It’s easy for conversations about social issues to become abstract. Dealing with manageable, practical problems is both difficult and kind of boring. It’s much more fun to grapple with profound abstract concepts instead. Even if they’re fundamentally meaningless.In my article, Who Cares If America Is A Racist Country, I tried to bring focus back to concrete issues. While it had become fashionable to debate whether America itself was a racist country, with even Joe Biden and Kamala Harris weighing in on the topic, questions like these a) can’t ever be settled, and b) don’t help anybody.
The Japanese believed they were superior to the Koreans, and that belief conveniently justified exploitation. The situation between the British and the Irish was similar, and their exploitation and dehumanization of the Irish lasted 700 years.
People outside these areas would struggle to recognize physical characteristics identifying these groups, but people within group at least believed they could tell each other apart. The British drew caricatures of the irish as short, with their eyes close together—not dissimilar to the Nazi caricature of the Jews as having long feet and big noses.
There is nothing special about using skin color to divide people like this, and I struggle with the idea that America invented racism. Maybe you could make that case with an extremely narrow definition of racism? But even then, people around the world have factored skin color into their hatred. I am not sure I understand the goal people are trying to achieve when they make this charge. I read it in Caste as well.
"People outside these areas would struggle to recognize physical characteristics identifying these groups, but people within group at least believed they could tell each other apart. "
I still remember as a child asking why Catholics and Protestants hated each other, and learning what the difference was between their beliefs. I was probably about 7. Differences so small that most people could barely even understand them, and it wasn't even possible to tell them apart by looking, and yet God knows how people died over it.
It was a truly formative moment in my understanding of how stupid and destructive bigotry is.
This is a great point about the Catholics and the Protestants too because it reminds us that the Irish developed their own bigotry, which they also inflicted on Black people in America. It’s comfortable to see ourselves as solely victims or oppressors, but as we’ve discussed before, most of us have both in our backgrounds.
Holy fudge! I don't know how you do it, unless you've been graced with the patience of a saint. I find that people who reason like Daniel seem more interested in the theory of racism instead of discussing how to solve it. They've discussed the topic so much that they now inhabit a whole new stratosphere of logic that is foreign to many of us. In an case, keep up the good work.
"I find that people who reason like Daniel seem more interested in the theory of racism instead of discussing how to solve it."
Yep, absolutely nailed it. What would he have to complain about if serious efforts were made to fix the problem? As I said, the fascinating about Daniel, in our other conversations too, is that behind all the bluster and hyperbole, we seem to mostly agree on the path forward.
"Racism isn't different to other forms of tribalism. It's simply based on a different arbitrary cause."
Sebastian Junger makes a strong case for belonging to a tribe and mental health in some of his books, like "TRIBE: On Homecoming and Belonging" and his TED Talks. There are some very positive things found in belonging to a tribe. This makes it very difficult for people to renounce because of the negative aspects of tribalism like its relationship to racism.
"There are some very positive things found in belonging to a tribe."
Oh absolutely. We all need a "tribe" in some form or another. I guess my point is just that we can belong to a tribe without hating or fearing or generalising other tribes. That's where a healthy "tribalism" turns into something else.
This is reminding me, tangentially, of the concept of affinity groups in schools and workplaces. I participate in my own at work with a guilty feeling. At what point is my sense of belonging shutting another person out? Is it appropriate to lean into these aspects of my identity at work to the exclusion of others, especially when my minority identity actually privileges me in some way? (for example, I read a stat that lesbian and bi women are paid more on average than straight women)
"I participate in my own at work with a guilty feeling. At what point is my sense of belonging shutting another person out?"
Yeah, this is a tricky one. To me, groups like this should have a clear purpose that isn't easily achieved without them. There's nothing wrong with leaning into certain aspects of one's identity, my question is just; "is it necessary to exclude other identities in order do this?"
It's an open question, I don't think there's a "right" answer. But definitely one to consider.
I love your writing, but I have a qualm with one thing you wrote here, when you used Israelis and Palestinians as an example of "People have been hating each other for arbitrary reasons since time immemorial"
I would be very happy to have an opportunity to discuss this with you in further detail, but for now I'll just say that the specific Israeli-Palestinian conflict is relatively recent, and you do a disservice to your readers by over-simplifying it in this way. Of course, I know this topic doesn't fall into the scope of your writing, so I'm not judging you for it.
