The
Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity
by Eric L.
Goldstein, 2006.
Numerous books have been published lately linking white
supremacy with the eugenics' movement leading to the “Holocaust”, along with
other horrible things. This is the first book that chronicles how Jews have
over the last few hundred years considered themselves primarily a race, and how
they have and still do consider themselves the superior race.
Reviewed by
Matt Nuenke, July 2006
http://neoeugenics.home.comcast.net/
This new
book by Goldstein shows a pattern put forth by Kevin MacDonald in his trilogy
on Jews with regards to how Jews look at themselves and how they present
themselves to others. (MacDonald 2002a,1998a) It also reflects on the current
debate with regards to the meaning of race, differences in intelligence between
races, difference in personality traits between races, and how deception played
an integral part on the part of Jews in order to fit in and remain free of
prejudice.
Essentially, Jews always considered themselves to be a race more than a
religion or ethnic group, up until after the Second World War. For various
reasons, after that, race was played down. In fact, many Jews have been at the
current forefront of denying that race has any meaning, while other Jews go
about using genetics to define the Jewish race and also to fight genetic
diseases that afflict Jews.
Goldstein states: "Far from playing the role of undifferentiated whites,
Jews held an uncertain relationship to whiteness from the late nineteenth
century until the end of World War II, a period when both Jews and non-Jews
spoke of the 'Jewish race' and of 'Hebrew blood.' Although these racialized
understandings of Jewishness have long been discredited among scientists and
laypeople, they were very real to those who employed them during these
years."
This is most assuredly mistaken, as some people try to deny the reality of
race, while others recognize it for what it certainly is—differences in allele
frequencies in different groups (races) that alter the average expression of
genetic diseases, personality traits, intelligence, physical appearance, etc.
In a paper written by the Jewish golden
boy psychologist and scientific researcher from Harvard, Steven Pinker, in The
New Republic Online entitled "The Lessons of the Ashkenazim," he
discusses the fact that Ashkenazim Jews have an average IQ 108 to 115, the
highest average IQ of any known race. He also states that there are no
environmental factors that could account for this high IQ, and it must be
genetic. (Article available at http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/tbs.htm)
Pinker states: "They mention
historical accounts attesting that intermarriage was indeed rare, and genetic
evidence pointing to an admixture of about 0.5 to 1 percent of neighboring
genes per generation. Note that over many centuries this is enough to make
Ashkenazim genetically similar to their European neighbors, so the notion of a distinct
'Jewish race' is indeed nonsense. But the two populations are not identical:
the genetic overlap due to interbreeding is around one-third to one-half,
depending on which genes you look at."
The "distinct" race is the recurring straw man that race
deniers use to claim races don't exist, and yet no one claims there is such a
thing as a distinct race anymore than there are distinct breeds of dogs. And,
there is no specific number of races; one can slice human groups into two
races, three races or ten thousand races—it is all a matter of what one wants
to do with these different groupings. They can be used for research, to set
immigration policy, etc.
Does the intermarriage rate likewise make two neighboring races more similar?
Not necessarily. Wolpoff and Caspari, in their book Race and Human Evolution describe how slow influxes of new genes
into a race merely provides new genes to work with, but selection can continue
keeping a race relatively stable. Kevin MacDonald looks at Jewish history and
describes numerous practices that kept the Jewish race stable in terms of
intelligence and personality types. (MacDonald 2002a) One of these Pinker
disparages: "Jews have long had an ambivalent attitude toward their own
intelligence, and toward their reputation for intelligence. There is an ethnic
pride at the prevalence of Jews in occupations that reward brainpower…. Many
Jews subscribe to a folk theory that attributes Jewish intelligence to what
would have to be the weirdest example of sexual selection in the living world:
that for generations in the shtetl, the brightest yeshiva boy was betrothed to
the daughter of the richest man, thereby favoring the genes, if such genes
there are, for Talmudic [studies]."
