Evaluating exceptionalism: unfounded and counterproductive

Let me first thank Evan Krasner for responding to my critique of his original post.  I appreciate his choice to continue the conversation beyond a simple point-counterpoint, and I’ve learned a lot already.

Evan clarifies something regarding the debate at his school that I actually didn’t understand, which I’m grateful for.

The debate’s original format included a person representing Israel’s perspective on both the one-state and two-state solutions and a person representing the respective Palestinian perspectives. Fieldston’s administration then decided to completely change the format without announcing it ahead of time.

I agree with Evan that it was unfair of the school’s administration to change the debate format without saying so, and I too consider this ample reason for canceling or postponing.  It’s not fair to promise people one thing and give them another.  However, while I agree with Evan on the school’s tactical error, I continue to disagree regarding the substance of the changes to debate’s form.

Instead of having an Israeli and a Palestinian debating one another, there would be two Palestinians “debating” one another. One speaker would represent the one-state solution and the other would represent the two-state solution.

“Debating?”  Evan, I respect that you felt left out of the debate, but it’s offensive to put it in these terms.  A debate between two Palestinians (especially who, as you said, disagree on the resolution to the conflict) is no less of a “true debate” than between an Israeli and a Palestinian.  Being an Israeli or a Palestinian is not an opinion.  Multiple viewpoints exist within both societies.

Harpo called my analogy of African-American slavery to the Holocaust a “huge generalization….”  I agree that this is a generalization, but my point was that both Jews and African-Americans have painful pasts. The fact that many of Fieldston’s assemblies focused on African American history and not the Holocaust is a disservice not only to Jewish students but to the whole community as well.

I still maintain that the generalization is harmful, but I do agree with Evan on the disservice done to the community by not studying the Holocaust.  The Holocaust was not tragic because it happened to Jews; the Holocaust was tragic because it happened to humans.  Everyone can benefit from its study.

It does not matter how “Jews feel…about their racial identity” or whether or not they consider themselves to be a part of white society. Jews represent two percent of the American population, which makes them a minority.

I beg to differ.  How Jews feel about their racial identity is in fact the only thing that matters.  As I said before, race in this country is highly related to seemingly trans-racial issues such as income and living conditions.  How we are raised and who we’re surrounded by has a huge impact on our conception of our own race.  For instance, I grew up in an upper-middle class liberal white town, and although there wasn’t a large Jewish population, I never felt like I was that different from the non-Jews, because they were all pretty similar to me in a lot of other ways.  I tend to associate with Judaism on purely religious and cultural, rather than racial, terms.  Clearly, different people approach the issue of identity from very different perspectives.  It’s counterproductive to claim that every member of a group as diverse as self-identified Jews has the same perception of their “minority status”.  While self-identified Jews are obviously a numerical minority, the statistic is deceptive when compared to something like racial whites.  There’s a lot more of a gray area in self-identifying as Jewish than as white.

If you gave me a form with two checkboxes: “White” and “Jewish,” and said “Check only one,” I’d choose white.  A different Jew might do the opposite.  That should tell you all you need to know – we’re not monolithic.

Finally, Harpo writes, “All people have suffered discrimination.” For someone who hates generalizations, this is big.

Fair enough.  This is a big generalization.  But I think it’s pretty true.  I challenge Evan to try to name a group of people who have not been the subject of discrimination at some point.  In fact, his very next sentence does just that!

Do you think that WASPs have suffered from significant discrimination in the US?

The US was created because WASPS were suffering significant discrimination.  If you limit the scope of your investigation to the brief history of a single country, you obviously won’t get the whole picture.

I want to move on to Evan’s last point, because it really made me stop and think.  I do have a response, and I’m glad Evan brought this up, because it’s helped me clarify my own thoughts a lot.

Additionally if all people have suffered from some form of discrimination, then why is it that only certain groups are entitled to government handouts such as affirmative action? If “All people have suffered [from some form of] discrimination,” then why is it that certain groups have more entitlements than others?

Affirmative action is designed to remedy inequality, not redress discrimination.  Although Jews have been discriminated against in this country, we’re not disadvantaged because of it, so we don’t need affirmative action to secure our status as productive citizens.  American blacks, on the other hand, still live with the debilitating effects of centuries of legally-established second-class citizenship.  Poverty and crime rates are higher, literacy and income levels are lower.  Without disregarding the anti-Semtism in this country’s past, we should realize that contemporary American Jews (meaning those who would formerly have been discriminated against) are in far better shape than contemporary American blacks (even if we assume that blacks face no discrimination today, which is not true).

I’ll end, slightly out of order, with Evan’s opening point:

I believe that Jews should be proud of their exceptionalism and there is no reason to stop writing about it.

This is the core of my disagreement with Evan.  I don’t think Jews are exceptional.  And while this is a personal opinion (meaning I respect Evan’s right to believe in Jewish exceptionalism), I strongly believe that every second we spend being proud of and writing about our exceptionalism distracts us from the rest of the world.  Which is, after all, where we live.  Thus, I see an insistence on Jewish exceptionalism as detracting from Jews’ ability to function effectively (on both an individual and group basis) in society.

I welcome further responses from Evan and/or others, and look forward to continuing this conversation.