KY Lantern: “New Orleans in the 1970s was awash with racism, but it mostly targeted African Americans. Once someone fell on the “white” side of the black-white divide, neither nationality nor religion mattered much to those who reared me.
To the extent Jewish people appeared in our lore, the narratives were favorable.
A Jewish politician represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate even before the Civil War.
A Jewish businessman was crowned first King of Carnival.
Because of the segregation characterizing more-traditional New Orleans social clubs, Jewish businessmen helped launch the Mardi Gras parades that came to define my favorite holiday….
I hope it’s become clear how unlikely a candidate I was to be spouting antisemitic garbage. If anything, I felt an abstract fondness for Jewish people, and I’d never witnessed antisemitism in real life.
Yet, sitting alone at my word processor late one night, horrified that Israel was poised to execute a Ukrainian autoworker and struggling to express my feelings persuasively, I latched onto the sort of nasty images and phrases that antisemites had employed for generations….
One thing the study of racism taught me is how adaptable such a centuries-old evil can be.
It doesn’t matter that Americans express positive feelings toward Jewish people. Doesn’t matter if they’re sincere.
Antisemitism sits lurking in the cultural background. Once anger or fear or frustration arises, however justifiable — once those emotions seek expression — they find an easily available (and potentially deadly) toolkit of insults, prejudices, and even conspiracies to exploit.”