In his review of a recent book titled Jews Don’t Count, Kenneth Marcus relates the following episode:
Last May, Zoom-bombers hijacked a Stanford University townhall and broadcast racist messages that displayed images of swastikas and weapons and made use of the N-word. [But] the diversity committee at Stanford’s psychological-counseling division decided to omit mention of anti-Semitism in its post-mortem of the incident so as not to overshadow anti-black racism. To be clear, Stanford’s diversity experts do not avoid Jewish issues altogether. In January of this year, diversity trainers described how Jews are connected to white supremacy. Another has boasted that she takes an anti-Zionist approach to social justice.
This phenomenon is well-described by British comedian David Baddiel in Jews Don’t Count. . . . The problem, as Baddiel describes through such examples, is that Jewish identity is erased in progressive circles. This can be gleaned easily enough in discussions of “cultural appropriation.” Google “cultural appropriation food” and one finds outrage about affronts to Chinese, Indian, or Caribbean culture. But when one adds “Jewish,” one finds only articles chastising Jews for appropriating Palestinian foods. Baddiel finds not a single blog post, article, or tweet about the appropriation of bagels, chopped liver, chicken soup, or corned beef.
Thus the same people who are constantly on the look out for the tiniest evidence of bigotry directed at an ever-expanding roster of identity groups—which includes not just racial and religious minorities, but the “nonbinary,” the overweight, the “neural atypical,” and people with various sexual proclivities—are not in the least bothered by equivalent slights against Jews.
More about: American society, Anti-Semitism, Political correctness
