I think antisemitism actually is systemic and pervasive, just in different ways than racism is; it's less about state institutions, although certainly they can play into it.
Yeah -- I didn't express it well, but I wanted to convey that your post & the others and the great comments really made me see the systemic/pervasive quality of antisemitism in a way that I really hadn't before. And I know that I'll be spending some time trying to sort through why I hadn't been able or willing to see that. I'm guessing that part of that is how I've traditionally interpreted antisemitism in the contemporary U.S. as primarily religion-based prejudice and oppression. I found the following helpful in thinking beyond that:
The "anti-Semitism" of our own time, that of the twenty-first century, does not seem to care whether the Jews are a religion, a people, a nation, a race, or an ethnic group.
From Collective Psychological Processes in Anti-Semitism (http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=111&LNGID=1&FID=388&PID=0&IID=1009) (mainly focused on European antisemitism, and I'm not sure what to make of some of the psychoanalytic interpretations....)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-09-12 04:15 am (UTC)Yeah -- I didn't express it well, but I wanted to convey that your post & the others and the great comments really made me see the systemic/pervasive quality of antisemitism in a way that I really hadn't before. And I know that I'll be spending some time trying to sort through why I hadn't been able or willing to see that. I'm guessing that part of that is how I've traditionally interpreted antisemitism in the contemporary U.S. as primarily religion-based prejudice and oppression. I found the following helpful in thinking beyond that:
The "anti-Semitism" of our own time, that of the twenty-first century, does not seem to care whether the Jews are a religion, a people, a nation, a race, or an ethnic group.
From Collective Psychological Processes in Anti-Semitism (http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=111&LNGID=1&FID=388&PID=0&IID=1009) (mainly focused on European antisemitism, and I'm not sure what to make of some of the psychoanalytic interpretations....)