Is there a common cause for rising antisemitism and historic racism?

[JohnRoberts]

Finally some thoughtful discourse on topic. Thank you.
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Yes, natural distrust of strangers is wired into our behavior. Probably related to our hunter-gatherer period when strangers were routinely associated with bad group outcomes.

School busing to expose children to other children from different backgrounds worked to overcome ignorance based prejudices. Kids experiencing how minor the actual differences are helped them discount societal biases.

My judgement was that we were making good progress to overcome such prejudices but that progress has been reversed for political gain. I was disappointed by my first memory from President Obama's first term, when he accused a Cambridge police officer of Racism. He ended up trying to walk that back with Rose Garden beers, but the negative tone was set.

JR

 

[jabe]

None of us want to stop individuals leading their lives as they want. Be it LGBTQ or whatever.

I'm not certain to whom you refer by "us", but I can think of a number of people and groups who very much want to stop certain individuals from leading their lives as they want.

Being able to openly talk about it without fear of retaliation is the first step to progress.

What is meant by retaliation, though? I would agree that governments should not be able to shut down genuine discussion, but I've noticed that bigots generally seem to think any negative reaction to the views is unfair retaliation. (To be clear, I am not saying that *you* think this.)
In many parts of my country the "anti-woke" are using legal means to shut down discussion of racism because it makes certain anti-woke people feel bad.

 

[jabe]

I was disappointed by my first memory from President Obama's first term, when he accused a Cambridge police officer of Racism. He ended up trying to walk that back with Rose Garden beers, but the negative tone was set.

For those unfamiliar with the incident, here were Obama's words. Judge the tone for yourself:
"I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

 

[fallout]

One shouldn't ignore their gut feelings or common sense in fear of being racist.

 

[living sounds]

Discord has been on the rise across the globe, there are mechanism explaining what happens.

I recommended Peter Turchin's writing before. His books "Ages of Discord" (looking at the United States primarily, more of a scientific paper than a popular book, also availible for free from the internet archive) and "End Times" (more recent, much more of a 'popular science' book) show how a variety of factors contribute to societal states.

Also, the rise of social media has made a lot of things worse. Before that information silos like talk radio and cable news in the US have surely helped polarization.

 

[ijvanl]

I have definitely felt a change in the attitudes of most of the people around me as well, like many others in this thread have described — transphobia is the one I personally have felt the most, but racism, sexism and general prejudice have become dramatically more prevalent, seemingly only within the last 5 years or so. Paradoxically, it also seems to be happening (at least in my experience) a lot more with younger people.

The main reason that people have prejudices, at least in my view, is because it's easy. If you've been doing something your whole life, and then you come to find that it does in fact affect someone or something negatively, it's much easier to blame the person or thing for being affected by something that, to you, has no consequence, than it is to reorganise your whole worldview around something which, at least to you, seems to have very little impact.

I am transgender. I have had my fair share of crap jokes made about the way I act or the way I dress, which have ranged from slightly questionable to outright vitriolic. I, as well as (in my experience) the vast majority of other trans people in the world, can generally deal with the jokes. What we care about is being able to engage with society as easily and comfortably as everyone else (that often does include the right not to have crap jokes thrown at you for things about you which you can't change, but I digress). However, seemingly entirely within the past 5 years or so, the trans community has found itself firmly within the crosshairs of the full force of the far-right political machine, enduring a seemingly never-ending torrent of vitriol, at a scale which has arguably not been seen in this century or the latter half of the last.

This is because, in typical fashion, the kinds of shock-jocks and politicians who are most interested in extracting money and support from fanatical citizens have found transgender people — as a group with a very new place in the public consciousness, with problems and lived experiences often pretty incomprehensible to the average person — to be a fantastic scapegoat.

These aforementioned shock-jocks and politicians tend to hit it big whenever public discontent is at its highest. We have come out of a global pandemic and barrelled directly into a worldwide recession and cost-of-living crisis. People's lives are generally worse now, and to have someone in your ear blaming it on a nebulous group of ostensible villains can be, in a strange and horrible way, quite comforting.

This is also my gripe with the term "woke" — "woke" is used largely as a nonsense-word catch-all term for "people who disagree with me" by the kind of people who make a buck off other people agreeing with every word they say.

 

[jabe]

One shouldn't ignore their gut feelings or common sense in fear of being racist.

One also shouldn't leave said feelings unexamined lest they turn out to be rooted in racism.

 

[fallout]

The main reason that people have prejudices, at least in my view, is because it's easy.