"I'll just say that the specific Israeli-Palestinian conflict is relatively recent"
Hi Leor! Thank you. Ah, I bang out these comments pretty quickly because I'm usually having so many of these conversations at once, so maybe I wasn't clear here. But I didn't mean to imply that the Israelis and Palestinians have hated each other since time immemorial, I just meant to give an example of people hating each other for bad reasons. Same with the Tutsi and the Hutu.
I’ve found Can We Talk About Israel? to be a useful guide on this. The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict extends much further back than I realized.
Of course America is a racist country. Let's not be silly here. Is it the world's most racist nation? Probably not. But racism comes in many flavors and in America it is mostly predicated on the need of people with low intelligence and little achievement to feel that someone in lower than them; Israeli settlers harbor a very different kind of bigotry toward Muslims, based on the conviction that the Jewish people are the master race. But.
I've said this before (I'm saying it again). Bigotry is so universal across time and culture that it appears to be in some way inborne. This is unsurprising; most of our history was in small tribes of hunter-gatherers and an outside was a threat. Hatred of the Other was a survival trait. Millions of years of this sort of "bake it into" a species' psychology.
The only societies that appear to be relatively free of bigotry, repeat relatively, are those that inculcate values of accepting otherness from an early age. And since the USA's nuclear family lets parents set those values, and about a third of Americans are rabid racists, we're not going to get much done there.
No, I sorrowfully think wee need to set our sights a little lower: suppressing racist expression. It was not that long ago that a coworker could use the N on another and suffer no consequences; now he is frog-marched out. That's progress. But we need to go a lot further. A racist rally should draw the Soylent trucks. Racist expression must be so anathema that bigots are ostracized, unwelcome, isolated. I truly believe that's the best we can do.
"Of course America is a racist country. Let's not be silly here"
Yeah, as I've said before, I just don't find the question very interesting. America is a country that has racism in it. As do all countries. And due to its racist history, the roots of that racism go deeper than most. Does that mean America *is* racist? I honestly don't care. There's no absolute standard by which you could settle the matter. So I'd much rather just see sincere efforts to fix the damage.
Definition quibbles settle nothing anyway. What I think is more important is the number of Americans who will associate with dyed in the wool bigots. I've known Republicans in person and online who from all appearances would never burn a cross, use the N bomb or throw a noose over a branch .. but even as the GOP goes from euphemisms aka dog-whistle to open embracement of every bigotry under the sun, they remain Republicans. Under GWB we could haltingly get along with each other; no longer. If the vileness of Gosar and Greene and the iDJT aren't too much for them, it's time for the parting of the ways.
What strange times we live in when Wm. Kristol and Liz Cheney are the good guys. Even George Will drew his line though I suspect his has more to do with patrician snobbery than moral outrage.
😂 Yeah, though I love the imagery, we see this differently. Racist expression is already highly stigmatised. I agree that that's progress. But I still don't buy that racism is inborn. Bias (which I think *is* inborn) is different to bigotry. And if you really think about the roots of hatred of the other, you find yourself thinking about things like scarcity of resources and greed and simple fear of the unfamiliar.
I'm not even close to pretending that there are simple solutions. But I do think there are solutions.
There are mitigations. We have to keep making progress. Yes the worst expressionsare stigmatized but when as Republican talks about "quotas" and "porous borders" the meaning comes through loud and clear to those listening for it.
And we are a long, long way from a real solution. I don't need to remind you what the outcome would have been if Rittenhouse had been black.
"I don't need to remind you what the outcome would have been if Rittenhouse had been black"
I'm really leery of this argument. Nobody knows what would have happened if Rittenhouse were black. Do I think he would have been treated differently? For sure. I think, just for starters, that it's very unlikely the police would have let him leave the scene with the rifle still slung over his chest. But do I think he'd have been killed? No, not really. Not if he'd made it clear that he was surrendering as Rittenhouse did. I also think Huber and Grosskreutz would likely have acted differently if he were black.
People talk as if black men (even armed black men) are never taken into custody alive. This is very, very clearly untrue. The legal system doesn't treat black people equally. Nobody with even a passing knowledge of the legal system would deny this. But the disparities aren't *so* great that we can talk about hypotheticals with such certainty.
And as for Republicans and their border policies, again, there's no denying that conservatives are more anti-immigration than liberals (though not by nearly as much as most liberals believe - https://perceptiongap.us). But, for example, Biden just reinstated Trump's "Stay In Mexico" immigration policy. A policy that Biden criticised when Trump was in power. The lines aren't as clear cut as you think.
