To the question, very simply, Northern European Jews, otherwise known as Ashkenazi Jews, catch hell because they consistently and predictably overachieve in disproportion to their relative percent of the population, in areas that influence the concentration of wealth and power, beginning with education. Because of religion, more so than visible ethnicity, members of the group cluster and are readily identifiable, facilitating those whose level of jealousy, envy, and opportunity has them act out their hatred.
Finally, why do Jews overachieve, you ask? I will save this question for another post, but I will say that there is nothing sinister about it or it's origins, and humankind has benefited tremendously because of it.
James C. Collier
READ MOST RECENT POSTS AT ACTING WHITE ACTING BLACK...
Technorati Tags: Why Do Some People Hate Jews?, Anti-Semitism, Henry Blodget, Business Insider, Holocaust, Acting White
The reason for Jewish hatred is Biblical, they are God’s chosen people. They were chosen by God to carry out his will but they decided not to. I think the hatred Jews experience is a result of their decision not to follow God’s instructions, and is a form of punishment from God.
ReplyDelete@Anon 6:41, let me get this straight - you, and people like you, justify being haters because that's how God planned it out? Sounds a tad bit presumptuous, blasphemous, and idiotic, in my view.
ReplyDeleteOverachieving groups are hated out of envy. Underachieving groups are hated out of fear. Neither of these phenomena spring from the best part of us.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many blacks don't like them because they think their race has to have the monopoly on tragedy etc.?
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago a black co-worker and I were talking when I brought up the holocaust. When I asked him what he thought of it he replied, "I don't think it was as bad as they say it was."
With all the footage of the death camps and with more than enough evidence of the millions upon millions of deaths how could he make a statement like that???
Overachieving groups are hated out of envy.
ReplyDeleteUnderachieving groups are hated out of fear.
Neither of these phenomena spring from the best part of us.
Wow. Never thought it about like that, but extremely simple yet all encompassing.
Several years ago a black co-worker and I were talking when I brought up the holocaust. When I asked him what he thought of it he replied, "I don't think it was as bad as they say it was."
With all the footage of the death camps and with more than enough evidence of the millions upon millions of deaths how could he make a statement like that???
Wow. What an unfeeling thing to say. There's way too much Nazi recorded proof for anyone to say 'I don't think it was as bad as they say it was.'
Even though we black folks endured hundreds of years of slavery and Jim Crow, et cetera (which were certainly was no picnic & we're still dealing with today), it pales in comparison to the thousands of years that Jews have suffered.
Not hundreds of years. THOUSANDS of years.
Thank you for having me on your site. To answer this question, I thought long and hard. The simple answer? Because they can.
ReplyDeleteJews, like blacks, were persecuted for many of the same reasons, religious...as some argue that life began in Africa so the first and Original Peoples of Mother Earth are..well, us. Some argue that Jews have a natural ability for finances,education, "physical" differences that breed scorn and hate. Also, to the ignorant population, Jews killed their Lord and the hate swells within them.
One will never know. The thing that amuses me about Jewish hate and Black hate for that matter, is how similar our experiences have been. Both survived a holocaust, both are Originals and both remain persecuted.
One would surmise that we should unite, no? But that is not the case.
People hate, dear blogger, for the reason the sky is blue. Just because.
Please come visit me at :
diaryofanegress.com
Good day.
@Wickedwisdom, without subscribing to pain contests, I concur that Jews have been catching hell from the time humans began writing. Anti-Semitism in graduate school was as virulent as any. I would tell @Anon 6:57, that they need to stop hanging out with ignorant people. And there is nothing about being black that inoculates the group from insensitivity.
ReplyDeleteI will strike a different note.
ReplyDeleteI too grew up "knowing" that the jews had been "suffering" for thousands of years at the hands of their neighbors. I grew up "knowing" that in the interactions between jews and nonjews, jews had always been innocent of any wrongdoing. People had just always hated them and there had never been any kind of even semi-rational reason for that hate. I grew up accepting that version of history.
Until it stopped making sense.
Jews have been on the receiving end of much abuse in the past. That's true. What I don't accept anymore is the idea that jews as a collective have never ever done anything to their neighbors and that they always were totally innocent and that anything and everything that nonjews said about them was a vile antisemitic canard or baseless stereotype.
Everybody's heard of the connection between jews and money/finance. Everybody has also heard or read many jews complaining that the link is a stereotype and a canard and a lie etc. I believed that too. I believed that people just made stories up about jews being good with money and that besides a few well known families, surely jews weren't anymore connected to banking than anyone else.
That's until I read that for several centuries in Europe, you had entire jewish communities where the men were almost all involved in moneylending and other money related activities. This was true for centuries and was obviously noticed by the europeans and so the very accurate stereotype developed.
When i discovered that it was in fact *true* that jews had had a very close connection with money, for centuries, I felt very pissed off that some people had tried to fool me into thinking that the jewish:money link was a baseless stereotype.
They are the link between Caucasians and Africans.
ReplyDelete