He makes two errors here; first it is not "folk theory" but is
documented by Jews in their long written history. It may not occur in any
degree today, but in the past these marital arrangements took place. One
indicator that this did take place is that though the average IQ of Jews is
very high, it is slanted towards verbal skills. No other race has this large
differential between practical intelligence and verbal intelligence. MacDonald
has pointed out that much of Talmudic and other studies were meant as IQ tests,
because the reading, memorization, and skill in debating had little to do with
religion, but seemed to be merely tests of reasoning and debating skills. But
this was only one method for selecting for high Jewish IQs. Others were simple
communal practices, such as not tolerating or helping Jews with lower intelligence,
and encouraging them to leave the community. Many of these eugenic devices of
course changed over time and from place to place. And among some Jewish
communities such as in
Back to The Price of Whiteness. Goldstein states, "Despite
the diverse nature of the American population and the presence of many groups
that were considered distinct in a racial sense—Native Americans, Asians,
Latinos and various European groups as well as African Americans—whites
consistently tried to understand the racial landscape through the categories of
'black' and 'white.' Thus, even as American racial commentators frequently
spoke of Mongolians and Mexicans, Celts and Teutons, Alpines and
Mediterraneans, they often struggled to suppress this unnerving complexity by
marking some of these groups as good candidates for assimilation into white
America and confirming others as racial outsiders by comparing them to and
lumping them with African Americans."
It is interesting that today, Whites are pitted against "people of
color" in order to group all oppressed people under that label, even
though East Asians are hardly oppressed even in the United States where they
are wealthier than Whites, many Mexicans are European, and Semites are
classified as being White. Government racial classifications are now used
purely for political reasons. Geneticists use genes frequencies to determine
different lineages, not arbitrary divisions to satisfy political goals.
Goldstein explains that Jewish immigration from
Goldstein states, "Second, an equally wrenching dilemma for Jews was the
struggle they faced over their own racial self-definition. Having long been
confined to the social margins of the Central and Eastern European societies in
which they lived, Jews from those regions had come to see 'apartness' as one of
the most salient aspects of Jewish identity. As a result, in the American
context they often defined themselves as a distinct 'race,' a description that
captured their strong emotional connection to Jewish peoplehood. As Jews came
under increasing scrutiny in American racial discourse, however, they were
often torn between their commitment to Jewish racial identity and their desire
to be seen as stable members of white society. Jews often tried to obscure,
downplay, or tailor their racial self-understanding to conform to the needs of
the larger culture, but ultimately it continued to make its claim on them as
they fashioned themselves as white Americans. Thus, in multiple ways, claiming
the status of 'whites' in
Goldstein explains how immigrants, one group after another, entered the
Goldstein explains the common view of race: "In 1887, Solomon Schindler,
rabbi of
Jews were understood to be a race in Western societies, by both Jews and
gentiles, as early as the fifteenth century. During the American Revolution,
they often chose to classify themselves as a nation, as many other groups
defined themselves, but this then became a problem of accusations of dual
loyalty. At that time, the Jews started to define themselves in religious
terms. Later, in the 1870s, when concern for group cohesion became an issue,
they started using race to define themselves again.
Goldstein: "Under the pressure of the shifting social boundaries of the
1870s, the language of race became an attractive vehicle for self-expression
among American Jews and was used liberally in the weekly Jewish press, in
popular novels and magazines, and in the pronouncements of Jewish leaders. The
great appeal of racial language was its unique ability to capture the strong
attachment of Jews to Jewish peoplehood, a feeling heightened during a time
when many of the familiar markers of Jewishness were receding. Because Jews
could no longer count on clear social boundaries to set them off from non-Jews,
they looked to race as a transcendent means of understanding and expressing the
ties that held them together as a group. In short, racial language helped them
express their ongoing attachment to the social dimension of Jewishness even as
the social distinctiveness of Jews began to weaken."
Race also allowed the Jews to maintain their status as an oppressed people.
They viewed the Aryans as conquerors and the Jews as peacemakers. For thousands
of years, this persecution complex is both dominant in their religious
celebrations and their view and fear of the other—extreme xenophobia. A recent
article about the Semitic tribes in
Goldstein notes, "In 1895, Max J.
Kohler, one of the founders of the American Jewish Historical Society, wrote
that the new communal interest in American Jewish history was due primarily to
'race pride,' which he defined as 'gratification over the deeds of members of
our race, present or past, purely because of our common ties of race.'