Part of my family is Jewish, and many close friends I’ve known and celebrated holidays with since I was very young. They believe they are God’s chosen people. Do you disagree?
When the antisemitic charge is used to silence all disagreement, it dilutes the impact of charges of real antisemitism.
You're conflating the notion of a "chosen people", which can be found in any religion, with an expressed right to dominate or exploit other people. we are all just human and susceptible to human behaviour and Jews don't see themselves any differently. There is no concept of needing to rule over others in Judaism, nor is there any sense of an ordering of "races." It's more akin to a "calling" to obey the commandments, not to impose them on others. Let's also remember that the scribes who wrote the Torah thousands of years ago were living in the world that they inhabited, long before science or the birth of the notion of liberal democracy. Perhaps there is an extreme fringe of Jewish society that believes in Jewish superiority, but the vast majority of Jews worldwide would never make such a claim. And if we are to say that Islamic terrorists don't speak for Muslims at large, certainly the same courtesy can be extended to Jews.
It's a bit disingenuous to claim that, after hundreds of years of persecution and second class status in Arab lands, suddenly the Jews are the ones who believe they are superior. If anything Jews should be an inspiration to indigenous and black communities for their ability to survive and thrive despite this constant persecution.
I don't make accusations of antisemitism lightly, and in fact I have argued with my own community over what is and isn't antisemitism. I personally don't use it to silence disagreement. But I do believe it is up to Jewish people to determine what is and isn't antisemitism, just as any other group defines bigotry against them. The implication that the Jews (sorry, "Israeli settlers") are solely, or even mostly responsible for the current conflict ignores the long history of Arab refusal to accept ANY self-determination for the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland.
As for "The King's Torah", I have had to look hard to find much info on that book (which itself belies the claim that it was a bestseller. One article I found claimed it had sold around 1,000 copies over 10 years ago). It's certainly a divisive book, and seems to have been mostly rejected (there were even attempts to charge the author ), but from what I can tell, it isn't advancing a theory of Jewish supremacy, but rather the idea that the commandment "thou shall not kill" doesn't apply to "non-Jews who threaten Israel". This argument is regularly applied the other way by Palestinians: that Israeli civilians and even children are legitimate targets because they have served, or will serve, in the Israeli army. It's not an argument I would agree with, but it's not based on race, either.
My last response to this petty thread hijack: I mentioned "The King's Torah," written by one settler-raise Rabbi Shapira. The book states with chilling nonchalance that the killing of a non-Jew by a Jew does not even count as murder; moreover, that Israel should be willing to kill a million Palestinian infants (!) for no better reason than to instruct their parents not to stand in the way of Jewish goals for example unlimited expansion (as advocated by Avigdor Lieberman and Ayelet Shaked).
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These people are monsters. Ghouls. As sick as Himmler.
And, of, lest I forget, a lot of the settlers have been unobservant for generations.
It’s problematic to judge any culture by its worst examples. One could cherry pick folks with abhorrent from any culture. It seems disingenuous to argue this view is representative of all Jewish people, and I have to say, this comment does feel antisemitic to me.
Where did I do anything like that? By "these people" I meant Shapira, Shaked, and Lieberman. As someone whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust I don't take to this casual use of "antisemitic." And with that I am definitely out of this hijack. I will respond to it no further.
I said "Israeli settlers," not "Jews." Get to know the settlers. They are monstrous and they are VERY vocal in this belief. And, oh, look up "The King's Torah," a recent best-seller in Israel that advances EXACTLY this view
I'd be a little careful with that BS "antisemitic" charge ... to insist that the politics of a savage right wing country, yet another religion-rotten Middle Eastern state, are synonymous with "Jewish," does no favors to global Jewery (like my family) innocent of the butchery going on in the West Bank.
Your point? How was democracy threatened by the Civil Rights Act, aside from moving millions of Dixiecrats to the Republican Party? In case you've been asleep the last thirty years, they're the threat to democracy. Sorry champ but the days are long gone when you can just mumble "freedom" and stop any argument. The CRA enhanced democracy because prior to it a black person voting put himself into mortal danger by doing so in much of the south.
Surveillance state. Melodrama much? Suppression of racist "free speech?" Who cares? If anyone wants my opinion, Americans are doing a pretty goddamn lousy job with their precious freedom.
"My understanding is that the English considered the Irish to be "subhuman" due to psychology, culture (and religion?), and physical characteristics. That gave the English moral justification for oppressing the Irish."
Yeah, I'm not sure about all the details, but the Irish had a hard time when they first came to America too. Many signs the said "No Blacks" also said "No Irish".
As you say, these lines are almost always drawn to justify cruelty or oppression of some kind.
The Japanese believed they were superior to the Koreans, and that belief conveniently justified exploitation. The situation between the British and the Irish was similar, and their exploitation and dehumanization of the Irish lasted 700 years.
People outside these areas would struggle to recognize physical characteristics identifying these groups, but people within group at least believed they could tell each other apart. The British drew caricatures of the irish as short, with their eyes close together—not dissimilar to the Nazi caricature of the Jews as having long feet and big noses.
There is nothing special about using skin color to divide people like this, and I struggle with the idea that America invented racism. Maybe you could make that case with an extremely narrow definition of racism? But even then, people around the world have factored skin color into their hatred. I am not sure I understand the goal people are trying to achieve when they make this charge. I read it in Caste as well.
"People outside these areas would struggle to recognize physical characteristics identifying these groups, but people within group at least believed they could tell each other apart. "
I still remember as a child asking why Catholics and Protestants hated each other, and learning what the difference was between their beliefs. I was probably about 7. Differences so small that most people could barely even understand them, and it wasn't even possible to tell them apart by looking, and yet God knows how people died over it.
It was a truly formative moment in my understanding of how stupid and destructive bigotry is.
This is a great point about the Catholics and the Protestants too because it reminds us that the Irish developed their own bigotry, which they also inflicted on Black people in America. It’s comfortable to see ourselves as solely victims or oppressors, but as we’ve discussed before, most of us have both in our backgrounds.
Holy fudge! I don't know how you do it, unless you've been graced with the patience of a saint. I find that people who reason like Daniel seem more interested in the theory of racism instead of discussing how to solve it. They've discussed the topic so much that they now inhabit a whole new stratosphere of logic that is foreign to many of us. In an case, keep up the good work.
"I find that people who reason like Daniel seem more interested in the theory of racism instead of discussing how to solve it."
Yep, absolutely nailed it. What would he have to complain about if serious efforts were made to fix the problem? As I said, the fascinating about Daniel, in our other conversations too, is that behind all the bluster and hyperbole, we seem to mostly agree on the path forward.
My jaw dropped at the line about moral sophistication. I just…. can’t.
😂
"Racism isn't different to other forms of tribalism. It's simply based on a different arbitrary cause."
Sebastian Junger makes a strong case for belonging to a tribe and mental health in some of his books, like "TRIBE: On Homecoming and Belonging" and his TED Talks. There are some very positive things found in belonging to a tribe. This makes it very difficult for people to renounce because of the negative aspects of tribalism like its relationship to racism.
"There are some very positive things found in belonging to a tribe."
Oh absolutely. We all need a "tribe" in some form or another. I guess my point is just that we can belong to a tribe without hating or fearing or generalising other tribes. That's where a healthy "tribalism" turns into something else.
This is reminding me, tangentially, of the concept of affinity groups in schools and workplaces. I participate in my own at work with a guilty feeling. At what point is my sense of belonging shutting another person out? Is it appropriate to lean into these aspects of my identity at work to the exclusion of others, especially when my minority identity actually privileges me in some way? (for example, I read a stat that lesbian and bi women are paid more on average than straight women)
"I participate in my own at work with a guilty feeling. At what point is my sense of belonging shutting another person out?"
Yeah, this is a tricky one. To me, groups like this should have a clear purpose that isn't easily achieved without them. There's nothing wrong with leaning into certain aspects of one's identity, my question is just; "is it necessary to exclude other identities in order do this?"
It's an open question, I don't think there's a "right" answer. But definitely one to consider.
I love your writing, but I have a qualm with one thing you wrote here, when you used Israelis and Palestinians as an example of "People have been hating each other for arbitrary reasons since time immemorial"
I would be very happy to have an opportunity to discuss this with you in further detail, but for now I'll just say that the specific Israeli-Palestinian conflict is relatively recent, and you do a disservice to your readers by over-simplifying it in this way. Of course, I know this topic doesn't fall into the scope of your writing, so I'm not judging you for it.
"I'll just say that the specific Israeli-Palestinian conflict is relatively recent"
Hi Leor! Thank you. Ah, I bang out these comments pretty quickly because I'm usually having so many of these conversations at once, so maybe I wasn't clear here. But I didn't mean to imply that the Israelis and Palestinians have hated each other since time immemorial, I just meant to give an example of people hating each other for bad reasons. Same with the Tutsi and the Hutu.
I’ve found Can We Talk About Israel? to be a useful guide on this. The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict extends much further back than I realized.
Of course America is a racist country. Let's not be silly here. Is it the world's most racist nation? Probably not. But racism comes in many flavors and in America it is mostly predicated on the need of people with low intelligence and little achievement to feel that someone in lower than them; Israeli settlers harbor a very different kind of bigotry toward Muslims, based on the conviction that the Jewish people are the master race. But.
I've said this before (I'm saying it again). Bigotry is so universal across time and culture that it appears to be in some way inborne. This is unsurprising; most of our history was in small tribes of hunter-gatherers and an outside was a threat. Hatred of the Other was a survival trait. Millions of years of this sort of "bake it into" a species' psychology.
The only societies that appear to be relatively free of bigotry, repeat relatively, are those that inculcate values of accepting otherness from an early age. And since the USA's nuclear family lets parents set those values, and about a third of Americans are rabid racists, we're not going to get much done there.
No, I sorrowfully think wee need to set our sights a little lower: suppressing racist expression. It was not that long ago that a coworker could use the N on another and suffer no consequences; now he is frog-marched out. That's progress. But we need to go a lot further. A racist rally should draw the Soylent trucks. Racist expression must be so anathema that bigots are ostracized, unwelcome, isolated. I truly believe that's the best we can do.
"Of course America is a racist country. Let's not be silly here"
Yeah, as I've said before, I just don't find the question very interesting. America is a country that has racism in it. As do all countries. And due to its racist history, the roots of that racism go deeper than most. Does that mean America *is* racist? I honestly don't care. There's no absolute standard by which you could settle the matter. So I'd much rather just see sincere efforts to fix the damage.
Definition quibbles settle nothing anyway. What I think is more important is the number of Americans who will associate with dyed in the wool bigots. I've known Republicans in person and online who from all appearances would never burn a cross, use the N bomb or throw a noose over a branch .. but even as the GOP goes from euphemisms aka dog-whistle to open embracement of every bigotry under the sun, they remain Republicans. Under GWB we could haltingly get along with each other; no longer. If the vileness of Gosar and Greene and the iDJT aren't too much for them, it's time for the parting of the ways.
What strange times we live in when Wm. Kristol and Liz Cheney are the good guys. Even George Will drew his line though I suspect his has more to do with patrician snobbery than moral outrage.
"A racist rally should draw the Soylent trucks"
😂 Yeah, though I love the imagery, we see this differently. Racist expression is already highly stigmatised. I agree that that's progress. But I still don't buy that racism is inborn. Bias (which I think *is* inborn) is different to bigotry. And if you really think about the roots of hatred of the other, you find yourself thinking about things like scarcity of resources and greed and simple fear of the unfamiliar.
I'm not even close to pretending that there are simple solutions. But I do think there are solutions.
There are mitigations. We have to keep making progress. Yes the worst expressionsare stigmatized but when as Republican talks about "quotas" and "porous borders" the meaning comes through loud and clear to those listening for it.
And we are a long, long way from a real solution. I don't need to remind you what the outcome would have been if Rittenhouse had been black.
"I don't need to remind you what the outcome would have been if Rittenhouse had been black"
I'm really leery of this argument. Nobody knows what would have happened if Rittenhouse were black. Do I think he would have been treated differently? For sure. I think, just for starters, that it's very unlikely the police would have let him leave the scene with the rifle still slung over his chest. But do I think he'd have been killed? No, not really. Not if he'd made it clear that he was surrendering as Rittenhouse did. I also think Huber and Grosskreutz would likely have acted differently if he were black.
People talk as if black men (even armed black men) are never taken into custody alive. This is very, very clearly untrue. The legal system doesn't treat black people equally. Nobody with even a passing knowledge of the legal system would deny this. But the disparities aren't *so* great that we can talk about hypotheticals with such certainty.
And as for Republicans and their border policies, again, there's no denying that conservatives are more anti-immigration than liberals (though not by nearly as much as most liberals believe - https://perceptiongap.us). But, for example, Biden just reinstated Trump's "Stay In Mexico" immigration policy. A policy that Biden criticised when Trump was in power. The lines aren't as clear cut as you think.
Jews do not believe we are the "master race". This comment is antisemitic.
Part of my family is Jewish, and many close friends I’ve known and celebrated holidays with since I was very young. They believe they are God’s chosen people. Do you disagree?
When the antisemitic charge is used to silence all disagreement, it dilutes the impact of charges of real antisemitism.
