Talk:Racism in the United States

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jeswinning (article contribs).

Bibliography

A selected annotated bibliography (20 titles or so) would make this article much more usefull. 12/2006

Weirdness

In 2005, as 4,000 people in Detroit paid their final respects to civil rights hero Rosa Parks during the four hours of her funeral ceremony on November 2, FoxNews devoted 23 minutes of air time to live coverage, there was 108 minutes of coverage on CNN and 100 on MSNBC.

Alright, uh...how is this relevant to the article, the news coverage of various networks? Why is it neccesary to say FoxNews had only '23 minutes of air time'? Also, isn't 'hero' a non-neutral term? Who is a hero or not is relative, and not a set fact. Should anyone be refered to as a 'hero' on Wikipedia? Shouldn't it say, "Rosa Parks, who is considered to be a hero in the civil rights movement by many..." or something similar?

Here are some links for citations.

The stuff's out there, I just don't have time to go through the tutorial on how to insert citations right now.

On the peaking of lynchings in the "nadir":

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/timelin2.html

On the foundation of the NAACP: (I mean, come on guys, it's on the NAACP website under "How the NAACP Began"):

http://www.naacp.org/about/history/howbegan/ (dead link)

On Jim Crow:

http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/

On lynchings and lynching photography:

http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/

Als, H., Lewis, J., Litwack, L. F. (Authors), Allen, J. (Ed.): Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. (2000) Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics2/carnival/

Placement of Jews and Romani

As Semitic peoples, both Jewish and Arab Americans should (as the article states) both be considered Middle Eastern diaspora; their similarly ambiguous relationship to whiteness in American racial discourse and policy is also rightly discussed. Placing Jews in a separate category unto themselves implies that Jews either are not a Middle Eastern ethnic group, or are somehow a unique race unto themselves. This is needlessly confusing. The complex relationship between the Jewish diaspora, its different groups, and their host cultures and nations could perhaps be discussed, and how that relationship has evolved over time, (though that would probably be more appropriate in another article), but I do not think that warrants placing Jews in a unique category. Jewish Americans should be listed under Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans.

The placement of Romani is tricky, as Romani are ultimately a South Asian ethnic group, yet they are often considered European for the large Roma diaspora in European countries (though this in itself is also difficult, as Romani have historically been stateless, and not accepted as a European people). Anti-Romanyism should either be listed under the Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans heading, or given its own separate section; listing Romani under Non-Anglo Europeans is misleading at best. Batanat (talk) 04:37, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree. Anti-Romanyism and antisemitism should be under South Asian and Middle Eastern respectively. It makes no sense to put them anywhere else.Tomerto (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2018 (UTC) — Tomerto (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Jews are indeed a Semitic people/Tribe, and thus "discrimination against Jews" should be framed as "discrimination against a Semitic people ("Middle Eastern," Afro-Asiatic, Southwest Asian, North-Northeast African, etc.)," which is a form of Racism, known to most as "Anti-Semitism." Also, in case it is brought up, racism does not only rely on genetics——especially such discrimination against Jews, who are an Ethnocultural/Ethnoreligious group, with ethnicity and culture intertwined——but also upon cultural (e.g. religious, traditional, linguistic, culinary, etc.) and sociopolitical power dynamics and divides; for example, Arab/Muslims/Muslim Arabs are the dominant Imperialist group of the Levant and can therefore act "racist" against Jews, Druze, Copts, Kurds, etc., even if Arab/Muslims are more genetically related to Jews, Druze, Copts, Kurds, etc.. Jeffgr9 (talk) 06:38, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Antisemitism is recognised as being a misnomer, it very rarely means prejudice against any Semitic people, but has come to mean almost exclusively 'prejudice against Jews'. Antisemitism (also spelled anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews. Pincrete (talk) 10:12, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

That’s true, Pincrete: antisemitism is anti-Jewish sentiment. And as has been established already: as Jews are indeed Semites originating in the Middle East, it seems rather silly that anti-Jewish sentiment be placed anywhere other than in the Middle Eastern and South Asian section. Batanat (talk) 11:45, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

RfC concerning placement of racism against Jewish Americans

Where should the section of this article about racism against Jewish Americans be placed? Please limit your choice to one of the following: A under the primary section heading "Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans", B under its own primary section heading, or C somewhere else? (If you choose C, please elaborate.) — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Survey