Kohler's statement exemplifies how American Jews could at once celebrate Jewish
contributions to the American way of life and attribute these contributions to
a distinct Jewish racial identity. It was this reasoning that led Jewish
newspapers to relentlessly hail the achievements of Jewish musicians, athletes,
inventors, and philanthropists. Jews employed this logic even when lauding
prominent Jews in other countries. In fact, the more enmeshed in a particular
national culture Jewish figures were, the more American Jews seemed to take
pride in their 'racial' accomplishments. Benjamin Disraeli, despite his
(Christian) baptism, became a favorite hero of American Jews, who saw in him an
exemplar of Jewish racial traits. Emma Lazarus, in an essay in the Century magazine,
described the British prime minister as a 'brilliant Semite' who exhibited the
'patient humility' and 'calculating self-control' that had allowed the Jewish
race to survive the centuries despite persecution."
If Whites did the same today, we would be accused of White Supremacy, and yet
even today the Jews claim to be the superior race. And this racial superiority
was not to be diluted, similar to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws. "In 1884,
when leading Reform rabbis converted several women to Judaism in order for them
to be married to Jews, the American Hebrew commenced a campaign against
the 'conversion farce,' using race as its chief weapon. Converts, held the paper, could not be made into authentic Jews since
'to be a Jew means to be of the stock of Abraham—to be of the Hebrew race.'
In this case, fear of intermarriage led the paper to modify the traditional
Jewish view, which allows conversion to Judaism, in favor of a racial argument
that built a more effective barrier around Jewish identity."
This supremacy of the Jewish race takes several forms and has changed over
time. Goldstein notes, "Einhorn believed strongly that Jews had a mission
to spread ethical monotheism, a task that required their dispersion among the
nations. But he also held firmly to the view that Jewish racial purity had to
be preserved in order for Jews to effectively carry out this mission. Thus, he
was able to express the Jewish attachment to peoplehood by reducing it to an
innate capacity for morality and religious service. 'Israel has disappeared as
a nation,' he wrote in 1870, but 'as a race with certain qualities of soul and
mind which form the life-giving condition and root of its own peculiar
historical mission, it has remained and will remain as such until the time when
this mission shall have been fulfilled.' For this reason he considered
intermarriage 'a nail in the coffin of the small Jewish race, with its lofty
mission.' Einhorn's views were echoed by his son-in-law and disciple, Kaufmann
Kohler, who argued in 1878 against the admission of male proselytes to Judaism
who had not undergone the rite of circumcision. Since
Kohler argued for Jewishness to be defined by religion, but later changed his
mind in favor of a racial definition. Much of Goldstein's book deals with these
shifting definitions of what it means to be a Jew, and much of it was discussed
only internally among other Jews. To others, they would often define themselves
differently. By the 1890s, most rabbis had a strong "attachment to a
racial notion of Jewishness."
During this period, many scholars have tried to claim that the eugenics'
movement was driven by White supremacy, xenophobia, or a desire to oppress
lesser races. However, much of the eugenics' movement was driven by situational
concerns brought about by massive immigration that caused major disruptions in
social norms. "As the new century approached, Americans increasingly felt
the impact of massive social transformations related to industrialization, urbanization,
and immigration. These changes unnerved many members of the dominant white
society, who sometimes worried about their ability to meet the daunting
challenges they presented. While generally white Americans were able to
overcome such fears and preserve a sense of optimism in the face of change,
they often began to search for ways to boost their confidence and infuse their
society with a sense of order and stability." An unbiased reading of the
eugenics' movement leads to a far more benevolent concern for people. One could
always find some sinister types to point at as White supremacists, but most
people were just concerned about the increasing slums, overcrowding, disease,
prostitution, drunkenness, etc.—the same concerns we have today, but it was far
worse then.
In the argument over intelligence testing and the 1924 immigration act, it has
been asserted that Eastern Europeans, including Jews, were seen as having low
intelligence. However, even those giving the tests had doubts that this was the
case, and that these early tests must have been flawed. Goldstein clarifies
this distortion: "Among the many immigrants from Southern and Eastern
European who arrived on American shores between 1880 and 1924, Jews were the
group most identified with the ways of the modern world. Unlike most non-Jewish immigrants, Jews had not been farmers or
peasants in
Just like the immigration debate today, too many immigrants tend to disrupt
diverse aspects of society from hospitals going under because of the cost of
caring for the uninsured, to wages falling for traditional blue collar labor,
to a new sector for immigrant advocates such as low-wage service sector unions,
to lawyers, and even churches to increase membership, society divides along who
is gaining and who is losing from massive immigration. A century ago, similar
rapid social and economic changes caused society to try and find solutions. And
again today, eugenics plays into the immigration debate, though it is hidden
under the types of entry granted—guest workers to pick crops or skilled
immigrants to fill white-collar positions.
