The Harvard/Harris poll asked people, “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology”? 67 percent of people age 18-24 agreed that Jews are “oppressors” and should be treated as oppressors. By contrast, only 27% of people in general, and only 9% of people over age 65, agreed that Jews are oppressors.
Young people are influenced by race-based “social justice” ideology, as is shown by young adults’ similar responses to whether whites as a class are oppressors and need to be discriminated against. The Harvard/Harris poll asked, “There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?” The young adults polled overwhelmingly say yes, they support it.
Among people age 18-24, 79% say they “support” this ideology that white people are oppressors and should be discriminated against, compared to only 35% of people in general, and only 19% of people over age 65.
In short, “Anti-Semitism has been rehabilitated under the guise of anti-white racism,” notes Aurelian. “Is anyone actually surprised that teaching a generation of kids to be obsessed with race has yielded a generation of classical antisemites?,” asks Kathryn Paisner.
“To be fair, they have had these ideas pounded into their heads by schools and universities. That’s where the real blame rests,” says Loren Thacker. “This reflects the toxic ‘oppressor-oppressed’ ideology being pounded into the heads of young people by progressive ideologues.” As Rudy Auerbach observes, “The kids didn’t create the Intersectional Oppression Olympics that has our children rejecting Western Civilization.”
The Harvard-Harris poll result is “consistent with other polls that have found relatively high anti-Jewish sentiment among young American adults,” notes Will Saletan, a journalist who used to work at Slate and now works at The Bulwark.
As a father notes, “Given what my daughter was taught in school (e.g., reading leftist Ibram Kendi’s book), it’s sadly predictable that many her age view Jews as oppressors. Kendi teaches that all ethnic disparities” in achievement “are due to discrimination. Jews are statistically ‘overrepresented’ in many fields” that pay well, like law and medicine.
Kendi is very influential among progressives. The New York Times touted Kendi’s axiom that “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.” If someone believes all ethnic disparities in outcomes are due to discrimination, as Kendi does, then they will naturally be suspicious of Jewish “overrepresentation” in law, medicine, and other lucrative fields. Antisemites such as the Nazis have long claimed Jews were unusually successful because they were clannish and discriminated in favor of fellow Jews. Never mind that Jewish success in these fields is due to merit and hard work, not discrimination in their favor. Ivy League universities and many major law firms used to discriminate specifically against Jews. Yet Jews managed to become statistically “overrepresented” in fields like law even at a time when discrimination against Jews was more common than it is today.
Kendi’s claim that all racial disparities are due to racism is wrong. Unequal racial outcomes exist everywhere in society and the world, usually for reasons unrelated to racism, as the black economist Thomas Sowell chronicles in his book Discrimination and Disparities.
The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s best-selling book How to Be an Antiracist is that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi in that book. Kendi has been described by progressive publications as a leading “critical race theorist.”
“To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says Kendi’s best-seller, How to Be An Antiracist. That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushes the leading progressive media organ Slate.
The progressive Arlington County schools have students read books by critical race theorists such as Ibram Kendi. Arlington distributed hundreds of copies of Ibram Kendi’s book Stamped to students at Wakefield High School. The book contains many errors and celebrates a Marxist anti-Semite. It also peddles conspiracy theories and is dismissive about Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass. At Arlington’s Washington-Liberty High School, most students in 9th grade English were assigned to read either Stamped or a much longer book that would require more work to read. Virtually all students chose to read Stamped as a result.
Under Democratic governor Ralph Northam, Virginia’s official “Roadmap to Equity” published by its Department of Education in 2020 thanked critical race theorist “Dr. Ibram X. Kendi” in its acknowledgments section, as having “informed the development of the EdEquityVA Framework.” Kendi says he was “inspired by critical race theory,” and that he cannot “imagine a pathway to” his teachings “that does not engage CRT.” Virginia’s largest school system, the progressive Fairfax County Public Schools, encouraged teachers to apply critical race theory. The Washington Times reported that a “slide presentation” in 2021 “instructed social studies teachers in Fairfax County Public Schools that ‘critical race theory is a frame’ for their work.” Detroit’s school superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, said that critical race theory is deeply embedded in his school system: “Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English language arts and the other disciplines. We were very intentional about … embedding critical race theory within our curriculum.”
It is disturbing that so many people wrongly view Jews as a “class of oppressors,” when they are just a small minority, not an oppressive “class,” and have been subjected to unspeakable horrors such as the Holocaust.
