Fox News reported last month that elite universities are “feeling the heat” after longtime donors started cutting off the cash. They’re upset that more hasn’t been done to protect Jewish students from a recent wave of antisemitism, with examples ranging from verbal threats to physical assaults.
In one case, Jewish students at New York City’s Cooper Union had to take refuge behind locked library doors while an angry mob yelled outside.
Meanwhile, a Jewish student was swarmed by masked individuals at Harvard University as he attempted to walk across campus.
Judging from the Fox News story, those wealthy benefactors are shocked at the way Jews are being openly reviled for their ethnicity. However, the ideology underpinning that hate really shouldn’t come as any surprise to them.
After all, they’ve been funding it for years.
Antisemitism in the West has traditionally been associated with white supremacists who hated Jews for having non-European origins. Yet for most of today’s antisemites, the issue isn’t that Jews aren’t white enough. Rather, the problem is that they’re too white.
That’s according to the tenets of critical race theory, which was developed in the 1980s by academics like Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell. It holds that society is designed to benefit whites at the expense of minorities. Because racism is systemic in nature, all people of color are by definition oppressed by it. Conversely, all white people are both complicit in and derive privilege from racist structures. Racism thus becomes a one-way street: whites are always its perpetrators but never its victims.
While these concepts may have started in universities, they have since filtered down to elementary and middle school classrooms. That’s evident from something called the Anti-Racism Fight Club Fistbook for Kids, which is given out in elementary schools. It points out that “on average, white people have more money, better healthcare, schools, and better neighborhoods than Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). The book goes on to add that “if a black person says something mean to a white person, he has no power over him. It’s as if white people walk around with an invisible force field because they hold all the power in America.”
Curiously, the book doesn’t explain why a systemically racist society would allow Asians to enjoy a longer average lifespan and a higher median household income than white people do. Nor does it explain how Nigerian Americans are somehow also able to out earn whites in a supposedly white supremacist country.
Further, the idea that white people possess some sort of protective force field likely would have come as a surprise to 17-year-old Jonathan Lewis Jr. He was beaten to death by a group of African American youths, reportedly after he tried to help a friend who had been robbed.
Meanwhile, the suggestion that white people share collective blame for oppression is promoted in Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness, which is aimed at children aged four and up. On page 59, it teaches that white people obtained privilege by selling their souls to the devil.
Naturally, the belief that a particular group of people are both unjustly privileged and ultimately responsible for all the world’s ills creates a sense of resentment, and some are willing to act on it. Jayvon Hatchett did: in 2020, Hatchett stabbed an AutoZone employee, later telling police that he wanted “to find a white male to kill” after watching videos about police brutality. The man survived, but Hatchett subsequently murdered his white cellmate while awaiting trial. Cory Batey and Temar Bishop both expressed similar motives for raping two women.
At this point, it’s important to note that critical race theorists don’t limit their definition of whiteness to skin color, as those who embrace what they consider to be “white culture” are fair game too. According to a flyer put out by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, whiteness includes obeying the law, getting married, and practicing Judeo-Christian values.
This expanded definition of whiteness explains why Los Angeles Times columnist Erika D. Smith was quick to label conservative talk show host Larry Elder as “the black face of white supremacy.” It also explains why Jews would become targets despite not historically being seen as white. Indeed, according to critical race theory, Jews are among the whitest people in America given their overrepresentation in professional fields and legislative bodies.
It’s no surprise then that flyers appeared at the University of Chicago several years ago which proclaimed that “ending white privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege.”
More recently, a pro-Palestine march in London included a sign which read, “You’re either on the white or right side of history.” The “white” side featured flags from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel.
Meanwhile, Canadian anti-racism consultant Laith Marouf labeled law professor Michael Geist as “a little Jewish White Supremacist turd” after he highlighted the fact that Justin Trudeau’s government awarded him a six-figure contract.
Finally, Black Lives Matter Chicago decided last month that it would celebrate the Hamas terrorists who raped Jewish women and left 1400 Israelis dead.
Back in 2002, Harvard University professor Noel Ignatiev called for “bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females, too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed, not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.” Ignatiev made no distinctions among whites as individuals, insisting that whether rich or poor, “every group within white America” works only for their “narrowly defined interests.”
If one were to substitute the word “Jewish” in place of “white,” then Ignatiev’s rhetoric would sound indistinguishable from that of old school antisemites. Yet rather than portraying Jews as an alien people, critical race theorists see them as just another example of whiteness that needs to be “destroyed.” Simply put, Jews weren’t the first target under this framework.
And they won’t be the last.
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