MAY/JUNE 2009
State of the Nation
Anti-Semitism and the economic crisis The media coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal made extensive reference to Madoff’s ethnic and religious background and his prominent role in the Jewish community. Because the scandal broke at a time of great public outcry against financial institutions, some, including Brad Greenberg in The Christian Science Monitor and Mark Seal in Vanity Fair, have reported on its potential to generate a wave of anti-Semitism.
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.
Interestingly, Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32 percent of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4 percent of Republicans did so (a statistically significant difference). This difference is somewhat surprising given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition. Are Democrats simply more likely to “blame everything” thus casting doubt on whether the anti-Jewish attitudes are real? Not at all. We also asked how much “individuals who took out loans and mortgages they could not afford” were to blame on the same five-point scale. In this case, Democrats were less likely than Republicans to assign moderate or greater blame.
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?
To address this question, we carried out a simple but powerful experiment. Participants in a national survey were randomly assigned to one of three groups. All three groups were prompted with a one-paragraph news report that briefly described the Madoff scandal. The text was the same for all three groups, except for two small differences: the first group was told that Bernard Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” the second group was told that Madoff is a “Jewish-American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” and the third group was told that Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “Jewish educational charities.” In other words, group one did not receive any information about Madoff’s Jewish ties; group two was told explicitly that Madoff is Jewish; and group three received implicit information about Madoff’s religious affiliation. In a follow-up question, participants were asked for their views about providing government tax breaks to big business in order to spur job creation.
The responses of the members of the three groups are revealing and disturbing: individuals explicitly told that Madoff is a Jewish-American were almost twice as likely to oppose the tax cuts to big business. Opposition to tax cuts for big business jumped from 10 percent among members of group one to over 17 percent among the members of group two, who were explicitly told about Madoff’s Jewish background. This difference is highly significant in statistical terms. The implicit information contained in Madoff’s charitable history also produced an aversion to big business, but to a lesser degree, with opposition to corporate tax breaks in this case increasing to 14 percent.
This result is most likely not a coincidence. First, when we examine the results of the experiment on Jewish voters, we find that respondents had the exact same policy preferences in all three groups. In other words, the information about Madoff being Jewish only had an effect among non-Jews. Furthermore, we examined how the experimental groups answered questions on a set of other proposals that did not deal with the business sector, but rather with federal support for state governments or with tax breaks for the middle class. On these other issues, no differences were observed in the way members of the different groups responded, suggesting that anti-Semitic sentiments may particularly affect views on wealthy institutions.
Other political research, too, suggests that U.S. public opinion is not immune to anti-Semitic stereotypes. For example, Adam Berinsky and Tali Mendelberg of MIT and Princeton, respectively, have found that exposure to anti-Semitic stereotypes, even stereotypes that people outright reject (e.g., that “Jews are shady”), can have an indirect effect of making other, less patently offensive stereotypes of Jews (e.g., that “Jews are politically liberal”) more salient in people’s minds. Indeed this is consistent with the finding that information about Madoff being Jewish can have an indirect, and perhaps even unconscious, effect on people’s thinking about the response to economic crisis.
The findings presented here are troubling. This is not the first instance of an economic downturn sparking anti-Semitic sentiments. Financial scandals are widely regarded as contributors to the rise of anti-Semitism in European history. Famously, the Panama Scandal—often described as the biggest case of monetary corruption of the nineteenth century—led to the downfall of Clemenceau’s government in France and involved bribes to many cabinet members and hundreds of parliament members. Nonetheless, the public’s fury centered on two Jewish men who were in charge of distributing corporate bribe money to the politicians. In her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt described the Panama Scandal as a key event in the development of French anti-Semitism. The Stavisky Affair, in which the Jewish financier Alexandre Stavisky embezzled millions of francs through fraudulent municipal bonds, broke out 40 years later and had a similar effect of nourishing the accusation that the Jews were behind the corruption in financial dealings.
Crises often have the potential to stoke fears and resentment, and the current economic collapse is likely no exception. Therefore, we must take heed of prejudice and bigotry that have already started to sink roots in the United States. The negative attitudes toward Jews reported here are not only dangerous in and of themselves, but they may also have bearings on national policy matters. The media ought to bear these findings in mind in their coverage of financial scandals such as the Madoff scam. In most cases, religious and ethnic affiliations have nothing to do with the subject at hand, and such references, explicit or implied, ought, then, to be avoided.
Post this page to:
Comments
Powered by Comment Script
Tweet
About the Author
Neil Malhotra is Assistant Professor of Political Economy at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Yotam Margalit is Fellow at the Program on Global Justice at Stanford University and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.
Illustration by Brad Larrabee
Related Articles
Stephen Ansolabehere and Charles Stewart III, Amazing Race: How post-racial was Obama’s victory?
Keep in touch with Boston Review
But the results are not surprising. When you read a paragraph FIRST, you prejudice the audience and then just check to see just how much you riled them up. I think that if you replaced the "Jewish" affiliation with a "Catholic" or Moslem reference, you would get something very similar.
I suspect you would also get around 25% blaming them for the Economic Crisis.