• B — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• B, obviously. While most Jewish people have Middle Eastern ancestry if you go back far enough, the vast majority is the US are Ashkenazi Jews and therefore more proximately of European descent; they are not perceived as being Middle Eastern, on the whole, in American culture. This is particularly important when discussing racism, because they tend to face a different set of prejudices and different forms of racism as a result, which makes it worth putting them in a separate section. --Aquillion (talk) 06:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• B. Many Jews do not have a middle-eastern ancestry. We have African American Jews. And European descended Jews with nary a whiff of Asia. Beyond this technicality, the causes of racism against Jews are quite distinct and separate (stemming largely from European blood libels and early Christian-Jewish spats, and in recent years from Nazi spin-offs and possibly the Israeli/Arab conflict (though it is debated what causes what in this regard)).Icewhiz (talk) 08:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• B apart from the arguments made above and below about the difficulty of classifying Jewish people as part of any geographical group, anti-semitism is commonly treated as a distinct form of prejudice, regardless of the recent (or historically distant) origin of the victim. Pincrete (talk) 09:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• B Anti-semitism is it's own nasty little beast. It deserves it's own section.--Adamfinmo (talk) 10:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• A Ethnic Jews are a Middle Eastern people. Much of the bigotry/racism against Jews in the US traced back to the bigotry/racism against Jews in Europe, which was directed at them precisely because they were not Europeans, but a Middle Eastern people living in diaspora among Europeans, and refusing to fully assimilate. The bogus claim that Ashkenazi Jews are "primarily European" is utter nonsense, not backed by historical sources or by DNA studies. PA Math Prof (talk) 15:39, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• While the Jewish people may have ancient ancestry in the Middle East, about 90% of American Jews are of European (Ashkenazi) descent. Nobody in her or his right mind categorizes American Jews as Middle Easterners. Finally, Jews are not the victims of racism (antisemitism) because of where their nation may have originated. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Firstly, Malik: your argument that Jews are not victims of racism based on the Middle Eastern origin of the Jewish people is spurious at best. It could just as easily be said that black Americans aren't victims of racism based explicitly on their origins in Africa, nor are Arab or Indian Americans explicitly hated because of where they came from: racism is based on ingrained stereotypes related to differences in culture, ideology, appearance etc. In the case of Jews, antisemitism was already heavily ingrained for centuries, if not millennia, and certainly was by the time Jews began appearing in Europe in large numbers; and America also often shows prejudice to immigrants, which Jews certainly were. In fact, it coincided directly with the discrimination faced by other West Asian groups in America, which incorporated both anti-immigrant sentiment AND explicitly ethnic/racial prejudices. Jews were, and still are, racialized as Middle Eastern/Oriental. Any modern anti-Jewish caricature, replete with exaggerated Semitic features, will tell you that.

Second, "nobody in her or his right mind categorizes American Jews as Middle Easterners"? Not only is this incorrect, but also aggressive and derogatory, and comes off as highly POV. Immigration documents for Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated before 1950 show racial classifications like "Hebrew" and "mulatto", and further historical American writings describe Jews as "Mongoloid", "Semite", "Syrian", "Oriental", "West Asian", etc. The relationship of Jews to whiteness is ambiguous now (in large part due to events like the 1909 Shishim case and the efforts by MENA Americans to avoid denaturalization or other discriminations based on ethnicity in past eras), but the notion that Ashkenazi Jews cannot and have not ever been categorized as Middle Easterners is absurd. Moreover: "of European descent"? To some extent, sure, due to centuries of gradual rape and intermingling in Europe, but a diaspora is never said to be "descended" from the majority ethnicity of its host country. And Jews are referred to as "diaspora Jews", both by themselves and by others, in every country except Israel, precisely because that is where Jews originate. To some extent there is ethnic admixture in diaspora populations (of any people), but such a standard is not applied to, for example, African-Americans — you would not say they are "of European descent" or "of American descent", even those who have significant European admixture in their family trees (again, often due to historical rape and other causes). White people have also lived in North America for centuries, as diaspora and settlers: but it would be fallacious to say they are therefore "of American descent", in a racial/ethnic sense — they remain ethnically/racially (predominantly) European-descended. The Jewish diaspora in Europe remained (and remains to this day) a diaspora population: and in the case of Ashkenazi Jews, a forced/coerced diaspora, not in Europe of their own volition but as a result of violent displacement. Ashkenazim, like all Jewish diaspora populations, continue to regard themselves as the diaspora of a Middle Eastern nation, hence the continued application of terms like "diaspora Jew" to non-Israeli Jews. Many American Jews, both Ashkenazi and otherwise, have never accepted a "European" identity for themselves; and many American Jews are increasingly rejecting identification as white, in part because of its growing association with European Americans exclusively, as opposed to decades past where it included Middle Eastern and North African Americans as well. Jews living outside of Israel have always been, both currently and historically, seen as originating in Israel. The idea that Jews are NOT a Middle Eastern diaspora is a relatively recent one, and is at least partially driven by political antisemitism. I think you may be conflating the nebulous American construct of "white" with "European"; these are not synonyms, and the relationship of Jews to whiteness in America is indeed ambiguous (as it is for other MENA peoples), but that is not adequate justification for extrapolating that American Jews are European, or anything other than Semitic Middle Eastern diaspora.

Third, I can't help but notice that you A.) started a RFC thread instead of engaging with my thread of near-identical topic, B.) left out Romani from this survey, singling out Jews in a way that comes across as antisemitic, and C.) these actions could be interpreted as canvassing, seeing as you did not interact with my thread on this topic, with me, or with the people who were supporting my reasoning on said thread, but instead went around all of us and made a survey as if such conversations had never taken place. Polling is not a substitute for discourse. WP:NOTADEMOCRACY Batanat (talk) 07:03, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Malik, et al., this is becoming more and more absurd. If Ashkenazi Jews are “proximately European”, then surely all African-Americans are more proximately European or Amerindian? Since apparently the majority race of whichever area a Diaspora people happens to find themselves (often forcibly) somehow carries over and applies to the Diaspora people? Or perhaps white Australians or Americans are Aboriginal, by the same logic. Your arguments are nonsensical, and the fact none of you engage with any discourse here is increasingly suggestive of WP:BIAS and deliberate canvassing. Polls are not a substitute for discourse, and Wikipedia is not a democracy.

Singling out Jews is also, I reiterate, quite peculiar and unsettling. And why are you talking about African-American and white European converts with no Middle Eastern ancestry — A.) converts are rare, and B.) this is a discussion about ETHNIC JEWS and racism against ETHNIC JEWS, making all comments not pertaining to ETHNIC JEWS 100% irrelevant. There are no ethnic Jews lacking Middle Eastern descent. There are no “fully European” ethnic Jews.

And saying that American Jews aren’t read as Middle Eastern is equally ridiculous: look at literally any antisemitic caricature you want, and virtually all of them play in some way on exaggerated Semitic physical features. And besides which: even if absolutely nobody in America thought of Jews as Middle Eastern, Jews would still be Middle Eastern. Perception plays no part in where Jews should be placed in a list of racial categories. As I’ve said many times: of course the ambiguous relationship between Jews and whiteness in the US should be discussed, just as it is for other Diaspora MENA groups in America, but to exclude Jews from the MENA/MESA category based on blatantly erroneous and subjective preconceptions is simply wrong. Ethnic Jews are a Middle Eastern ethnic group, period; and no amount of irrelevancies or dodgy, subjective claims will ever alter that fact.

I am increasingly suspicious that this RFC is merely a way of gatekeeping an article for POV-driven (i.e., antisemitic) reasons. First, Malik, you tell me to build consensus. I did. Then, once you’d seen that I’d done that, you — rather than engaging in any way with my thread — made this separate RFC thread singling out Jews, it would appear, in order to gather support for your own view, as an attempt to negate the consensus I built (as per your suggestion). I call WP:BIAS. This RFC is not an honest, objective assessment of the topic, it’s a cowardly sham meant, it would appear, to assert the (bogus) claim that Jews aren’t a Middle Eastern ethnic group. No one here in favor of B has given any cogent or relevant arguments; half of these pro-B arguments are outright fallacious or half-true at best. I call shenanigans here. This RFC is just a poll being used as a substitute for discussion, in order to ideologically gatekeep the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Batanat (talk • contribs) 11:37, 26 February 2018 (UTC)