Goldstein notes: "By turning the issue to one of religious liberty, Wolf
ignored the true reason for the bureau's classification while claiming that his
request was 'in accordance with the spirit and genius of our American
institutions.' When the officials replied that they classified all immigrants
according to race, and that they were interested in Jews as a racial rather
than a religious group, Wolf set out to gather written opinions on the question
of Jewish racial identity from leading Jews that might be used in convincing
the Bureau of Immigration to reconsider. Much to Wolf's dismay, however, many
of the leaders failed to support his position, holding that the bureau was
correct in counting the Jews as a distinct race. In addition, Philip Cowen, the
editor of the American Hebrew and one of those who had been involved in
the initial discussions of immigration policy with Powderly, fired off an
editorial arguing that racial classification ought to be retained as a matter
of pride, since the statistics reflected well on Jews and demonstrated the
superiority of Jewish immigrants to their Polish and Slavic counterparts.
Apparently unable to gain a consensus among Jewish leaders or to create a sense
of urgency concerning racial classification, Wolf remained quiet on the issue
for several years."
Many scholars today conveniently forget that attitudes of Jewish supremacy over
other Whites is as prevalent as Whites feeling superior to Blacks. Most
scholars are loath to use the word superior today because what criteria would
be used? If it was athleticism, Blacks would be superior—with intelligence—well
many deny it is different between races (though some Jews like Pinker seem to
be breaking this taboo once again and claiming Jewish superiority).
Though the Jews were considered White, they developed a more ambivalent
attitude towards Blacks. Seeing themselves as being oppressed in
During the progressive era, acculturated Jews wanted to be classified as White,
but were hesitant to give up their distinctive racial classification. "As
a result, the question of whether Jews ought to fashion themselves as a race or
merely a religious denomination became one of the most hotly debated issues of
early-twentieth-century Jewish communal discourse. The climate of tension
surrounding the issue of Jewish racial self-definition in the early twentieth
century stood in sharp contrast to the ease with which Jews had been able to
define themselves as a race in previous decades. Before their whiteness became
suspect, Jews often found in race a comforting means of self-understanding, one
that provided a sense of security as they continued toward their goal of
greater social integration. Now, with their place in
This was the beginning of the slow transition, where Jews saw dangers in being
seen as a different race from Whites. They wanted to be included in the
"great Caucasian" race, but they feared that it would lead to calls
by Whites for them to fully assimilate—losing their Jewish particularism. Jews began the slow process of obfuscation
where they would redefine themselves in several different ways depending upon
the perceived threats.
Goldstein explains, "While rabbis often had trouble disentangling notions
of Jewish chosenness and ethical mission from Jewish race and peoplehood, these
leaders knew the urgency of denying Jewish racial difference. The prominent
attorneys Simon Wolf and Louis Marshall, the banker and philanthropist Jacob H.
Schiff and the scholar Cyrus Adler were among those who believed that Jews
ought never to articulate an identity that conflicted with the demands of
American national culture, regardless of
how they privately understood themselves. While in Jewish publications a
leader such as Wolf sometimes continued to refer to the Jews as a race — to the
non-Jewish world he carefully termed them 'American citizens of Jewish faith.'
Adler, who later collected and published the papers of his colleague Schiff,
stated that the philanthropist frequently declared himself a 'faith-Jew' rather
than a 'race-Jew,' a distinction to which Adler himself also subscribed. When
Louis Marshall was questioned on the matter, he responded that he entirely
concurred with Schiff, who regarded Judaism as 'a faith, and not as a race.'
According to Marshall, there were, 'ethnologically . . . as many types of Jews
as there are countries in which they have lived,' since 'climate, environment,
economic conditions, intermarriage, food, and a thousand other influences
operate as causes of differentiation between Jews of one country and those of
another.' Jews, he argued, were 'united by the bonds of religion and none
other.'"
About this same time however, Zionism was firmly attached to Jews being a race,
which further confounded the issue for Jewish leaders. As Goldstein explains,
"So divisive was the issue of race in the Jewish community that, by 1910, Israel Friedlaender, a
historian at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, could call it the
'shibboleth according to which the various Jewish parties are distinguished
from one another.' Yet despite the charged nature of racial politics among
American Jews, it would be a mistake to view the Jewish community as completely
polarized on the issue of race. Because
the denial of racial identity was often a diversionary tactic rather than a
reflection of their true feelings, establishment Jews sometimes found it
difficult to avoid references to the 'Jewish race.'"
It was official doctrine that Judaism was a universal religion, but it was also
understood that this official doctrine was not to be practiced—Judaism was a
race-based faith more than a religion. Its many rules and institutions were
built around separation from other races. Assimilation was anathema. "Few
social phenomena expressed the commitment of acculturated Jews to a racial
self-understanding during the early twentieth century as did their avoidance of intermarriage.
Despite increasing pressure to down-play racial commitments, most Jews of this
period continued, as they had in the nineteenth century, to treat marriage as a
key factor in Jewish racial preservation and as the line at which social
interaction with non-Jews was to be drawn. According to a study carried out in
It is an odd concept that in order for the Jews to complete their mission to
the world—described in various ways like universal brotherhood, peace, justice,
etc.—that the genes of the Jews could not change. Their moral essence was in
their blood. This rationale of genes, heritage, history, and religion seems to
have changed over time and the only constant thread in this apologia is to keep
the Jewish race pure.
After the First World War, Jews were recognized as being too powerful and too
radical: "Under these circumstances, Jews increasingly became a target for
those nervous about the direction of modern American culture. In their attempt
to understand why the nation was going astray from what they considered its
core values, many white Americans cast the Jewish 'race' as an infiltrating
force, one that was powerful enough to penetrate the central institutions of
American life but dedicated to its own selfish interests. This view of the Jew
was articulated almost immediately after the war, when the nation was gripped
by a series of red scares, and Jews were singled out by witnesses before
several congressional committees as importers of revolutionary communism to
these shores."
Again, many scholars have tried to make the 1924 immigration act one of keeping
out "inferior" people. Goldstein correctly points out that it was an
effort to reduce the number of immigrants to a manageable level that could be
assimilated. About this same time, the leading anthropologist Franz Boas was
arguing that race did not exist, though the concept was not well received by
the general public, not even Jews who were just getting a glimpse of Hitler's
racial policies (which reflected very similarly to the Jewish attitude about
race). Still, slowly, scholars were putting forth a pluralistic notion of the
importance of culture, religion and egalitarianism.
During the interwar years, lower class Jews from Europe returned to unifying
under racial solidarity as a challenge to acculturated Jews who were now
beginning to deny race in order to distance themselves from these new lesser
Jews. Just like Hitler breathed life into the German populace after a failed
war and economy, these lower class Jews embraced their own racial superiority
to lift themselves up to a higher status. Goldstein states, "Because their
interactions with the non-Jewish world were still heavily mediated by a strong
sense of Jewish particularism, nurtured both by their history and the
antisemitism of the interwar years, Eastern European Jews found it almost
impossible to define Jewishness in purely religious terms or to deny their
Jewishness altogether. Echoing the rhetoric of the day, the
Throughout the book, Goldstein sounds almost like one discussing White
supremacist attitudes, except these attitudes are held by Jews. Today, with
racial revisionism, Jews have not been as examined and condemned for their
racial attitudes as Whites. Whites alone seem to have the honor of being the
only race held culpable for a rather revisionist scientific understanding of
race during this time (note there are many other groups rarely as condemned as
Whites like East Asians, Asian Indians, tribalism throughout the Middle East
and Africa, etc.). During the interwar years however, a much more open
discussion about race was permitted.
Goldstein notes, "Labor activist Bertha Wallerstein, writing in the Nation,
implored Jews to struggle for their rights as 'human beings without making
a whole romance of the race.' Wallerstein argued that the 'jingo Jew' whose
motto was 'Right or wrong, my race!' was 'as rampantly Semitic as the Ku Klux
Klan is Nordic.' One of the strongest critics of Jewish racial assertiveness
during these years was Walter Lippmann, a prominent journalist who condemned
what he saw as Jews' aggressive tendency toward self-segregation. Contacted by
officials at Harvard for his opinion on the issue of Jewish admissions there,
Lippmann replied that he 'did not regard Jews as innocent victims.' Jews, he
wrote, perpetuated many 'disturbing social habits' that were the result of
'tribal inbreeding.' Lippmann argued that limiting the number of Jewish
students was the only way to insure the breakdown of Jewish racial
distinctiveness and encourage 'fusion' between Jews and non-Jews. The
insistence that Jews made more of their racial origins than they needed to was
especially common among a certain class of Jewish doctors and psychologists,
who spoke of a Jewish obsession with racial differences that edged on
psychosis."