You could then try blaming the "Arabs" and see what you get. I suspect more.
You may even get someone blaming an "international Nazi (or communist) conspiracy".
Only when you get results for each "scapegoat" group could you make any assumptions as to whether one is blamed MORE than the others.
Obviously virtually everyone will blame someone - even if it is the Bankers who are predominantly (you guessed it) "White Anglo Saxon and Protestant" (I worked in Wall Street for 15 years)
You have a self fulfilling prophecy here.
You have proved that 25% of the people blame someone for their woes - which they do as a matter of course.
Joe Passadino
Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studdies
Does the culture of anti-semitism mean nothing to you? People don't blame white anglo saxon protestants for crises, because such association has no salience. There have been no major recent episodes of people scapegoating them or seeking retribution against them for their economic woes.
Please list *one* "scapegoat group" over the past centuries that has been singled it half as many times as Jews.
I challenge the writers of this article to recreate this study using other groups as the focus of their questions. I guarantee you will not find close to half the level of baseless hatred and blame.
In addition, using the term "the Jews" in a question as opposed to simply "Jews," tends to reinforce an anti-semitic stereotype regardless of the response.
Jews are disproportionately represented in high finance- so it's entirely reasonable to assume some/many are implicated in the meltdown.
Have we forgotten Boesky, Marc Rich, Madoff?
Shame on you all.
history repeating itself.
letz finish the job this time.
In general, I think all researchers whose work is covered in the general media should provide a link to the actual research.
Most have heard of the notorious “Nigerian scams” which have taken many people for large sums of money but in total, cannot compare to what Bernard Madoff did. It certainly can’t compare to what other “respectable” persons of Wall Street did but have not been indicted. With Nigerian scams, intelligent and fair-minded persons know to, generally, stay away from certain financial environments where Nigerians are involved. This does not mean every potential financial endeavor with Nigerians should be shunned, only that it must be scrutinized more closely. You would not want certain critical details to be unknown when you’re engaging in these financial matters.
In African American communities across America, blacks are often profiled because of their skin pigmentation but really something much deeper. Most of this is without merit. Also, if you were to go into a certain area where crime such as muggings are high and there are a number of black youth hanging out, you’re going to be extra cautious. This heightened cautiousness is common sense based upon the circumstances of the environment in which you have entered. Of course, there are those who react based upon their prejudices and hatreds because the area is predominantly black. However, there are African Americans who adjust and react based upon their knowledge of the depravity of the area in which they are entering. They make the necessary adjustments if the particular environment is that of “dog-eat-dog”. There are some negative and remaining attributes of having been enslaved for a few centuries with a systematized approach of dehumanization.
Often those of Madoff's ethnic group blend in with whites in general when they commit a crime. They should be profiled just as you might a Catholic priest when it involves molestation of boys or a Rabbi involving molestation of an infant.
Anti-semitism tends to take attention away from some of the key kingpins who are committing these crimes. In fact, "semite" means Afro-Asiatic and the average Ashkenazim is not Afro-Asiatic. The shout of "anti-semitism" must not be allowed to be a badge to hide behind when members of an ethnic group commit crimes.
T. West
And stop with this anti-semitic nonsense. Slander does not win a debate.
Maybe we should study why the good German people had such resentment towards Jewry after Versailles.
A bank robs the people and nothing happens.
The people watch this happen and draw certain conclusions.
Why is it that EVERY Federal Reserve Chairman has ALWAYS BEEN AN ASHEKENAZI JEW.
Same folks that pulled off the last depression are DIRECTLY involved in this latest financial fraud.
Jews need to clean house of their criminals, not protect them just because they are of the same tribe. By doing this, it casts a negative light on the common ordinary Jew that has nothing to do with this crap.
Own up to your tribes crimes, because the rest of us are getting pretty F-ing sick of suffering from them. Either you do it yourselves, or you will experience BLOWBACK of the likes you have never seen.
Jude
Non-Jewish Fed Chairs include Paul Volcker, William Miller, William Martin, Thomas McCabe, Marriner Stoddard, Eugene Black, Roy Young, Daniel Crissinger, William Harding and Charles Hamlin. Roy Young was the guy who was Chair during the Great Depression. I'd ask for evidence that Jews "pulled off" the Great Depression, as if we
a) take some sort of perverse glee in massive suffering and
b) have the power to push the country into a recession in the first place
but I don't have the time or patience to refute other such nonsense.
I eagerly await other religions and ethnicities' efforts to "clean house" of "their" criminals.
These are the people that gave us the Weimar Republic,Hitler and now the complete collapse of the financial system worldwide.
over 60 billion US tax dollars are heading to Israel this year,as so called foreign aid,only this time they want it in Euros.
Talk about audacity.
The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion."
If you sound like this, you are likely wrong.
The "left" has become less tolerant of Jews only because of the Israeli's Nazi-esque apartheid being carried out daily on the native Palestinians.
And it's particularly racist to say "the Jews" are a "central part" of the Democrat coalition. There are so many different kinds of Jews, and their beliefs run the political gamut. Unfortunately, many American Jews are hand-in-hand with their Israeli counterparts, and support the warmongering Republican side at all costs because they think the Republicans are their best bet to continue to support the illegal zionist occupation of Palestine.
