Philip Carl Salzman
In our current “woke” culture, predominant in schools and universities, and on the coasts and in the largest cities, the world is seen as bifurcated, occupied on the one hand by privileged classes, races, and genders, and on the other oppressed classes, races, and genders, all victims of the privileged.
Throughout much of modern history, Jews were regarded as a race unto themselves, distinct from “Caucasians.” However, from any scientific point of view, the division of people into white, black, brown, yellow, and red “races” is nonsense, bunk. Science supports no such watertight categories, and the great diversities of peoples—genetic, physical, historical, and cultural—refute an attempt at simplistic racial distinction or classification.
It is ironic that, now that being “white” is in “woke” culture a sign of being an oppressor, a sexist, and a racist, Jews have been welcomed, nay, forced into the category of “white.” Having suffered from prejudice and discrimination as a designated separate and inferior race, Jews have now been frog-marched into the “oppressor” category. Now Jews must apologize for their evil deeds in oppressing “people of colour,” especially females of colour, and even more lesbians of colour, who now symbolize all that is good and pure.
Let consider Jewish “privilege”: The most profound example of Jewish “racial privilege” was being chosen for genocide by European Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semites, with a count of six million Jews machine-gunned, burned alive, or gassed to death. The Holocaust was the culmination of millennia of European anti-Jewish vilification, prejudice, discrimination, and violence on grounds of religion and latterly of racial inferiority. Muslims continue to hate Jews for their religion, and for their violation of inferior dhimma status, but Muslims were equal opportunity slavers, enslaving whites from Europe and blacks from Africa.
Jews that come to America enjoyed the American privilege of not suffering official inferior status or being subject to official pogroms or ethnic cleansing. But there was non-governmental prejudice and discrimination against Jews. I remember seeing signs at commercial enterprises that said, “restricted to Christians,” and remember lying to young thugs who were searching for Jews at Easter. In Quebec, when I first went to live there in 1968, Catholic sermons were still identifying Jews as murderers of Jesus, and Franco Quebecers were often unthinkingly antisemitic. Elsewhere in Quebec, but before my time there, McGill University had a low quota for Jews, limiting their numbers for not being Christians. This was true at the time in the Ivy League universities as well.
Now that Jews have been granted the “privilege” of being “white,” they have the corresponding privilege of being excluded on the grounds of “overrepresentation,” so as to make room for under-performing minorities who otherwise would be “underrepresented.” Like East Asians, today’s Jews are privileged to be excluded for their capability and achievement, to be replaced by those who have failed to compete academically or on the job market. Today, merit is regarded as an idea advanced by “white supremacists.”
Once again, people have found a way to make Jews villains. Israeli Jews are designated “white” by “woke” leftists, in spite of the actual racial rainbow of Israelis, and the Palestinians are designated “people of colour,” in spite of their long history of slaving in Africa and their designation of blacks as “slave.” Thanks to the magic of “intersectionism,” Black Lives Matter organization and feminist organizations side with the Palestinians on the grounds the Israelis are “white” and Palestinians are “people of colour,” a lie which is in keeping with their many other lies.
Let me be clear: claiming that Jews enjoy “white privilege” is not only reverse racism, which evaluates and treats people according to their “race,” it is the latest in a long line of antisemitic attacks. Liberal and leftist Jews should see through it.
