There have been waves of prejudice in our country lately that are very troubling, a combination of hardened attitudes and outrageous mistreatment of different minorities, including Muslims, Jews, Asians, immigrants, Blacks, Hispanics and LGBTQs, reflecting in surveys, legal battles and attacks, much of it encouraged by Trump for political advantage. But do those waves of prejudice make sense for any of us?
The Constitution repeatedly grants rights to “person[s]” and imposes penalties on “person[s]” – at no point does it impose penalties on families and it abolishes “corruption of blood” – an old feudal practice that imposed familial penalties that lasted through the generations. One hesitates to imagine who would be penalized if we imposed penalties on the families of every murderer, terrorist or other criminal. None of us should welcome that idea but prejudice, antisemitism included, imposes such a notion of collective responsibility and without the benefit of any constitutional protections, due process or otherwise, for a penalty far more severe and dangerous than any the Constitution permits. Group prejudice is an anti-American abomination, which liberals who fight for the accused and conservatives who wave the flag should both certainly understand.
As Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the radicals in the House of Representatives who fought for the crucial Reconstruction Amendments that recognized African-Americans as citizens and as equals, told his fellow members of the House, he longed for a world where “no distinction would be tolerated in this purified republic but what arose from merit and conduct.”[i] Slavery had made disability follow race but Stevens and his colleagues had abolished it and he was protecting all people as individuals, not authorizing renewed disability by race nor overruling the Constitution’s ban on collective punishment for the sins of others.
Jewish culture stresses education. Kids are supposed to make something of themselves when they grow up. But Jews would be more popular if we were neither honored nor condemned, just invisible. Stick your head up and someone has a beef not just with the individual but with Jews. Do the antisemites want to get rid of Zelensky or Soros? Love or hate them because they support what liberals like? Actually they’re both loved and hated for the same behavior and the hate is generalized. Soros supports liberal causes. Hate Jews. Liberal antisemites don’t draw the hate conclusion for Soros but they draw it from Netanyahu and generalize – Jews are bad because Israel under Netanyahu is behaving badly – never mind that they remember with pride and pleasure that they stood, marched and even shared the podium with Martin Luther King. Apparently heaven forbid anyone should talk about the good things Jews have done for all of us – for equality, for unions, for social justice.
Let me be clear – though antisemitism is personal to me, so is prejudice against my Muslim friends, my Black friends, my Asian friends, my LGBTQ friends. There are good and bad in every war on every continent now and in the past. Equality and equal respect must encompass all of us or we are all targets for the mere fact of having been born.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.