The authors are also not talking about the left. They are talking about Democrats. Democrats, on the whole, are as supportive of the Israeli government as Republicans. For that and many reasons no self-respecting contemporary leftist would ever accept being equated with a Democrat.
And I would like to think that the left has not grown intolerant of Jews because of Israel, but rather that it has grown critical support the Israeli government. That kind of intolerance is totally unjustified. I am deeply disturbed, for example, of the way Arab Muslim governments treat their populations, yet I am not opposed to the personal practice of Islam. I am, in fact, deeply disturbed by nearly all religious belief and doubly so when it is applied for political purposes such as by crusading American Christian politicians. But I am perfectly willing to accept the spiritual choices of others.
However, I think "Scooter Libby" is correct that the left has become less tolerant of Jews. And that's part of why I've become less tolerant of the left.
The fact is that Jews are an integral part of our society and we are at the point of no return, in a good way. Antisemitism can not come back. It is not a virus. If it is, it is one we are already immune to. There are so many viruses we are not immune to. Put your time and effort on them. It will be more useful for society.
Huh? I thought there were entire academic disciplines devoted to blaming WASPs for all sorts of things. Google "Whiteness Studies", for example.
The left routinely blames the economic and social woes of African Americans on the white Christian majority, as do most black politicians. The Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva recently said that the current economic crisis is caused by "white men with blue eyes". It's completely PC to blame WASPs for all the ills of the world.
This shouldn't pass muster. It is a hack piece against democrats.
Nice try.
except of course when it comes to blaming their favorite target (after America itself, of course)... 'the Jews'
What ever happened to responsible journalism... perez hilton is more credible than this garbage.
I don't believe that antisemitism is over, however, with 'reports' like this, there is no way to make a credible understanding of the extent with respect to the financial crisis. And it seems clear that this publication is not the appropriate medium to find that information - for better or for worse.
My name is Neil Malhotra and I am one of the authors of this article. I am glad that the article stimulated a great deal of healthy discussion. Now that a few weeks have passed since its publication, I can hopefully leverage my expertise in survey methodology to address a few of the excellent questions raised in the comments above.
This is not a forty-page, peer-reviewed scientific article. However, as a tenure-track professor at Stanford University, I definitely understand it is my responsibility to explore these sensitive topics very carefully.
I will address three main points:
1. Some people raised some questions about how the overall blame attribution question was asked. No survey item is perfect, and you have to choose the one that is going to bias your findings in the reverse direction from your alternative hypothesis. The question we asked has been used previously, and generally underestimates the level of racial prejudice. We were shocked that this ended up not being the case, most likely due to the anonymous Internet survey mode (as opposed to phone). Second, any biases will likely only produce intercept shifts (i.e. shifts in the baseline level of blame), and not slope shifts (i.e. the difference in blame between various population subgroups). And it is these slope shifts that we are most interested in.
2. On the slope shifts, some people asked whether the results are robust to the inclusion of various controls (education, region, gender, race, etc.). We find that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is highly robust to these controls when: (1) estimating a multivariate regression model; and (2) conditioning on these variables. That being said, the gap between partisans is definitely a correlation, and it not causal. But it is a highly robust correlation.
3. Lastly, we thought that the most interesting finding was from the survey experiment, but nobody seemed to focus on this (rightfully so, given the prominent graphic). Keep in mind that in an experiment, you don’t have to control for anything due to the random assignment of the treatment. We find that priming people to associate Madoff with his religion changed attitudes on seemingly unrelated public policies. We would love to hear more about what people think of this result.
Neil Malhotra
Assistant Professor
Stanford Graduate School of Business
comments above.
Btw, since there don't seem to be any reliable studies about the percentage of Jews in the banking sector, the question if there's reason to blame this minority can't be convincingly answered. Maybe the authors should follow up with a study investigating if it is the view of an overrepresentation of Jews in this industry that leads people to point fingers. And of course it would be nice to know if there really is a significant overrepresentation, too.
What is astonishing about these blame games is that people seem to think Jews are capable of conspiracies far more expansive than human beings could ever achieve. Think about the number of people who would have to be involved in a conspiracy to bring down the entire global financial structure. How could that group possibly remain cohesive? How could none of the thousands upon thousands people involved not leak some important document or sell some emails?
Blaming "the Jews" for the financial crisis is a classic kind of anti-Semitism in part because it follows the standard line about Jews: at once too weak and effete for "honest" labor, yet also more powerful than any other human force on the planet.
We the people, collectively skipped happily into this crisis on the promise of prosperity-and-property-for-all chanting "We're #1!". All while slipping on world-wide standards of: education, health, manufacturing, life span, happiness, etc.
Pogo taught us long ago, "We have met the enemy and they is us."
I think these are all the relevant questions below, but let me know if I've left something out. The visual presentation is hard to show in this comment box, but it should give you some idea.
1. Many people have speculated about the reasons why the global economy has collapsed in the last few months. