones
mike lyvers
mike lyvers
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Woody Allen is a famous atheist Jew.

Helen Moorhouse
Helen Moorhouse
3 years ago
Reply to  mike lyvers

In NI you might have been asked if you were a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 years ago
Reply to  mike lyvers

NYC is filled with atheist Jews and others who are non-observant.

Last edited 3 years ago by Cathy Carron
Roger Inkpen
Roger Inkpen
3 years ago
Reply to  mike lyvers

Didn’t Allen say he wasn’t so much a Jew. but Jew-ish?

Robert G
Robert G
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Thumbs down, largely for referring to Israel as an “apartheid state,” which is offensive to both South Africans and Israelis alike.

Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

There is also a clear difference between criticising the policy of a state and hating its people. There is certainly plenty of vile ant-Semitism in the world, much of it emanating from Muslims as well as the fringe of the extreme right in Europe, but this is not the same as arguing against the policies of land acquisition by violence in the West Bank, or of race based migration policies with regard to settlement of people into Israel. Many Jews also object to some of the actions of the Israeli government – some of those Jews are Israeli citizens. Are they anti-Semites?

Iain McCausland
Iain McCausland
3 years ago
Reply to  Geoff Cooper

You either believe in universal human rights or you do not. The state of Israel treats non-Jews unfairly q.e.d.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Daisy D

Thumbs up.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Simon Cummins

Thumbs up.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Simon Cummins

The vast, vast majority.

alan fry
alan fry
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

“The Jews are pretty much the most hard working, entrepreneurial and useful people in the world.”
really ? Is that not doing the same as those who say the jews are (insert slur) ?

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

Indeed. The tendency to make generalisations about the character of nations, generations and ethnicities is a common feature of these pages.

nick harman
nick harman
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

Everything is a generalisation (sic). I mean, not all lions are dangerous but if you meet one when out for a walk it’s safest to accept the generalisation and run away.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  nick harman

close to the difference between anxiety and fear.
If there is a lion outside your door, you have every right to be very fearful.
If there is no lion but you keep imagining there might be, and are taking ridiculous unnecessary precautions, then you have great anxiety.

Geoff Nottage
Geoff Nottage
3 years ago
Reply to  nick harman

If you meet a lion while out for a walk running is not the best option, grab a whip and chair and arrange some flaming hoops in a circle. Habit will do the rest.

George Stone
George Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  nick harman

Are you sure it is safest to run away. This would only stimulate the predator response. I would have thought it would be safer to look it straight in the eye and walk towards it.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

Yes, this is correct. On yet another thread today, people are throwing venom at the Chinese. It is a bit sad that clever people can only exist with generalisations.

George Stone
George Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Generalisations are never true, but they are true.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

A positive statement is now a slur? Generalizations get made about all groups. Often, they are not complimentary. That is not the case here, so no, it’s not the same.

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Yes and no. A generalised positive statement about an ethnicity means you accept that ethnicities can have positive or negative traits based on their ethnicity. If you say the Jews are inherently more hard working than other ethnicities then you are saying there are other groups you believe are inherently less hard working. That, though I’m sure you didn’t mean it to be, is racist.

simon taylor
simon taylor
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

But, in my experience, is true.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  simon taylor

There are incompetents and achievers in all religions.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

yes, but not the same degree or extent. I know it’s hard to accept positive generalizations about Jews, but do try.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

What extent? Christians have long outperformed Jews and historically Muslims and Hindus have contributed vastly greater knowledge than Judaism.
I have studied many religions, including Judaism and found nothing to support claims of exceptionalism.
I have worked with and for Jews, including Israelis, as well as Christians, Muslims and Hindus, and found again no exceptionalism although Jews like fundamental Islam, Christianity and Hinduism seem to be more trapped in tribalism.
Jewish family and friends around the world demonstrate the same sort of difference as do Christians, Hindus and Muslims, so again, nothing exceptional. The religion is the link and the rest is nationality.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

“Christians have long outperformed Jews and historically Muslims and Hindus have contributed vastly greater knowledge than Judaism”….this statement seems rather silly. How do you prove such a thing?
Jews and Asians perform exceptionally well (highest average salaries, professional awards, etc) in the USA, one surmises because of high intelligence combined with a strong work ethnic and tighter family ties than most.

Last edited 3 years ago by Cathy Carron
Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

such nonsense

Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

The term racist is so heavily used these days and often abused too, that it has become less than useful. Making generalisations about large groups or races of people is very frequently a mistake, whether you are making a positive generalisation about them or negative ones. I try to form opinions about people as individuals, based on what they do and who they show themselves to be. If they upset me I have no problem in adopting a mode of strong dislike.

Last edited 3 years ago by Tom Fox
Robert G
Robert G
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

Matters grow more complicated if we acknowledge that we’re not talking about inherent, racial characteristics. Rather, we are looking at cultural norms, values, and mores. These attributes are not immutable qualities ingrained in the DNA, but learned behaviors passed down through family and community.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

no, it may not be nice, but it isn’t racist, because there isn’t a racial element in the way you have phrased it, you just refer to “other groups”

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Thumbs up.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

Well, they have won a remarkable number of Nobel prizes relative to their population, and my experience is that Jews are very hard working, productive and entertaining people.

Rob Alka
Rob Alka
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

I shoud scrolled down to your excellent summary before giving my expanded version which probably oversteps the mark in these wide-a-woke times
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a considered or open-minded reply

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Well I am no fan of the various Jewish religious sects such as those that someone wrote about in an article here a few days ago. But most or all religions seem to spawn these groups.
No problem with Big Media and Hollywood, even it it’s true that Jews control these industries. Nobody forces me to consume or pay for their content. It’s all garbage so I don’t.
Do Jews really control the financial system? I don’t really know. But the financial system is largely a consequence of the structures set up and enabled by politicians. You can’t blame people for taking advantage of it, just as you can’t blame people for gaming the welfare system which is also set up and enabled by politicians.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Thumbs up.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Slither back under your stone, Corbyn fanboy.

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

Corbyn has never stated or supported the views you ascribe to him.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Ah, the old furphy of the Nobels.
Let us take Albert Einstein. His parents were atheist so not Jews. He was educated by the Catholics so the Christians trained his mind. He explored spirituality later but was not a practising Jew in any serious sense.
How did Judaism help him win a Nobel Prize?
And there were other winners, called Jews, who had one Jewish and one Christian parent. How did Judaism wreak religious miracles there? It all sounds very racist and probably does not win hearts and minds to fly the fantasy flag that followers of Judaism are smarter than other humans. Anyone spending time in Israel soon has that delusion smashed.
The stand-out religion for achievement remains Christianity. But that means little without understanding the country and culture of each individual. And these days Nobel Prizes count for very little anyway.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Einstein would have mocked you for that stupid comment. He knew he was a Jew and was proud of it. And nobody says “judaism” wreaks intellectual miracles. You’ve got Jews on the brain.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

Einstein would have agreed. He knew truth when he saw it. The facts are never stupid.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

All religions are flawed and Judaism has some of the worst flaws. But, like other religions, it has positive qualities as well.
Unfortunately Israel gives Jews and Judaism a bad name.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

only to you and yours, lady. much of the world is impressed, and with good reason.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

You are wrong. Increasingly world opinion, including Americans and American Jews, condemn the backward, apartheid state of Israel.
In recent years many more groups challenging Israel have been set up by American Jews who totally reject what Israel is and does.
I can give you a list but you can start with….
If Americans Knew

mike lyvers
mike lyvers
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

The surrounding countries are far more backward, oppressive and primitive. There is no comparison.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

“world opinion” based upon your detailed thorough research????
and your observations about American Jews, again based upon your profound knowledge of large numbers of American Jews across the very profound spectrum of between 4 and a half to 6 million people????????

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

your unpleasant anti-Jewish hate has nothing really to do with the modern State of Israel.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

There are 15 or 16 million Jews in the world. The vast majority of us don’t control hollywood, media or banking. There is no apartheid in Israel, only an occupation that treats occupied population differently, as any occupier would. The chosen people canard is purposefully misunderstood to mean superior; it doens’t. As for “inter marriage culture,” whatever it means, it’s certainly not applicable to Jewish people only.
This is what prejudice does to people.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

So you have not caught up with the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, declaring Israel is an apartheid State?
The world should be prejudiced against such bigotry and atrocities.

Henry Allen
Henry Allen
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

as in Yemen? do you advocate war and all the atrocities that brings. history tells us what to expect, opps we never learn, we never ever learn.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

oh please, BTselem is viewed by almost everyone in Israel, without exception, as an extreme left virulently anti-Israel organization, not to be believed.

George Stone
George Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Bigotry and atrocities are everywhere in the world and always have been. ‘The world ‘has no opinion.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

what do you mean by “occupied population”???
palestinians in Gaza and in Yehuda and Shomron are governed by their own palestinian authorities, they are not occupied.
There is a military presence in Yehuda and Shomron but not in Gaza, because terrorists attacking and killing Jews as recently as a few days ago still occur on a regular basis.
The “occupation” myth was used a few weeks ago to claim that Israel was denying palestinians anti-covid vaccination, while the truth is that for 25 years the palestinian authority has been solely responsible for its own health care and it failed miserably.
Arab Israeli citizens received vaccinations in the same way according to ages, vulnerabilities, occupational priorities, as all other Israelis.

Pamela Booker
Pamela Booker
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Why class them as “flaws”?

Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

I’m sure that many Jews are hard working clever and splendid people. They hold those qualities as individuals not as a member of a superior race. So do many Chinese, or white people. If you prove to be a superior performer, you achieve that status because of who YOU are. I am completely against generalisations about race be they positive or negative. It is a well known fact about performance and ability that the differences within groups are far greater than any differences which appear to exist between groups.

Last edited 3 years ago by Tom Fox
Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

The propensity to intermarry varies amongst Jews. Orthodox Jews practically require it. However, there is so much inter-marriage amongst liberal Jews that some think it concerning, a dilution. Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard has even written a book about the problems with too much inter-marriage.I have NEVER heard a Jew refer to themselves as ‘the chosen ones’ after living in NYC for 35 years.
Take care not to generalize ‘Jews’ – they are a varied lot, with varied beliefs & practices throughout the world.

Last edited 3 years ago by Cathy Carron
Micheal Lucken
Micheal Lucken
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

Yes you can’t have it both ways. Either it is valid to make qualitative judgement on the basis of race ethnicity etc or it is not. If you claim virtue for one or several groups then by implication others are less so leaving it to others to assume who that might mean.

Michael Coleman
Michael Coleman
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

No it isn’t. Are we forbidden from recognizing statistical differences between groups (unless of course it is between black & white which must be systemic racism!). Clearly the author didn’t mean ALL Jews and it is a fact that Jews are one of the wealthiest ethnic groups and have made disproportionate contributions (see Nobel prizes). Lastly, and most obviously, recognizing a positive fact about an ethnic group can at best be considered the opposite of a slur.

William meadows
William meadows
3 years ago

That’s why the left hate you, you should be down trodden, with your hands out, and full of grevence, not successful despite everything, there little heads can’t handle it.!

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago

If you assume those differences in statistics are due to inherently ethnic characteristics that’s racism. Saying Jews are the hardest workers because they’re Jewish is no different from saying the Poles or the Irish are inherently stupid because they’re Polish or Irish.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago

Followers of Judaism are not wealthier than followers of other religions. My lot certainly were not. Going back 400 years they were as poor as the Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, Lutherans, Wends, Huguenots and Greek and Russian Orthodox.
And Jews are members of a religion where the only ethnicity is religious and that differs country to country and always did.
And if you separate out of those Nobel prizewinners, those who were atheist, raised atheist, i.e not Jewish, and those with one Jewish parent, the other belonging to another religion, the ‘performance’ of followers of Judaism becomes trivial. How many of those ‘winners’ were raised by practising Jews and were Jews themselves? Certainly not Einstein. The Catholics who educated him played a bigger part than Judaism.
Apart from which such claims of superiority just make the religion look childish and bigoted.

mike lyvers
mike lyvers
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Jews have been despised by the likes of people like “Athena” irrespective of whether they were religious or not.

Daisy D
Daisy D
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

It’s only a slur if claiming that most of the exceptionally good basketball players in professional basketball are black.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Daisy D

Thumbs up.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Daisy D

Except having African ancestry can and does pass on physical genetic characteristics.
Pray, how does a religion do that? It doesn’t. Jews comprise all races and hundreds of nationalities and cultures and are as smart and as stupid as followers of any other religion.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

you refuse to accept that jews — ashkenazi jews for sure — form an ethnicity, so none of your arguments hold any water whatsoever. Carry on banging on about belief, as though that’s the issue. it isn’t.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

Ashkenazi Jews are European, largely German. Are you saying Europeans are an ethnicity?
Ashkenazi are linked by religion. Drop the religion as my ancestors did and you are no longer Jewish or Ashkenazi.
I fully understand how Israelis of Askenazi descent consider themselves to be superior to Sephardim. But bigotry is the name of the game there anyway. Remind me again how being Jewish creates unity?

