<p>I don’t really see the clannishness of Jews at all anymore, except for the small subset that is orthodox and strictly keeps kosher. Belonging to a synagogue and contributing to Jewish charities doesn’t make a person any more clannish than a Methodist who belongs to a church and contributes to UMCOR.</p>
<p>I would add to the black/Jew thing that a strain developed in the 1960’s because the black nationalist movement wanted to keep white involvement at arms-length. The Black Muslim organization - meaning the Elijah Muhammad / Louis Farrakhan religion, not regular Islam - was specifically separatist (and there are stories that Muhammad Ali spoke to the Klan; he has said that but I’m not sure it’s true). The alliance of Jews with SNCC - the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee - with the NAACP, with other rights groups was used by separatists to argue that the white man and particularly the Jews were selling black people out from the inside.</p>
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<p>Gosh, and here I thought it was many Catholics trying to keep gays and lesbians from their full civil rights when, according to you, it’s the other way around. </p>
<p>Back to the topic…I have found part of it to be lack of exposure. I’ve been suprised how often I’ve heard anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic bias passed off as fact here in south Texas. </p>
<p>It’s odd as an agnostic to be so often in the position of clarifying and defending the beliefs of Catholics and Jews but, of course, I’m happy to do it. I also find myself in the position of clarifying and defending Baptists and Mormons with friends/family in the Northeast. Is it any wonder I am woman of no religious faith who finds theology so interesting?</p>
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<p>Absolutely. I don’t see a big difference between my mother and my friends mothers who are Jewish. They are all New Jersey mothers to me; I love and admire them.</p>
<p>not going to get into religious persecution, but I think if we remember that we tend to notice attention whether negative or positive that is paid to " groups" we belong to, whether that be a white Protestant male from North Dakota or a Jewish female from Florida , black Mormon from NYC, or an atheist from SLC.</p>
<p>We really only have so much room in our head for information that doesn’t directly pertain to us, and frankly I can barely pay attention to the stuff I need to know, and I do have my causes, but I try and speak out for those who aren’t heard.</p>
<p>Since I just saw * A Serious Man*, I wanted to point out that those of the Jewish faith are hardly silent in the fields of artistic expression- however, I didn’t really " get" the movie. 
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<p>When others are making racist/sexist … or other hurtful comments, either make clear that it isn’t funny, that you don’t like it and don’t listen to it.
If they don’t pay attention, then they aren’t friends, but I would be surprised if that sort of behavior is representative of most schools, by that I mean- I realize college students make bad jokes- but if they are repeatedly singling out one group over others, it would surprise me.</p>
<p>other than at the expense of voters for McCain/Palin
(jk)</p>
<p>^ ^ </p>
<p>Oh…well, south Texas. You know what they say about south Texas. </p>
<p>I’m JUST KIDDING with you pugmadkate (I have no idea if anything at all is said about south Texas).</p>
<p>Actually, two wrongs don’t make a right, at least that’s my feeling. There are plenty of people, many of whom are Catholic, who feel:
Homophobia is wrong. Same-sex couples should be accorded the same civil rights.<br>
Hatred / desecration of symbols of religions is also wrong, doesn’t matter what religion, or non-religion.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you’d “be so often in the position of clarifying and defending the beliefs of Catholics and Jews”, unless of course you are well-versed in those faiths. And then I wonder why you keep company with folks who attack other people’s beliefs on a regular basis. But, that’s your choice, I guess.</p>
<p>I grew up in a Catholic family and a neighborhood that consisted of Catholic and Jewish families. Until I left for college, nearly every friend I had fell neatly into one of those catagories. </p>
<p>Nor do keep company with folks who attack other people’s faith. But I do keep company with people who grew up like I did; exposure to religion limited to one or two faith communities. It’s rare that I hear someone say something as an attack, rather they believe something to be true that is wrong and/or offensive. </p>
<p>As an non-traditional college student, I’ve spent the better part of the past two years in college classrooms with 18-22 year olds who are born and raised south Texans. They know far more than I did about Baptists and Mormons and I’ve learned a lot that I did not know which lead me to research the topics even more indepth. </p>
<p>Finally, while I can understand why someone would think that desecration of religious symbols is wrong, it is far less wrong than any infringement on our First Amendment. If I wanted to live in a society that gave symbols/religions the same protection as individuals, I’d move to a fundamentalist country.</p>
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<p>She’s in south Texas; she probably has little choice but to associate with them.</p>
<p>I agree with her - I grew up in the Northeast and people were Catholic, Jewish, or some kind of mainstream liberal Protestant - not fundamentalist or evangelical. Religion was private and not something you wore on your sleeve. It’s a shock when you travel to areas where people really, honestly don’t know Catholics or Jews or they actually think that someone else’s relationship with G-d or Jesus is any of their business.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that Jewish people consider themselves a minority. I have overheard conversations from self identified jewish people who say things like their child is a minority on campus and I think huh? I personally don’t know who is Jewish or not unless they say so.
