I totally get our desire to be recognized as an oppressed minority. Jews make up 2.4 percent of the U.S. population and 10 percent of all hate crimes. Compared to any other ethnic group, we suffer from more unwanted parental career advice.
So it makes sense that the California Senate and Assembly unanimously passed a bill requiring all colleges to teach antisemitism as part of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training. But this is exactly the opposite of what we need. We don’t need more DEI. Because DEI caused campus antisemitism.
Though it’s not fair to only blame wokeism for antisemitism. As the saying goes, if people hate you for 1,000 years, you can blame them; if you're persecuted for 2,000 years, maybe you're unlucky; but if they still want to kill you after 3,000 years, you have to ask yourself if you're doing something wrong. I have long advocated dropping our Chosen People™ marketing campaign. Not only is it failing to intimidate others from bullying us by implying God is our tough dad who is going to show up at your house, but it comes off as arrogant. I suggest we change our official slogan to Just One of the Guys™ or the People Who Believe in Most of Your Bible™ or even the People Who, If History Is a Guide, Are Not Actually Among God's Favorites.™
Also, we need to stop killing other people's messiahs. Yes, it was actually the Romans who killed Jesus, but we were in the general area at the time. Though even if it had been us, you'd think the Catholics would thank us, since otherwise they'd have churches today full of statues of a bald old guy clutching his heart in hospice care, and who’s showing up every Sunday for that?
But wokeism is the main cause for the spike in campus antisemitism. That’s because, unlike most minorities who are diminished by a racism that labels them inferior, Jews are hated for doing too well. We’re stereotyped as the elite: Sneaky, greedy, wimps who twist language in a lawyerly way to get what we desire. Which seems to be to cure diseases, advance physics, build technology, and provide our entertainment. We’re reviled as super-oppressors, the business owners who – according to replacement theory – profit from replacing the pure-blooded citizens with cheap foreign labor. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion says that the Jews’ goal (I'm using the Iranian translation here) is "extracting from the hands of the Lord many stars and galaxies." Not just one star or one galaxy. But many stars and galaxies. That’s so megalomaniacal that Elon Musk isn’t even planning it. Let me reassure you by telling you that most Jews cannot even name many galaxies. We’re tapped out after Milky Way and Andromeda, which are the two we control.
To deal with the problems on campus last year, Stanford created a subcommittee on antisemitism. It issued a report that recommended – despite the pressure of Jewish groups – not to include Jews in its officially oppressed groups. Instead, it suggested abolishing the DEI program.
We believe that this identity-driven approach to belonging and inclusion is anathema to the University’s educational mission, and that it ultimately works to the detriment of the very groups it seeks to aid. Among other things, these DEI programs tend to propagate oversimplified histories and promulgate ideologies about social justice without subjecting them to the critical inquiry that is a core aspect of a university education.
Two of the professors on the subcommittee wrote about it in The New York Times:
University-based D.E.I. programs tend to come in two basic forms: online or off-the-shelf trainings that are more suitable for airline safety briefings than exploring the complexities of interracial relations, and ideological workshops that inculcate theories of social justice as if there were no plausible alternatives.
The thing about being Jewish that I’m most grateful for, besides all the money, is that we question everybody and everything. We don’t just get second opinions from doctors, we give second opinions to doctors. Nothing in my upbringing makes me want to “educate” someone. I want to argue with them.
If Jews can add anything to this awful conversation – and you really can’t stop us from adding to a conversation – it’s that our existence proves the idiocy of dividing the world into oppressor and oppressed. Because Jews are both. As is every identity group. You’re both the person of color who feels uncomfortable on campus and the college-educated American with more power than 99 percent of the globe. It’s a world of power bottoms and service tops. And if colleges can’t explore that complexity, Jews are going to have to find somewhere else to do our arguing.
The guy above me here and so far the three people beneath me, don't know what they're talking about. Let me tell you ...
"We don’t just get second opinions from doctors, we give second opinions to doctor." So happy to know I'm not the only one who does this.