George Stone
George Stone
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

I have known many Jewish people in my life and I am confident to be able to pick out jewish people just by looking at them. What does this suggest?

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

I think this can easily be a slur and it depends on the context – what is being said and who is saying it.
To quote a post below, if you are in a group and somebody is complaining that there are too many black people in the neighbourhood so you say, “But most of the exceptionally good basketball players in professional basketball are black.” That is a slur.
If you are talking to an audience which does not think much of Jewish people and you say “The Jews are pretty much the most hardworking, entrepreneurial and useful people in the world.” then you are in desperation mode. I think it would be better to just say nothing.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Why would anyone judge others on the basis of their religion? I have family and friends who follow many different religions, including Judaism, and I don’t find religions create universal qualities.
There is no Jewish people beyond religion and even that is not universal.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

tell it to hitler, you ignorant fool.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

Hitler is irrelevant. I am talking about the logic and teachings of religion. Religions do not make a people or all religions would have the same status.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

I agree, people are individuals. I worked for a few years at a school with a lot of Jewish staff and students and saw little common. Except perhaps a playfulness with language bit like the Welsh.

Admittedly, Jewish history goes back a but further but they are so good at rugby as the welsh.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  alan fry

“The Jews are pretty much the most hard working, entrepreneurial and useful people in the world.”
Which begs the question why the stand-out religion for achievement for the longest time is Christianity and even Hinduism and Islam in their time have vastly outperformed followers of Judaism.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Because the discussion is about today, not 300 or 1300 years ago. Duh!

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

So, how did this miraculous ‘Jewish’ intelligence begin and at what point in recent history since you agree Jews did not demonstrate such ‘cleverness’ through their history?

joannedbell
joannedbell
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

We are a different group. Proudly so. Why on earth should we not be proud of our existence, which is almost a miracle given our history?

Sheryl Rhodes
Sheryl Rhodes
3 years ago
Reply to  joannedbell

I think that the continued existence of the Jewish people through millennia and endless persecution IS a miracle. If you allow for miracles, and I do.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  joannedbell

Thumbs up.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  joannedbell

Most religions have been persecuted. Some did not survive, like the Cathars. My Jewish ancestors were poor but lived pretty comfortable lives with no more problems than the followers of the many other religions in my family.
Unfortunately the mythology and propaganda coming out of the Second World War, and the desperate desire to believe in Jewish exceptionalism – no wonder they do so well in the US – has created distortions.
The survival of Judaism is no more a miracle than the survival of many other religions. People remain ignorant of the horrific persecution of other religions throughout human history.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

utterly clueless.

mike lyvers
mike lyvers
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

You don’t have Jewish ancestors.

Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  joannedbell

Breaking down society into disparate identity groups is damaging to societal cohesion. I live in Britain. I am interested in fostering Britishness, patriotism and societal cohesion. We have FAR too much competition to fragment our national identity and too many people pushing grievance politics and sniping and even strident criticism of other groups.

Steve Heath
Steve Heath
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Don’t forget that the ‘far right’ are normally economic socialists. Far right only in so far as they have been positioned there by the left to distance their idea of government control of the means of production from someone else’s idea of the same principle.

rosie mackenzie
rosie mackenzie
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Heath

Agreed but they are also economic nationalists and blame the Jews for mass immigration. Do you know why this is?

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

I guess its to do with the historic issues Giles talks about – which come from c18thC and before in UK and later in Russia. Germany etc. I think its important to note the far right blame Sinti/Roma/Gay etc as much Jews and the far left blame Jews and rich whites. Hilarious because the far left are mostly rich whites and the far right a few rich whites leading a group of mostly poor whites. FYI i view anyone who broadcasts the words pickinnnie and letter box for women choosing niqab as far right. Thick, yes, but also far right and as weak as they are thick.

Last edited 3 years ago by mike otter
Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

When Johnson mentioned “picaninnies”, he was lampooning Tony Blair’s white saviour mentality.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Heath

Yes, I’m aware of that, although those on the far right tend not to work for the state, unlike those on the far left.

Unherd Unheard
Unherd Unheard
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

If you reverse that you are saying everyone is lazier and less useful than Jews- it’s not a very healthy way of thinking, particularly if you identify to the group you are also claiming to be uniquely gifted.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
3 years ago
Reply to  Unherd Unheard

One thing about having a little knowledge of statistics is that it tells you that moving from the average to the individual is futile. Knowing tha one group, on average, bears a particular trait tells you nothing about the individual people that you meet.

I don’t know about you but I only meet people and not representative samples.

LUKE LOZE
LUKE LOZE
3 years ago

Thank you for a sensible comment. Funnily enough I had a similar issue with aggregates earlier in the day. If you took the UK average age of 40 out of context we’d need no schools and far fewer hospitals.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago

And Jews are not a group. Many intensely dislike Israeli Jews and British Jews have about as much in common with American Jews as do British Christians with American Christians.
Religions are not united or universal and Judaism is no exception as spending time in UN Mandated Zionist Israel reveals.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

British Jews have about as much in common with Americans Jews …..

Utterly ignorant, no doubt wilfully so. Jews in the anglosphere have LOTS in common, which is one reason they tend to gather together in many cities. duh!

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Vilde Chaye

In the same way Christians gather. I have said the link is religious and it is. Hindus and Muslims do the same thing.

mike lyvers
mike lyvers
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Most Jews are atheists, but still identify as Jews. Of course you know that.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Thumbs up.

Paul N
Paul N
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

The far right (like their co-dependent colleagues on the far left) need an enemy. Historically Jews were designated scapegoat for everything, though that role may now be transitioning to Islam.

Jonathan Finger
Jonathan Finger
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

I like your post. I am not in favor of joining the Identity-Grievance-Complex, as it only fuels more resentment across society. That said, I really thought after 9-11, folks would say to themselves, “Jews are a productive, peaceful people, maybe they aren’t so bad after all.”