You're conflating the notion of a "chosen people", which can be found in any religion, with an expressed right to dominate or exploit other people. we are all just human and susceptible to human behaviour and Jews don't see themselves any differently. There is no concept of needing to rule over others in Judaism, nor is there any sense of an ordering of "races." It's more akin to a "calling" to obey the commandments, not to impose them on others. Let's also remember that the scribes who wrote the Torah thousands of years ago were living in the world that they inhabited, long before science or the birth of the notion of liberal democracy. Perhaps there is an extreme fringe of Jewish society that believes in Jewish superiority, but the vast majority of Jews worldwide would never make such a claim. And if we are to say that Islamic terrorists don't speak for Muslims at large, certainly the same courtesy can be extended to Jews.
It's a bit disingenuous to claim that, after hundreds of years of persecution and second class status in Arab lands, suddenly the Jews are the ones who believe they are superior. If anything Jews should be an inspiration to indigenous and black communities for their ability to survive and thrive despite this constant persecution.
I don't make accusations of antisemitism lightly, and in fact I have argued with my own community over what is and isn't antisemitism. I personally don't use it to silence disagreement. But I do believe it is up to Jewish people to determine what is and isn't antisemitism, just as any other group defines bigotry against them. The implication that the Jews (sorry, "Israeli settlers") are solely, or even mostly responsible for the current conflict ignores the long history of Arab refusal to accept ANY self-determination for the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland.
As for "The King's Torah", I have had to look hard to find much info on that book (which itself belies the claim that it was a bestseller. One article I found claimed it had sold around 1,000 copies over 10 years ago). It's certainly a divisive book, and seems to have been mostly rejected (there were even attempts to charge the author ), but from what I can tell, it isn't advancing a theory of Jewish supremacy, but rather the idea that the commandment "thou shall not kill" doesn't apply to "non-Jews who threaten Israel". This argument is regularly applied the other way by Palestinians: that Israeli civilians and even children are legitimate targets because they have served, or will serve, in the Israeli army. It's not an argument I would agree with, but it's not based on race, either.
My last response to this petty thread hijack: I mentioned "The King's Torah," written by one settler-raise Rabbi Shapira. The book states with chilling nonchalance that the killing of a non-Jew by a Jew does not even count as murder; moreover, that Israel should be willing to kill a million Palestinian infants (!) for no better reason than to instruct their parents not to stand in the way of Jewish goals for example unlimited expansion (as advocated by Avigdor Lieberman and Ayelet Shaked).
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These people are monsters. Ghouls. As sick as Himmler.
And, of, lest I forget, a lot of the settlers have been unobservant for generations.
It’s problematic to judge any culture by its worst examples. One could cherry pick folks with abhorrent from any culture. It seems disingenuous to argue this view is representative of all Jewish people, and I have to say, this comment does feel antisemitic to me.
Where did I do anything like that? By "these people" I meant Shapira, Shaked, and Lieberman. As someone whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust I don't take to this casual use of "antisemitic." And with that I am definitely out of this hijack. I will respond to it no further.
Sorry, Steve.
I said "Israeli settlers," not "Jews." Get to know the settlers. They are monstrous and they are VERY vocal in this belief. And, oh, look up "The King's Torah," a recent best-seller in Israel that advances EXACTLY this view
I'd be a little careful with that BS "antisemitic" charge ... to insist that the politics of a savage right wing country, yet another religion-rotten Middle Eastern state, are synonymous with "Jewish," does no favors to global Jewery (like my family) innocent of the butchery going on in the West Bank.
Your point? How was democracy threatened by the Civil Rights Act, aside from moving millions of Dixiecrats to the Republican Party? In case you've been asleep the last thirty years, they're the threat to democracy. Sorry champ but the days are long gone when you can just mumble "freedom" and stop any argument. The CRA enhanced democracy because prior to it a black person voting put himself into mortal danger by doing so in much of the south.
Surveillance state. Melodrama much? Suppression of racist "free speech?" Who cares? If anyone wants my opinion, Americans are doing a pretty goddamn lousy job with their precious freedom.
"My understanding is that the English considered the Irish to be "subhuman" due to psychology, culture (and religion?), and physical characteristics. That gave the English moral justification for oppressing the Irish."
Yeah, I'm not sure about all the details, but the Irish had a hard time when they first came to America too. Many signs the said "No Blacks" also said "No Irish".
As you say, these lines are almost always drawn to justify cruelty or oppression of some kind.