Note how such statements targeting Jews would border on lunacy, and yet similar
charges continue to be made against Whites such as the "Protestant
Ethic," Whites have a propensity for "authoritarianism" (The
Frankfurt School), we are "sexually suppressed" (Freudian
psychoanalysis), etc. (MacDonald 2002b) Even with advanced scientific tools,
such as magnetic resonance imaging to see if the brain is thinking in racial
terms, the testing is generally used to see how racist the White brain is when
presented with images of Blacks. It is just assumed that all other races are
free of racialized thinking.
Goldstein continues, "Writer Samuel Ornitz lampooned the views of some of
Just picture such discussions taking place today in churches, the media,
politics, etc. Even on the Internet, such statements are met with apoplectic
outrage if directed at anything Jewish, but is commonly heard directed against
Whites. Perhaps this is because the White race is not anywhere near as
xenophobic and paranoid as are Jews on average. Our evolutionary past has
equipped us with different sensibilities. And yet, race today is such a
sensitive subject that it is very difficult to test a variety of races and see
how they differ in personality traits or intelligence.
Goldberg states, "Despite the increasing popularity of a cultural or
'ethnic' definition of Jewish identity in intellectual circles, the notion of a
Jewishness rooted in culture and not race failed to win a large following among
American Jews in the years before World War II…. Newspaper columnist George
Sokolsky echoed this point in 1935, explaining that no matter how hard scholars
tried to uproot the race concept using scientific means, the daily social and
political realities facing most Jews told them that "race does
exist." Until society at large ceased to recognize the existence of a
Jewish race, it would remain impossible for most Jews themselves to do so….
Paradoxically, while the climate of social exclusion meant that many American
Jews were unable to break away from a racial self-understanding during these
years, it also left Jews increasingly divided about how strongly they ought to
assert their racial distinctiveness. In addition to insecurity stemming from
their own experiences with Depression-era hostility, Jews in
Though Jews were led to assert their Jewish supremacy in the face of Hitlerism,
some Jews recognized the dangers in defining groups by race—the Jews were
powerful for their numbers but could easily suffer the same fate in the
Not unlike today, the government moved against any citizens that it perceived
would undermine the war effort. Racist agitators were investigated for
sedition, the Catholic Church was told to silence radical priests, publications
were shut down, and a propaganda campaign was waged promoting tolerance and
equality. Racial hatred was now un-American. Goldstein states, "Ultimately,
the
Between Boas and Roosevelt, the propaganda worked. "In public opinion
polls carried out just after the war, less
than half of Americans surveyed still identified the Jews as a race, a sharp
decline from the prewar tendency. The inclusive nationalism of the
Roosevelt Administration, the integration of Jews into the
Goldstein notes, "In fact, because Livingston's goal was to show how
Jewish traits had helped make Jews contributors to the larger society, those
involved in specifically Jewish activities—rabbis, communal leaders, Hebrew and
Yiddish authors—were excluded. Similar works, like Mac Davis's Jews at a
Glance, which offered a 'gallery of Jewish greatness and achievement,'
appeared as late as 1956. The tendency, even at this late date, to define Jews
as a group bound by unique qualities and ancestral ties rather than by
particular cultural markers suggests that the
rise of 'ethnicity' did not represent a thoroughgoing reconceptualization
of Jewish identity. Instead, it was
largely a linguistic strategy designed to recast their continued attachment to
a racial self-understanding in terms more acceptable to the non-Jewish
world."
During the decades after WWII, as race was eradicated as a biological concept,
Jews started to intermarry with other races, sending fear among the Jewish
establishment of a "Silent Holocaust"—Jews marrying non-Jews at an
accelerating rate. To stem this trend, increased efforts were made to arrange
for new means of maintaining Jewish solidarity, from obsession with the newly
discovered Holocaust (it was virtually ignored up until about 1967), to setting
up new social arrangements and seminars for Jews, sending Jewish students to
Israel to establish a personal connection with Zionism, etc. Racial reasons for
not intermarrying could no longer be openly discussed. Tribalism had to take on
new types of symbolism. "Over the next few decades, Jews began to express
a growing impatience with the constraints of liberal universalism and exhibit a
tendency to turn away from classical liberalism toward a more group-centered
political agenda."