Michael L
Michael L
3 years ago

I am a Jewish, I am reasonably non-religious, but I am Jewish. I was born in the Soviet Union and grew up with systemic antisemitism of Soviets. Jews couldn’t enter certain Universities; Jews couldn’t get certain positions. My birth certificate mentioned that my parents are Jews (they were never religious). In my passport, there was a line telling you that I am a Jew. On top of systemic Soviet antisemitism, there also was ‘routine’ antisemitism. I live in the UK now. I don’t know if I am BAME or white majority or anything else of that sort, frankly speaking, I don’t even want to know. All we (myself and family) want is to be a part of the British community, and yes, we would like to remember that we are Jews in our family. However, neither radical left nor radical right ever let us calm and become an integral part of society. In the Soviet Union, they told us that ‘Jews sold mother Russia’. I don’t know to whom, and I also never got my part of the ‘deal’. It was just a ‘regular’ anti-jewish libel. In the West, we accused of having privileges. It would be interesting to know who provides us with those as I am certainly not getting mine. Now a bit about me I am working from the age of 16, while studying in the UK University I washed floors in Tesco and dishes in Pizza Express. Those privilege givers certainly could do better in my case. While doing my PhD here in the UK, I taught in many different places in order to sustain myself and family while paying full tuition fees as an overseas student. Yet again, my privileges eluded me. However, the one thing stays constant no matter where I am – I am constantly reminded that I am a Jew. 
Michael

Last edited 3 years ago by Michael L
Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

Michael, welcome to Britain. Like you, all the Jews I have known have simply been part of the British workplace and football team etc, not some separate group. Sometimes I wasn’t aware for a long time that they were even Jewish.

Michael L
Michael L
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Thanks!

Rob Alka
Rob Alka
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

I’m a Jew too …… at the retired end of the age range. My grandfather was born in the Soviet Union. My parents attended synagogue on just the big occasions (eg NY, Day of Atonement and Passover) but this was only to please my grandfather in his fading years. My career was in gentile land and I never wanted to be recognised as a Jew, least of all to enable the observer to impose onto me a predictable Jewish stereotype. For the most part, I get away with it, unless only very occasionally I forget my traits of shrugging too much or talking too much about money (or wearing blue shiny mohair suits – aaaarrrrgggh never on this last one!).
You’ve given a good profile of yourself but you have left the $64,000 question unanswered: why do you think you are “constantly reminded” that you are a jew?
Do you wear a skullcap?
Do you have a prayer shawl sticking out of your trousers?
Do you take off too many Jewish holidays?
Do you keep talking about money?
Do you use a lot of jewish phrases?
Do you tell too many Jewish jokes?
Do you keep shrugging?
Do you live in Golders Green or Stamford Hill or Hendon?
Have you reveal having been to Israel two or more times?
Do you talk too much about your former years in Russia?
Do you mostly buy wholesale?
Is your surname Jewish or could it be minconstrued as such?
Do you have sephardic eyelids or a jewish shaped nose?
Do you read a newspaper from back page to front page?
Do you think Havanagila is a catchy tune to hich you can’t resist dancing?

Michael L
Michael L
3 years ago
Reply to  Rob Alka

What do I mean by being reminded? Well, let me give you an example when I think about the fact that Jeremy Corbyn could have been PM of this country I start to think maybe I shouldn’t grow my children with the knowledge that we are Jews.

Daniel Goldstein
Daniel Goldstein
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

He was never going to be PM. But it was still a mighty relief he got defeated resoundingly.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

Corbyn makes my skin crawl.

Paul N
Paul N
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

I keep hearing these fears about Corbyn – he was apparently supposed to pose a existential threat to Jewish life in the UK (or a Corbyn led government was). But how was that supposed to work? The joint editorial in the three Jewish newspapers which made this claim didn’t really explain. But clearly some people were very worried. So what exactly was this threat? How was Jewish life under threat?

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul N

if you don’t know then you are totally ignorant of Jewish history, and of 19th and 20th century European history and economics.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

You are not Jews unless you follow the religion. Religions are not genetic. We can take them up or drop them as we choose. If the religion is important to you then practice it proudly and let your children choose whether to carry it or toss it.

Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Your just wrong there Anthea, Jewish lineage follows the mother as Giles said. If your mother was Jewish you could be a Catholic Priest and still be Jewish.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul Goodman

Many primitive tribes, past and present were matrilineal, but there is no scientific basis for your claim.
But I do understand that some orthodox Jews do not accept converts as real Jews. Then again they don’t accept atheists either.
Patently, if you can convert to Judaism, and you can, or drop the religion and stop being a Jew, your mother’s religion is irrelevant.
My family had no problem dropping Judaism. It was as easy as dropping all the other religions.

Simon J Hassell
Simon J Hassell
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

Athena, converts are extremely highly regarded in orthodox Judaism. I am afraid you are just wrong in that regard.

Science appears to be your schema. But it’s only one and you cannot cancel someone’s claims or beliefs with a different schema. This is why any debate about the existence of God between atheist and believer is pointless. The scientist believes absence of proof is proof of absence and therein lies the problem.

I have a science degree. And I also have God in my life. I am grateful for both understandings.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

no, orthodox judaism as an entity most definitely accepts converts, it just asks them to go through a more rigorous process of learning and preparation than the reform movement for example.
A person born Jewish who of a Jewish mother who “drops out” remains Jewish, even if they don’t practice, or join another religion as a recent Cardinal of Paris who still asked for the Jewish memorial kaddish to be said at his funeral!
A person born Jewish who wishes to drop out is “best off” marrying a non-Jew and bringing up the children in another religion. Bringing them up without any religion may lead them to search out their ancestry and some find their way back to their Jewish roots that way.

Vilde Chaye
Vilde Chaye
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

stop telling other people what they are. given your historical ignorance, you in particular are in no position to tell anybody much about anything, never mind what ethnicity they identity with.

Sheryl Rhodes
Sheryl Rhodes
3 years ago
Reply to  Rob Alka

I’m not Jewish but boy, does Hava Nagila have a hook or what? We sang a lot of folk tunes when I went to summer camp (Methodist) and one of those songs was Hava Nagila. I can still remember all the words and can’t resist singing along when I hear it.

Dorothy Slater
Dorothy Slater
3 years ago
Reply to  Rob Alka

well i figure you were jesting – but I am Welsh a couple of generations back but I lived in New york city and we all speak Yiddish in NYC – Jews or no – I talk about money all the time because I don’ have any.

