PJ Media

IMHO, J. J. Sefton has provided the most cogent comment. That said, I note that no one has dealt with one of the stereotypes that lies behind much of black animosity toward Jews and Israel: the Jew as parasitic shopkeeper in the black community. A similar stereotype exists for Chinese and (East) Indian merchants around the world; I have seen evidence for that in SE Asia (a Thai king wrote a book titled “The Jews of the East” about the Chinese minority in his nation). The Thai economy is not in the hands of ethnic Thais but is overwhelmingly held by powerful ethnic Chinese families, along with less obvious Japanese interests. In Fiji, an Indian minority dominates the economy, and that caused a civil war. So, too, in Belize — again, Indians with “too many” shops that charge “too much,” and a black population that feels powerless to correct the perceived injustice. In French Polynesia, the ethnic Chinese have a strong grip on the economy and squeeze the comptetion by controlling the unloading of ships importing goods for non-Chinese-owned stores. The profits leave Tahiti and wind up in condos in Hawaii and California — or so the story goes. My point: true or not, people believe it.

Where some folks have the gumption to make money by buying and selling, resentments can arise and give birth to stereoypes. The result is always hatred, misunderstanding and reactions that can range all the way from shoplifting to mass murder. As we know.

This problem is not well understood, perhaps because it is too hot to talk about openly. I expect to be attacked for even mentioning it. Governmental and private strategies for coping with it are, AFAIK, non-existent. Free trade would be a beginning, of course, but when two cultural traditions meet and one has a very weak concept of business while the other lives and breathes it, there are bound to be problems. How do you teach people to compete economically, when the concept/value is underdeveloped in their culture? When does simply doing business become exploitive? How can we justify handicapping one ethnic group in favor of another, in a misguided effort to level the playing field?

Please don’t misinterpret this comment as a gullible acceptance of rumor and a promotion of horrid stereotypes. I am trying to say that we have to recognize the causes for hatred, and realize that some of them have roots in how people perceive their economic circumstances. We must begin with that in order to find ways to defuse a problem that is much, much larger than just the resentment many black folks feel toward Jews: it’s a virtually worldwide pattern, and very common wherever distinctly different cultures come into contact.

Kumbaya, in my view, is superficial, temporary, and ultimately counterproductive. Feel-good rituals do not address powerful perceptions of injustice. It does no good to shame an angry man into silence; in fact, it damns his feelings as illigitimate, and degrades and humiliates him profoundly, punishing him for his thoughts. That’s a true horror, for it is a form of censorship. Better we get this problem out in the open and deal with it rationally!!