In my experience, it seems to be so much of the conversation.</p>
<p>My answer to the OP is simply that some people need someone to hate.</p>
<p>Our Jewish friends in Chicago are who I miss the most since moving to Podunk, BFE. We still visit them all at Christmas. (Not for the occasion, of course, but because that happens to be when I’m off work.)</p>
<p>Jewish people consider themselves a minority because they ARE a minority. Whether or not you can identify us (some are more identifiable than others - especially those who are religiously observant), we are often reminded of our difference. I think most Christians – Catholic and Protestant – have no idea how normative Christianity is in American society. I never minded it much, at least not after I was 7 or 8, but I know plenty of generally assimilated people for whom it grated and grated. They felt they were being isolated and attacked twenty times a day.</p>
<p>Not only that, but even for people my age, there were plenty vestiges of real discrimination around. I had a great internship for a major Wall St. financial institution when I was in college. You did not need all your fingers to count all the Jews employed by this company then – and none of them had been there longer than five years. Apart from a few pioneers, most professional firms were not “integrated” until the 60s or 70s. My in-laws spent most of their adulthood as Unitarians simply because my father-in-law’s company did not employ Jews (although by the 60s it was more of a don’t ask / don’t tell system, and the prohibition was probably gone by the 80s). My father’s parents would not let him study architecture, because at that time it was unheard-of for a Jew to get a job with an established firm of architects. An elderly high school teacher of mine, with whom I was arguing about the interpretation of a poem, told me that he respected me a great deal but that my cast of mind was too “Oriental” for his taste. I knew what he meant.</p>
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<p>To some extent I agree. To some extent I don’t agree. </p>
<p>I have met a lot of people who do not look Jewish (to the extent one can look Jewish). Only if they had a traditionally Jewish name or they told you they were Jewish could you figure out they were Jewish. It is difficult to tell who is an who is not Jewish unless you know the person. Compare that to race where one’s race is often obvious.</p>
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<p>Jewish people are only about 2-3% of the US. That’s pretty minority to me!</p>
<p>As for names - I had a VERY “obviously Jewish” last name growing up (even though I was the child of a non-practicing Catholic mother and non-practicing Jewish father, and we didn’t do anything “Jewish” other than eat bagels and lox). I definitely know that there were situations in which the name preceded me, if that made sense. I was seen as “too Jewish” (because of the name) for some boys, and “not Jewish enough” for others. I have a much less obviously-identifying last name now.</p>
<p>Gee, there was an oft-cited figure that 2/3 of the caucasian females on a certain east coast ivy league school were jewish. They may be a minority depending on your definition of the universe, but they don’t get their minority self-awareness status from feeling outnumbered. They’re pretty prevalent in certain parts of the country.</p>
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<p>There seem to be a remarkable number of white, Christian students on our daughters’ campus who never met anyone who wasn’t white and Christian until they got to college. These students are not accustomed to the diversity that your daughter and my daughter take for granted. </p>
<p>There is also a very clannish Asian contingent on campus – something that shocked my daughter, who came from a high school magnet program where Asians mixed freely with everyone else.</p>
<p>Perhaps for our daughters, the real diversity lesson to be gained at college involves the challenges they encounter when dealing with less cosmopolitan people.</p>
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<p>The statistics I’ve seen indicate that at least one-third – perhaps as many as one half – of the white students at all of the Ivy League schools except Dartmouth are Jewish. It’s difficult to determine exact numbers because colleges don’t bother to count Jews in the way that they count African Americans, Hispanics, or Asians, and Hillel’s figures are not necessarily accurate. Nevertheless, despite their heavy representation on some campuses, Jews are still a very small minority of the overall U.S. population.</p>
<p>[World</a> Jewish Population | Latest Statistics](<a href=“http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/world-jewish-population.htm]World”>World Jewish Population | Latest Statistics)</p>
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<p>If anyone wants to argue that Jews aren’t a minority, I’ve got facts to dispute them.</p>
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<p>I think it could have more to do with upbringing (lack of the teaching of tolerance in the home; lack of discipline, etc.). Two true stories:</p>
<p>1) At a place I volunteer at, one little girl (6 years old) was whining about how one of the boys hit her. Another volunteer (neither of us actually saw what happened) asked the boy if he hit her; he said no. She told both kids that they were all friends at this place (the program they attend) and needed to get along with each other. The little girl said that he was not her friend because he had dark skin and she had light skin, and cried when we berated her for saying such an inappropriate thing.</p>
<p>2) Once when I was on a Native American reservation for another volunteer project, a 7 year old kid was telling other children (in a school) that “Hitler was a great person.” The other kids had no clue who Hitler even was, and honestly no one would expect them to at such a young age.</p>
<p>Honestly, where else can these kids learn this crap than at home (either from older siblings or the parents)?</p>
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<p>Yes, Jews will be more prevalent in certain parts of the country, but they are still minorities in those areas for the most part. What % of the New York population do you think is Jewish, for example, crescent?</p>
<p>It is interesting how some jews are ashamed of their race or religion. They always claim that they are half jewish, a technical impossibility (either your 100% or 0%, bloodline makes no difference). </p>
<p>Why are they ashamed? That like asians being ashamed of being… asian.</p>
<p>Skimming the last 15-20 posts in this thread makes me so glad that I live in a place like L.A. where being Jewish, or anything else, isn’t much of an issue with most people. I’ve had several on-line disconnects with people who are used to living in a place where virtually everybody is Christian and don’t get how things like having high school football players run through archways marked with pro-Christian sayings could be offensive to anyone.</p>
<p>On-topic with CC in general: D came home from the first day of Calculus AB in 11th grade and said, “It’s the Jews, the Asians, and me and Callan.” Somewhere in late high school, she told me that my parental attitude was pretty demanding but that if were Jewish I’d be normal and if we Asian I’d be easy. Some stereotypes may be nonetheless largely true, e.g., drive for education.</p>
<p>As to the OP’s original question, someone once said it was because Jews sank the Titanic. When pointed out that the Titanic was sunk by an iceberg, the guy replied, “Iceberg, Goldberg, what’s the difference.”</p>