– I shop exclusively at Goodwill – which is WAY below wholesale – sometimes I do read the paper back to front depending on what’s on the back page – If I could remember jokes at all, they would be Jewish – there is nothing like a Jewish mother joke if you remember Nichols and May

everyone shrugs these days since no one knows the answers to anything and shrugging is the only thing left to do I don’t wear a skullcap but I do wear a wig due to chemotherapy loss – does that count? I have been to israel twice and also remind people that of course Jesus was a Jew- no gentile would have turned water into wine.

j hoffman
j hoffman
3 years ago
Reply to  Dorothy Slater

Dorothy Slater
Utterly wonderful! I, too, am Jew/Non-Jew.
I have just Decided to be BAME. I fit the Criiteria!
Sorry you have the Burden of Being Welsh.
Perhaps take a look at my post a bit below.

Dorothy Slater
Dorothy Slater
3 years ago
Reply to  j hoffman

My father was from North Wales – not the dreary slate mining South- he used to get utterly disgusted that the only Welsh who anyone ever heard of were Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton both alcoholics. We do keep singing, however, through thick and thin – and shrugging.

datiddeman
datiddeman
3 years ago
Reply to  Dorothy Slater

The slate mining is in North Wales….

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Dorothy Slater

Not my experience of living in New York. Very loud, American English was spoken.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

Thumbs up.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

I’m not Jewish, but the left’s antisemitism fills me with loathing and disgust.

Paul N
Paul N
3 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

I’m an equal-opportunities loather – I also loathe the antisemitism on the right.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul N

Me too, but there seems to be an awful lot more of it on the left.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

If you believe in the Jewish God then you are Jewish even if lapsed. If you do not then toss it. My ancestors did and with no regrets. Then again they all tossed all of the many different religions my ancestors followed which has worked very well.
Why drag a religion around behind you if you don’t follow it?

Michael L
Michael L
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

You either haven’t read what I have written, or you have issues

Ralph Hulbert
Ralph Hulbert
3 years ago
Reply to  Athena Jones

When Hitler was rounding up Jews, he had no interest in whether or not they followed Judaism. It was on the basis of their parentage alone. Surely you must know that?

Robert G
Robert G
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

Thank you for sharing your perspective. Very well written and insightful.

Stephen Colman
Stephen Colman
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

Michael
I am a Jew born and bred in this country. My wife and I both come from financially difficult families and have not experienced any of the so-called Jewish privilege. Like you, everything we have we have worked for and earned ourselves.
Do not worry or be afraid about being Jewish. Be proud. Our communities contribute to society in many ways whilst at the same time retaining their identity.
Since Hitler, the refrain ‘Never again’ is one that we hold dear. Despite the behaviour of the Labour party over the past few years we stood tall regardless of what fear we had.
Never be afraid of being Jewish. Bring your children up to know what they are and where they come from. They will be better for it.

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Stephen Colman

excellent

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

beautiful reply, wish you much success

David George
David George
3 years ago

I like Jews, the most interesting people in the world and not forgetting the outsized contribution in science and art from this tiny slice of humanity.

Simon J Hassell
Simon J Hassell
3 years ago
Reply to  David George

http://www.jinfo.org
By most metrics, the most successful people on the planet, David.
Personally, when I come across successful people, companies, processes, I like to study them to find out how I can emulate.
Sadly, some people seem to just want to persecute rather than learn. I think that says a lot about them, none of it any good.

Daniel Goldstein
Daniel Goldstein
3 years ago

And I’m not sure you could produce a similar list for some other ethnic groups.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  David George

Thumbs up.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  David George

Jews are not a people, but a religion. Jews comprise all so-called races and hundreds of nationalities like many other religions.
All humans are as interesting as each other.
In terms of achievements, the Christians stand out and even the Muslims and Hindus achieved more than followers of Judaism.
But truly, what on earth does it matter? Religion should be private not waved like a flag of exceptionalism.

Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago

Who the FK cares about this?
The big problem with Fraser and Badiel and many others in the media is that they are living in a bubble. In modern Britain, the vast majority of people don’t give a tinker’s cuss whether you are black or white or brown as long as you muck in and behave yourself. The vast majority of the UK population, probably have no idea what the term BAME even means. Most of them happen to be white and working class, a group which virtually nobody in the media cares at all (save perhaps that ‘waycist’ Rod Liddle). Their deprivation and under achievement far exceeds any other group. Their needs are entirely ignored by the media establishment AND THEY ARE BY FAR THE LARGEST GROUP IN THIS COUNTRY – the much despised white working class.
Getting back to the point, Giles Fraser may wring his hands about one or other of the media’s favourite victims and their deprivations. Most people just take folk as they are, ignoring the ridiculous and utterly irrelevant identity politics that so excites the left. Meanwhile, white people form romantic and life long partnerships with those they fall in love with without really noticing their colour. Mixed race relationships here take place at rates unseen anywhere else in the west. If you don’t believe that, just look at the numbers of mixed race children at any primary school.
about

Last edited 3 years ago by Tom Fox
Simon J Hassell
Simon J Hassell
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Fox

So, Tom, the crux of your argument is that nobody should care about this because it doesn’t tally with your subjective experience or how much you perceive ‘racism’, ‘anti-Semitism’ or say, ‘Islamophobia’ as existing in our or wider society?
I assume you are white and (at least nominally) Christian?

D Ward
D Ward
3 years ago

That’s not how I read it at all. Did you miss this bit “the vast majority of people don’t give a tinker’s cuss whether you are black or white or brown as long as you muck in and behave yourself.”?

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  D Ward

Thumbs up.

James Sutton
James Sutton
3 years ago

Simon I think you’re missing Tom’s point being that we all have subjective experiences – white working class, BAME, Jewish etc etc but that we should stop this devisive approach of victimhood and identity politics and start celebrating what we have in common and how lucky we are to live in this thriving democracy. We are pretty lucky multi-cultural bunch here in the UK.

Simon J Hassell
Simon J Hassell
3 years ago
Reply to  James Sutton

Amen to that.

Eloise Burke
Eloise Burke
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Fox

Tom, I am an American trying to figure out what BAME means. Please enlighten.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
3 years ago
Reply to  Eloise Burke

I’m from Australia, and it puzzles me too, but it seems to mean Black, Asian, Middle Eastern in the the UK context.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Maurice Austin

Whatever-it’s another qwerty confusion-welcome to 2021.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Maurice Austin

It’s an acronym, denoting “black & minority ethnic”.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
3 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

Thanks!

