Boston Review: Anti-Semitism and the economic crisis (2009)
This concern makes good sense. In complex situations such as the current financial crisis, where the vast majority of us lack the relevant expertise and information, biases and prejudices may play a significant role in shaping public attitudes. To evaluate just how large a role, we conducted a study (part of a larger survey of 2,768 American adults) in which we explored people’s responses to the economic collapse and tried to determine how anti-Semitic sentiments might relate to the ongoing financial crisis.
In order to assess explicit prejudice toward Jews, we directly asked respondents “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?” with responses falling under five categories: a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, not at all. Among non-Jewish respondents, a strikingly high 24.6 percent of Americans blamed “the Jews” a moderate amount or more, and 38.4 percent attributed at least some level of blame to the group. {…}
Educational attainment also correlates with variation in anti-Semitic attitudes. Whereas only 18.3 percent of respondents with at least a bachelor’s degree blamed the Jews a moderate amount or more, 27.3 percent of those lacking a 4-year degree did so. Again, we get a similar reversal when examining the blameworthiness of individuals who took out loans they could not afford.
To assess more deeply whether the tendency among a subset of Americans to blame the Jews is meaningful, we conducted a controlled experiment. The question of interest is whether anti-Semitic sentiments affect people’s thinking about the preferred response to the economic crisis. For example if people associate corruption on Wall Street with Jewish financiers such as Madoff, what is the impact on their views about bailing out big business?
People are very good at forgetting that levers of power swing both ways. Simply possessing the levers doesn’t mean that someone is particularly out to destroy the financial universe. Well, except for AIG’s executive wing, which really did blackmail themselves into a golden parachute.
Also, there’s a big difference between “ran these particular firms” and “behind the corruption of Wall Street.” One can be substantiated, and have significant factual basis (okay, I suppose, theoretically, one could substantiate ‘wall street corruption’, but in practice? no way in hell).
And, really, Will? You didn’t think the Graph was worthy of a headline? Democrats think Jews were more responsible for the Financial Crisis than Republicans do? I guarantee you lead with that, and more people read the whole article.
Ignorance is a horrible trait in a researcher, and these people are displaying enough of it that I’d like to discount the whole article. Instead, I’ll take the whole thing with a tablespoon of salt.Report