Disagree, I believe prejudices are formed from either personal experience, or taught (parents, social media, school, news etc..). I also don't think having a prejudice is easier than being kind.

If you've been doing something your whole life, and then you come to find that it does in fact affect someone or something negatively,

If you've been doing something your whole life, you learned it from somewhere.

 

[jabe]

I have definitely felt a change in the attitudes of most of the people around me as well, like many others in this thread have described — transphobia is the one I personally have felt the most, but racism, sexism and general prejudice have become dramatically more prevalent, seemingly only within the last 5 years or so. Paradoxically, it also seems to be happening (at least in my experience) a lot more with younger people.

The main reason that people have prejudices, at least in my view, is because it's easy. If you've been doing something your whole life, and then you come to find that it does in fact affect someone or something negatively, it's much easier to blame the person or thing for being affected by something that, to you, has no consequence, than it is to reorganise your whole worldview around something which, at least to you, seems to have very little impact.

I am transgender. I have had my fair share of crap jokes made about the way I act or the way I dress, which have ranged from slightly questionable to outright vitriolic. I, as well as (in my experience) the vast majority of other trans people in the world, can generally deal with the jokes. What we care about is being able to engage with society as easily and comfortably as everyone else (that often does include the right not to have crap jokes thrown at you for things about you which you can't change, but I digress). However, seemingly entirely within the past 5 years or so, the trans community has found itself firmly within the crosshairs of the full force of the far-right political machine, enduring a seemingly never-ending torrent of vitriol, at a scale which has arguably not been seen in this century or the latter half of the last.

This is because, in typical fashion, the kinds of shock-jocks and politicians who are most interested in extracting money and support from fanatical citizens have found transgender people — as a group with a very new place in the public consciousness, with problems and lived experiences often pretty incomprehensible to the average person — to be a fantastic scapegoat.

These aforementioned shock-jocks and politicians tend to hit it big whenever public discontent is at its highest. We have come out of a global pandemic and barrelled directly into a worldwide recession and cost-of-living crisis. People's lives are generally worse now, and to have someone in your ear blaming it on a nebulous group of ostensible villains can be, in a strange and horrible way, quite comforting.

This is also my gripe with the term "woke" — "woke" is used largely as a nonsense-word catch-all term for "people who disagree with me" by the kind of people who make a buck off other people agreeing with every word they say.

Thank you for sharing this. It is one of the best summations of our current state of thing that I've read.

 

[fallout]

One also shouldn't leave said feelings unexamined lest they turn out to be rooted in racism.

Of course..

I have a challenge for you Jabe. I'll bring you to the beginning of MLK Drive and/or Ocean Ave in Jersey City NJ after dark and challenge you to walk to the end by yourself. Obviously (if you know the area) this would be extremely dumb to accept this challenge (with the assumption that you're not black). Is this racist? Feelings unexamined? Would ignoring common sense or gut feeling be warranted?

 

[JohnRoberts]

For those unfamiliar with the incident, here were Obama's words. Judge the tone for yourself:
"I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

I recall watching exPresident Obamas initial comments on TV. It was a pretty shocking pivot from the moderate persona presented by his campaign. ex-President Obama gave great speeches..... but. He pretty much immediately tried to walk back his emotional outburst from the "bully pulpit" after advisers(?) clued him into what he said/implied. The news media did a deep dive into Sgt Crowley and it turned out that he was clearly not racist.

[TMI Coincidentally I met the worst racists I ever did inside a bar in Cambridge, MA when I was working at MITIL back in the 60s. So there were definitely racists in the region. Worse than any racists I met during several decades in MS. I even lived in Stone Mtn, GA briefly. /TMI]

The president acknowledged that his words "helped to contribute to ratcheting" up the situation when he criticized the manner in which Sgt. James Crowley arrested professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

"I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically," Obama told reporters. "I could have calibrated those words differently, and I told this to Sgt. Crowley."

Watch Obama describe talk »

Obama spoke about two hours after police unions in Massachusetts called on him to apologize. He did not apologize for his remark but repeated that he believed his choice of words was unfortunate.

He reiterated his assertion that he believes police overreacted, but said Gates "probably overreacted as well."

"My sense is you have got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved," he said.

Obama also spoke briefly with the arrested professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is a friend of the president, the White House reported. He and Gates had a "positive discussion" about his call to Crowley on Friday afternoon, the White House said. Obama also invited Gates "to join him with Sgt. Crowley at the White House in the near future."

https://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/24/officer.gates.arrest/

JR

 

[Matador]

Sounds like Obama was a blowhard.