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Eloise Burke

Thumbs up.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Eloise Burke

It’s an acronym, denoting “black & minority ethnic”.

Last edited 3 years ago by Drahcir Nevarc
Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  Eloise Burke

Google is your friend…

kevin austin
kevin austin
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Fox

Seriously, I thought it meant BLACK AND MIDDLE EASTERN…Twenty years ago when my nephew in Perth (Australia) was eight and during one of our visits to see family, said: “Uncle Geoff, 98% of my school are White”. Quick as a flash, Geoffrey said: “What are the other 2%?” Innocently, he piped up: “Italian”.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
3 years ago
Reply to  kevin austin

Kev, not entirely sure I am comfortable having my older brother commenting on the same article at the same time as I am 🙂
After all, it’s nearly 1 a.m. here on the Eastern seaboard of Australia.
Or … are you … an IMPOSTER?
If you don’t have a younger brother called Maurice and you are having breakfast in the UK, then greetings anyway!

David Wrathall
David Wrathall
3 years ago
Reply to  kevin austin

Black and minority ethnic was a version I’ve heard. Interesting, if so, that black has its own special sub category

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Reply to  David Wrathall

BAME is an awkward phrase that people on all sides of the argument find clumsy. An interesting alternative I heard suggested the other day was ‘Global majority background’. Just as clumsy but makes a point.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

I usually just say “non-white”, mainly because it winds up the wokescum.

j hoffman
j hoffman
3 years ago
Reply to  David Wrathall

Black And Minority Ethnic.
Yeah, right about ‘Black’ 3% of the pop. And within there is BIG difference. Those from Africa, Ngeria in particular, do very well. Balck people from the Carribean tend to be rappers, footballers and drug dealers.

Adrian Maxwell
Adrian Maxwell
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Fox

This idea of ‘mucking in’ and behaving oneself is far too radical. Sounds like something uncle Monty said when allowing Withnail to use his house.

Alexandra Thrift
Alexandra Thrift
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Fox

Tom Fox , I highly recommend the TV docu-drama about the murder of Stephen Lawrence. At one point Doreen Lawrence states that up until the savage, pointless murder of her blameless son, she had believed in the happy,fairytale world you describe. I recommend that everybody should watch that
production from the beginning to the end , with no distractions.

Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago

I don’t deny at all the horrors of what happened to Doreen Lawrence’s son. It was a foul crime as was the botched (deliberately?) police investigation. If you read what I said you will note my use of the term, ‘most people’ in describing the fact that most people don’t care about your ethnicity, but only whether you behave yourself and muck in with the rest of us. I am TIRED of hearing people whining about what happened to their ancestors hundreds of years ago. Nobody now alive was involved with those historic wrongs and there were historic wrongs inflicted on people of all ethnicities. My white ancestors were starved in the Irish famine and were worked to death in coal mines and mills and factories. Their life expectancy was abominable because of wicked exploitation and neglect. It was a bad old world. None of that applies now.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Fox

I agree with you. The thing to remember with UnHerd is that it is not representative of anything, apart from perhaps intellectualism. Contributors have to be clever or angry or have chips on their shoulders. As you say, most of the people I speak to every day have never heard of: BAME and ‘woke’ and also have never heard of UnHerd.
The article above is important in that ordinary working class people will be forced to follow the trends that people are discussing, even if they don’t understand them. So, if a man murders his black colleague and is found guilty he will get a prison sentence. If he murders the man because he (the victim) is black and it can be proved that he (the murderer) is racist, then it can be labelled A Hate Crime and the sentence can be about 50% longer.

Daniel Goldstein
Daniel Goldstein
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Fox

The British public aren’t all as enlightened as you assume (perhaps from a lofty position). It’s not a value judgment, but we’re all influenced by in-group and our-group perceptions. A black or brown person (maybe even a Jewish one) WOULD stand out in a 99% white town. The idea that people would just get on if they “mucked in” is really naive. It just seems to fit in with your “nothing to see here” narrative.

Tom Fox
Tom Fox
3 years ago

I did not claim that there were no racist morons, only that the vast majority of the public don’t care about your ethnicity, but they do care about your behaviour. There are among us rapists, paedophiles, thieves, murderers and racists. All of these aberrant types are but a tiny minority.
Constantly whining on about how badly done to you are is a pain in the @rse for most of us, whatever your particular gripe with the world.
Non white people absolutely DO get on fine when they just muck in and show themselves to be a good sort. Millions do. Do they ever meet a moron who causes a problem? Of course. I meet the odd moron who is unpleasant to me too and I am white … So do most people occasionally. Moons behave badly because that is who they are.

Alison Houston
Alison Houston
3 years ago

It seems that perhaps you are fighting for your son to have his fair portion of the BAME identity goodies, currently being handed out. It’s interesting how the evolutionary instinct to fight for what ever privileges are available for your offspring wins out and you don’t attempt to pretend otherwise, no Christian view point offered here. Even when the privilege is the privilege of saying he’s not naturally privileged like other children he superficially resembles, so give him some artificial privileges. Or, people will exclude him because they falsely believe he is naturally privileged, when he isn’t so give him some artificial privileges.

Time to start thinking like a Christian again, put aside evolutionary instinct because you know where that leads and stop giving voice to your inner lefty.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

I agree – sad really – let the kid decide when he/she is old enough. IMO Its better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven…

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

WTF! Unherd changed the middle two letters of english for “el infierno” to **. Poitical correctness gone mad, I am near fluent in Spanish, OK in French, Italian and Portugese and can get by in German. So you’d better get a bit less racist when hiring censors! Hope this stays up long enogh fo the readers to get the irony of WTF

David Otness
David Otness
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

I got that too.JFC & LOL. H.E.L.L., I say & it’s H.E.L.L I said!
The woke is here too apparently.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

Thumbs up.

rosie mackenzie
rosie mackenzie
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

Very true.
It is also the case that the Israelites were fair skinned. It says so in the Bible.
That is how Pharaoh’s daughter knew the baby Moses was not Egyptian.

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago

Oh well. Must be true.

Mark Bailey
Mark Bailey
3 years ago

Much to like in this article, but pathetically, I know, I couldn’t get past the irritation caused by the author’s use of that sneering acronym, ‘BCE’. Why not use BC ? They both refer to the same event, but BCE tries desperately to remove its overt religious content. Man-up, vicar!

