The critics of Chomsky whom I've been tweaking (here and here) have argued badly, but they may be on to something nonetheless.
I still have to research this a bit, but if this chart at Public Eye is any indication, hate crime statistics suggest anti-Semitism in the U.S. is far more of a problem than anti-Black or anti-Hispanic animus. For instance, the number of reported hate crime "incidents" involving anti-Jewish bias in 2001 totals 1,043. In contrast, anti-black incidents total 2,899. Assuming that Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population and blacks about 12 percent, the figure for anti-Jewish incidents is truly astonishing--a victimization rate more than twice that of blacks.
Even assuming these figures are accurate, of course, they are still ill-equipped to tell us whether anti-Semitism exists "abundantly" in the U.S. But they would prove Chomsky is way off when he says that anti-Semitism is on a par with anti-Irish or other anti-immigrant sentiment.
In any case, I would have to count myself as grossly ignorant of the relative magnitudes involved. Which makes me wary and, like I said, prone to research the issue when I get the chance.
UPDATE: Public Eye's figures are on the level. Here is the FBI's hate crimes report for 2002.
I have to say I'm totally astonished, and a little bewildered. The only justification I can summon for the media's not making this fact notorious would be if the majority of anti-Jewish incidents comprised crimes against property. (The FBI's stats don't distinguish crimes against property from crimes against persons.) So what's the deal?
UPDATE: In an update to this post, Pejman gives me credit for my willingness to admit error. I appreciate the encomium, but I still think he and the others I mentioned here were "playing the fool" when they belched their sundry accusations in response to Chomsky's assertion. The figures on hate crime notwithstanding, there is a sense in which it is perfectly reasonable to say that anti-Semitism "scarcely exists anymore," and only the most willfully uncharitable interpreter would fail to see that.
It should (but of course in the current climate can't) go without saying that I could give a rat's ass whether Chomsky is factually correct about any of this. I'm neither an accolyte nor a detractor, either of his linguistics work or of his political activism. I will say that Chomsky's remark about anti-Semitism in the West largely resonated with my own family's experience (my father's side of the family is at least nominally Jewish), and even if that experience isn't representative, Chomsky's claim can't be dismissed out of hand--not to mention be used as a license for boiler plate ad hominems.
And of course there is still the matter of Bernstein's utterly unargued-for assertion that Chomsky "wants to deny that ANY manifestations of anti-Zionism are motivated by anti-Semitism," which assertion was the main focus in my original post. That remark is far more foolish than anything Chomsky said, and I can only hope that Bernstein soon will summon the courage to admit it. Perhaps then Pejman will extend to him the same round of congratulations he did to me?
UPDATE: In another update to the same post, Pejman thinks I'm getting "defensive": I've already acknowledged my astonishment, so why can't I just admit I was wrong?
Well, I was wrong: I would've thought that the rate of anti-Semitic hate crime was far below that of anti-black hate crime.
It's just that I wasn't wrong about the issue at hand. As I answered Pejman in his comments: Yes, I am bewitched, bothered and bewildered both by the rate of anti-Semitic hate crime relative to the rate of anti-black hate crime and by my own ignorance of that statistical relationship.
But then that relationship says next to nothing about whether there is a meaningful sense in which anti-Semitism "scarcely exists today, though it once did." Which of course there is: If after a long lifetime as a Jew you (like Chomsky) had perceived the rate of anti-Semitic prejudice drop from 7 or 8 or 9 in 10 to 1 in 10, and had personally witnessed well nigh all institutional manifestations of anti-Semitism disappear, you too might be inclined to say that anti-Semitism now "scarcely exists." You also might be inclined to say the same thing about anti-Black-ism, were you to have the corresponding background experience.
Nonetheless, such claims might be arguably wrong, and so we might want to make a suitable argument to that effect (which argument of course would have to establish some common criteria for the relative concept of scarcity). Very well, then, let's make the argument and not turn a factual dispute (or could it merely be a dispute about semantics?) into something else.
This back and forth has to end, so I'll leave the last word to Pejman if he choses to take it.
CORRECTION: I had said that anti-Semitic hate crime rate was "nearly twice" as high as that for anti-Black hate crime. But given my figures, it's actually more than twice as high (2.19 times as high). I've corrected the post accordingly. (Thanks to Dr. Weevil for the remedial math.)
Comments