Are Jews in the United States White? Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit?

Linda Maizels, managing director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, will speak on the following topic. Optional reception at 6:30 p.m., event at 7 p.m.

American Jews are seen on average to be more successful than other American identity groups, whether ethnic, racial, or religious. However, although Jews in the United States only comprise around two percent of the total population, the New York Times editorial board recently reported that “On a per capita basis, Jews face far greater risks of being victims of hate crimes than members of any other demographic groups.” How do we reconcile this competing information about the American Jewish community? One of the factors is that different ideological and political factions within the country have opposing views of Jewish whiteness. For some activists on the far left, American Jews in the aggregate are disparaged as the embodiment of white privilege, not only for their economic success and educational attainments, but also for their support for Israel, which is derided as a racist, white majority state. Yet for some activists on the far right, Jews are not white; rather, Jews are seen as a separate and treacherous race that works actively to undermine the lives of Americans of European descent. Consequently, American Jews find themselves uncomfortably situated between simplistic narratives that do not capture the complexity of contemporary Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.