Over the last decade, the intermarriage rate for Jews is exceeding 50%, and
with Jews and non-Jews socially mingling, Jewish supremacy can no longer be
openly discussed (non-Jews were increasingly mixed in with the tribe and such
statements would be embarrassing). Goldstein asserts, "Ultimately, it is
hard to trace either an unchecked pattern of 'tribalist' assertiveness or a
steady decline of 'tribalist' sensibility among contemporary American Jews.
Cohen and Eisen report that 'tribalism' is being expressed more freely, but
that because of the growing interconnections between Jewish and non-Jewish
social worlds, Jews are increasingly careful about 'choosing certain spaces and
times to express it,' and even then there are often 'lingering hesitations,
anxieties and misgivings.' One might say that the two phenomena—growing ethnic
assertiveness and a declining ethnic cohesiveness—are actually two sides of the
same coin. Tribalism functions much like Jewish appeals to 'race' did during
the nineteenth century, giving contemporary Jews a tool for selectively shoring
up a Jewish identity that is increasingly in doubt. 'Throughout all the
de-racializing stages of twentieth-century social thought, Jews have continued
to invoke blood logic as a way of defining and maintaining group identity,'
writes historian Susan Glenn. 'It is one of the ironies of modern Jewish
history that concepts of tribalism based on blood and race have persisted not
only in spite of but also because of the experience of assimilation.'"
Now that some Jews who are highly regarded, like Steven Pinker, are finally
openly discussing the racial superiority of Jews in average intelligence, race
will begin to return as a biological category. No doubt, all of the recent
books condemning the concept of race, eugenics, and racial differences in
intelligence are due to the increased recognition that genes do count, and
people as well as races differ because of genes more than environment.
Goldstein states, "[There is a] major focus for genetic research, partly
because of the disproportionate number of Jewish physicians who found their own
community a convenient vehicle for study and because Jews, as a comparatively
endogamous group, provide desirable conditions for the testing of genetic
theories. During these decades, researchers identified no fewer than thirty
different genetic mutations present in the Ashkenazic Jewish population,
mutations that are linked to diseases such as breast, colon, prostate and
ovarian cancers, as well as to emotional disorders like schizophrenia, manic
depression, and autism. Despite repeated disclaimers by researchers that Jews
are not necessarily any more susceptible to these diseases than other segments
of the population, the growing interest in Jewish genetics has tended to revive
the notion that Jews are a group united by biological ties, an idea that had
been largely discredited among scientists since World War II."
With new genetic tools, Jewish and non-Jewish researchers are tracing racial
blood lines (family lineages), races can now be classified by genetic markers
at almost 100% accuracy, and Jews everywhere are more genetically similar to
each other than to any other group besides other Semites. This does not mean
however that these different branches of Jews are necessarily similar. The
Ashkenazi Jews differ in intelligence from other Jews because of their breeding
patterns in
So how will Jews define themselves in the future? As we have seen they do not
have a common nation or heritage, nor is there a religious position they can
fall back on as even (Christian) baptized Jews are still embraced by Jews as
part of the Jewish community, not Christian. Goldstein observes, "But
these feelings among Jews do tell us something about the pain and resentment
that has resulted from a system that often predicated full acceptance in white
America on the abandonment of cultural distinctiveness and the disavowal of
deeply held group ties, once expressed in the language of 'race.' For Jews who
want to assert a particularist identity in today's
Religion does not look like a very viable means of rebuilding a Jewish
identity: "[A] 2001 survey by the American Jewish Committee revealed that a plurality of American Jews—40
percent—said that 'being a part of the Jewish people' was the most important
aspect of their identity. A much smaller percentage, only 14 percent, gave
religious observance as their answer."
Now if we can move more
Whites away from forming their identities around religion, state, or culture,
we have a chance to end our self-destructive capitulation to other races'
interests over our own. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates stand as glaring
examples of how our brightest and best are willing to betray their own kin for
universal moralism—giving billions of dollars to those races that hate us.
Philanthropists have often chosen those moral causes that will win them
admiration, rather than doing the hard work of directing their good fortunes to
programs that have some probability of success.
---
Matt Nuenke, July, 2006
bibliography is available via my web site.
**boldface
added for emphasis