 

[jabe]

I have a challenge for you Jabe. I'll bring you to the beginning of MLK Drive and/or Ocean Ave in Jersey City NJ after dark and challenge you to walk to the end by yourself. Obviously (if you know the area) this would be extremely dumb to accept this challenge (with the assumption that you're not black). Is this racist? Feelings unexamined? Would ignoring common sense or gut feeling be warranted?

I though we were discussing racism. Surely you aren't selecting a specific high-crime area to represent a race of people?

 

[JohnRoberts]

Sounds like Obama was a blowhard.

No in fact he was a great public speaker and above average retail politician.
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I didn't vote for him but like many, was optimistic based on his inspiring speeches. I was then disappointed by the reality.

Back then I made a basketball joke "ignore the head fakes, watch his feet". Translation: discount his words watch what he does.

JR

 

[jabe]

I recall watching exPresident Obamas initial comments on TV. It was a pretty shocking pivot from the moderate persona presented by his campaign

I also recall it. For me the only shocking part was when certain people lost their minds at such an anondyne statement. Especially when he mentioned racism "separate and apart from this incident" and explicitly said "I dont't know... what role race played" but they still chose to interpret it as calling Chauvin racist.

 

[Matador]

For me the only shocking part was when certain people lost their minds at such an anondyne statement.

Obama could have avoided this whole kerfuffle if he had just said the Cambridge police were rapists and murderers, but some were probably good people.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I also recall it. For me the only shocking part was when certain people lost their minds at such an anondyne statement. Especially when he mentioned racism "separate and apart from this incident" and explicitly said "I dont't know... what role race played" but they still chose to interpret it as calling Chauvin racist.

My perception is that this was him accidentally saying what he actually thought without thinking about it. Not filtered by himself or by his speech writers and advisers. He was new to the gig and didn't appreciate the power of his extemporaneous remarks.

Look at how much effort they invested trying to walk this back, including the Rose Garden beer party with the officer and exPresident Obama's Harvard professor buddy.

Also consider how much respect for the police (and funding) deteriorated since then. (I don't blame him for this alone, but he surfed that social wave.)
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It's amusing to hear him compared to ex-President Trump who clearly bloviated without any filters from that same pulpit. Most of exPresident Obama's more embarrassing comments were captured surreptitiously during private fund raisers and campaign events.

JR

 

[fallout]

I though we were discussing racism. Surely you aren't selecting a specific high-crime area to represent a race of people?

We certainly are.. You cant simply ignore race just because it's a "specific high-crime area". There's plenty of 'high crime areas' that I would have absolutely no problem entering and leaving safely and have many times in the past. It's just a FACT that in certain areas, my personal safety is at risk simply because of the color of my skin. Are you arguing this fact?

..and no, my experiences do not represent an entire race but I can certainly generalize using common sense.

 

[cyrano]

Yes, natural distrust of strangers is wired into our behavior.

There isn't much research into natural distrust of strangers. Some have it, some don't. What was shown, mainly from very young children lost in the woods for long periods, is that they don't seem to have a natural distrust of strangers. On the contrary, they also have no distrust of dangerous animals. It also seems these animals don't necessarily eat those children. Althrough history, children have been raised by predatory animals. And there also are numerous observations of animals "adopting" babies from other species.

So I reckon that children who are afraid of strangers, have learned that from their parents or other adults.

It's a bit like swimming. If a baby is young enough, he'll probably instinctively know how to swim if you put him into the water. Fear of water comes later and is a real hindrance to learn how to swim.

 

[cyrano]

I'm not certain to whom you refer by "us", but I can think of a number of people and groups who very much want to stop certain individuals from leading their lives as they want.

Us, like us on this forum.

What is meant by retaliation, though? I would agree that governments should not be able to shut down genuine discussion, but I've noticed that bigots generally seem to think any negative reaction to the views is unfair retaliation. (To be clear, I am not saying that *you* think this.)
In many parts of my country the "anti-woke" are using legal means to shut down discussion of racism because it makes certain anti-woke people feel bad.

Retaliation, like one group being treated unfairly and then this group starts treating others unfairly.

In the case of child abuse, most murdered victims seem to come from fear of retaliation. Child abusers are either separated from the general jail population, or they get beaten up and even killed by other inmates. If you're a murderer, you get respect in jail. A child abuser is too vile even for other offenders.