Simon J Hassell
Simon J Hassell
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Bailey

What an ethnocentric perspective. Do you know how many different calendars the world’s people use? Or do you feel that everyone should use the birth of Yehoshua Ben Yosef (Jesus) as an anchor in time?

Mark Bailey
Mark Bailey
3 years ago

Because ‘BCE’ is still based on “..the birth of Yehoshua Ben Yosef (Jesus) as an anchor in time.” It just tries to deny that fact. Use any calendar you wish, but don’t euphemise it.

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Bailey

It’s not euphemising it. It’s saying it’s based on a construct that’s become dominant in the ‘Christian Era’. If he was born we don’t know when. If Pol Pot had successfully taken over the world no doubt we’d be using a different year zero.

Eamonn Toland
Eamonn Toland
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

Common Era, not Christian Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era

Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Bailey

no, they don’t, and you may not realize it but your comment is offensive, ask a knowledgeable Jew if you don’t understand why.

Mark Bailey
Mark Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  Joseph Berger

“…ask a knowledgeable Jew…”
Well, I could ask my, Jewish, wife.
You miss the point: ‘BCE’ is based on the dates of the Christian God just as much as BC, but it merely pretends not to.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  Joseph Berger

Could you explain why it is offensive? (I am a messianic Jew)

Adrian Maxwell
Adrian Maxwell
3 years ago
Reply to  Joseph Berger

Why not outline the supposed offence yourself? It would save time.

Charles Knapp
Charles Knapp
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Bailey

Assuming you can access this link, the interesting history of BC/BCE and AD/CE is set out and it has quite the lineage.

https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/history-ideas/2017/12/why-the-terms-ce-and-bce-replaced-ad-and-bc-and-why-jews-care-about-it/

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles Knapp

Thanks for the link. Interesting.

Charles Rense
Charles Rense
3 years ago

Way back in medieval times Jewish people were shut out of most trades and professions. They weren’t seen as deserving of honest work. And they certainly didn’t deserve the honor of fighting and dying in wars.

So they took what work they could get or make. Work like being merchants. Christianity took a dim view of the mercantile trade, through their interpretation of Jesus’s disdain for money changers. Yet these services were nevertheless necessary. So Jewish people filled those roles in society because good, honorable Christians were too good for it.

Then ships became better. Then whole new parts of the world were discovered. Then trade boomed. Then the Renaissance began. Suddenly this upstart heathen people the Christians were trying sooo hard to oppress started becoming rich. Not just rich in spite of their oppression, but rich because of it! The unmitigated gall of them!

This is where the stereotypes originated. And I for one find the irony delicious.

Of course the subsequent inquisitions give it a bad aftertaste.

Last edited 3 years ago by Charles Rense
Stefan Hill
Stefan Hill
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles Rense

There was no conspiracy aiming to keep Jews out of decent jobs. There were guilds. A guild was aiming to increase the status of a profession. Thus the guilds barred low status people, as Jews and bastards, from joining. Jews were therefore forced to take jobs not controlled by guilds. Sanitary work, grave diggers, musicians and bankers were most likely Jewish in an medieval town. Indeed low status jobs but there was no conspiracy who put them there

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
3 years ago
Reply to  Stefan Hill

Questionable to the point of garbage. There were laws, LAWS, preventing them from joining guilds or owning land or indeed wearing certain clothes. There was the blood libel. They were expelled from various countries, (including England), and forced to move elsewhere, leading to the classic accusation of the rootless “wandering Jew”. Charles’s second para is spot on, as they were allowed to lend money at interest, and good Christians were not – so they became wealthy … rich and despised. And they suffered for it.
Yes the guilds were powerful, but leaving the church and the kings out of the equation is either turning a blind eye or wilfully blind – and I am both a Catholic and a monarchist. Pretend it was “no conspiracy” if you like, but when a whole continent’s society is structured to force a group into a small number of jobs, and then punish them for being apart, then it sure looks like a conspiracy to me.

Last edited 3 years ago by Maurice Austin
Joseph Berger
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
Reply to  Maurice Austin

in many so-called highly civilized and cultured western societies, Jews were kept out of professions, In Canada till fairly recently a Jewish graduate could not obtain an internship in medicine to become fully licensed. Jewish hospitals were set up NOT to treat only Jewish patients or offer kosher food, but to give work to Jewish doctors who were being excluded elsewhere. Most European countries – and Britain when I applied to medical school – had what was called a “numerous clausus” which essentially meant ‘we shall only take a limited number of Jewish applicants’, and in London Jews of my age knew which schools not to apply to because then those admitted no Jews. Fortunately that has changed.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
3 years ago
Reply to  Joseph Berger

Sad, but spot on.

Alexandra Thrift
Alexandra Thrift
3 years ago
Reply to  Joseph Berger

I have a letter my mother’s Headmistress wrote in 1930 as a recommendation for a job at the Post Office when she left her school in Hackney, East London. Her Headmistress states ” Although she is Jewish , she is British born and will make an excellent Civil Servant “. My mother’s father ( Barnett Friedberg) was so angry about the mention of her Jewishness that he wouldn’t
allow her to go for the interview. The Headmistress was , apparently, aware of the prejudice in the Civil Service and was trying to help her.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Maurice Austin

Thumbs up.

Michael L
Michael L
3 years ago
Reply to  Stefan Hill

You are either ignorant, or you are just lying on purpose. Either case isn’t good.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

How about both..?

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael L

Thumbs up.

Simon J Hassell
Simon J Hassell
3 years ago
Reply to  Stefan Hill

Oh dear. I suggest you do a bit more research, Stefan. This has happened throughout time. Hungary passed laws in the 1930s placing limits on the number of Jews who could practice medicine, law or even go to University. This was before they decided to just capitulate to the Nazis and allowed them all to be shipped off to be murdered.
A primer: History of the Jews in Hungary – Wikipedia

David Bottomley
David Bottomley
3 years ago
Reply to  Stefan Hill

No conspiracy but Guilds barred low status people! Hmm, sound very much like a conspiracy or to be more accurate , a blatant stitch up . Who decided that Jewish people were low status and what on Earth are you doing putting’ Jewish, bastards and low status ‘into one category! Shame on you

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Reply to  Stefan Hill

So there was “no conspiracy” but there were guilds that purposely shut Jews out of certain lines of work.
Did the guilds form themselves and were jews randomly selected for exclusion?

Judy Posner
Judy Posner
3 years ago
Reply to  Stefan Hill

What a bizarre, uninformed and racist statement. Without getting into a linguistic discussion of the meaning of conspiracy how about substituting a “collective consensus.” One thing we know for sure is that anti-semitism is not a collection of random acts of discrimination.

Jonathan Ellman
Jonathan Ellman
3 years ago

The ‘left’ values ethnic minorities insofar as they can use them. This is because the ‘left’ is no longer supported by the working classes (see the collapse of the Red Wall). The left calculates that Jews cannot be used and therefore don’t count.
To watch over the next few years is the ‘ethnic drift’ in both UK and US politics. Asian origin British voters have begun to drift towards the Conservatives and away from Labour; Hispanic voters have begun to drift away from the Dems towards the Reps and even the black vote for Trump doubled between 2016 – 2020 (from very very little to very little but still, doubling is doubling). It was white working class voters, formerly deplorables, who won it for Biden. The Dems want to allow more immigrants in as they believe they’ll win their votes. This is the demographic play to watch between now and 2024. Although I think it will make itself felt very heavily indeed in the mid-terms.
The rest of the topic largely concerns identity.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

Labour in UK tried the same stunt as Dem Rats – works where the Bridari guy is labour, but most Blair/Brown/Labour migrants are Moslem, from east of the Nile, and they value hard work, honesty and family above other things, albeit through their cultural perspective. These values are the polar opposite of Lab/Dems.

Steve Sailer
Steve Sailer
3 years ago

Britain had an ethnically Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, as far back as 1868.

In the U.S., today, where only 2% of the population are Jewish, 35% of the first 100 names on the Forbes 100 richest Americans were at least half Jewish in 2019. If the concept of “white privilege” is valid, then the same reasons would suggest that the concept of “Jewish privilege” is even more valid.

David Bottomley
David Bottomley
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Sailer

There is privilege but the idea of white privileged is a bit of nonsense except in particular contexts. Many ‘white people’ are very definitely not privileged.
your conflation of money and privilege is interesting and implies that any race or ethnic group that earns good money in spite of severe discrimination and racial discrimination is actually ‘privileged’. And, conversely your line of argument also says that all those who don’t have money but are white are also not privileged

Claire D
Claire D
3 years ago
Reply to  Steve Sailer

Maybe the word “privilege” is invalid.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago

A slight aside, but don’t overvalue the PHDs, They confer little advantage outside the narrow field they dive into, and often give their owners a false sense of intellectual superiority over those who did not pursue them.

nick harman
nick harman
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

and I suspect you didn’t?

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Reply to  nick harman

Of course you do …

nick harman
nick harman
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Your comment did have the aroma of chips.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Reply to  nick harman

Rest assured my shoulders are “chip free” .
I come from an extended family of post-graduate folks, many of whom opine too confidently on topics they know very little about.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  nick harman

-and yours is fishy…

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  nick harman

I’ve got one and I agree with Ian.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Thumbs up.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Sometimes described as getting to know more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing!

David Bottomley
David Bottomley
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

A false sense of intellectual superiority? A) what does that mean in practice ? and B) I really doubt that many PhD holders have much sense of any sort of ‘superiority’ . In these days of materialism, superiority tends to come with having ‘loads of money’. A PhD is definitely not a route to riches.

Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Yep. Check out Aron Bastani (although his is a dodgy PHD) or Prof. David Miller. A PhD on media bias for Israel. Its all down to Blair: If you were teaching tiddledywinks to underachievers at Redcar poly you suddenly became a professor.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Thumbs up.

Anindita Doig
Anindita Doig
3 years ago

No one is “BAME”, a lazy, meaningless, offensive portmanteau term.
It is only useful for lazy people when when want to lump a whole load of “other” people together, either to be able to address the “problem” comprehensively, such as liberals trying to a fix the mostly non-existent problem of structural racism in the UK. Or it’s used by activists wanting to claim greater numbers for their cause than really exist.
The idea that Jewish people are the only people left out of “BAME” is not true. I am not BAME. I am a British Indian. No BLM activist speaks for me, and no white liberal worrying about “BAME” people can address my concerns.
Race is not like sex, where there are only two categories (yes, I know exactly what I am saying) so simplification does not render the discussion meaningless. Chinese / Jewish / Indian / Black African / Middle Eastern etc all have different experiences of not being White British. Maybe Irish people, Spanish people, Norwegians etc feel the same. I think we are all rather lucky living in the UK in the 21st century.

Fabian Destouches
Fabian Destouches
3 years ago

White privilege is a myth.

Sean L
Sean L
3 years ago

But minority status for ethnic Britons is mathematically guaranteed, by fertility rates alone, even without further influx, within our lifetimes if under fifty. Why are Europeans alone to be denied right to their own homeland which “the left”, ie big business/officialdom/academia promote for non-Europeans as “self-determination”?

rosie mackenzie
rosie mackenzie
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean L

I think this is because the Baby Boomers decided to have mass immigration and can’t imagine themselves in a minority. When they die, their grandchildren will be.

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago

Hang on, it’s the baby boomers children having all the mixed race kids that will create the mixed race majority you talk about. The boomers offspring will be the majority.

Paul Wright
Paul Wright
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean L

Big business = “the left”? Really don’t think so.
AF Neil was on Twitter recently crowing about how many years out of the last 60 were under Conservative governments. If you’re unhappy with the state of Britain in 2021 (as we ‘labour’ under a whopping 80-seat Con majority), I think it’s clear to which party you should direct your fire.

Sidney Falco
Sidney Falco
3 years ago

What a fatuous article.
“Whiteness” is rapidly becoming reserved for people who have no card to play or no card they wish to play when they are either seeking some advantage for themselves or trying to excuse their behaviour.
The “actually, I’m not really white, I’m fill-in-the-blank so how dare you, etc…” has become a powerful weapon of deflection for anyone who wants to use it.
I wonder if Nigel Lawson considers himself to be “BAME”.?

Last edited 3 years ago by Sidney Falco
nick harman
nick harman
3 years ago
Reply to  Sidney Falco

I wonder if Nigella Lawson does! She’s arguably the whitest person in England.

Simon J Hassell
Simon J Hassell
3 years ago
Reply to  Sidney Falco

Who knew that one had to “have a card to play”. That seems quite a fatuous idea, Sidney.
How about “actually, I am white but come from a tiny tiny minority that has been deeply persecuted for millennia?” – does that work better for you?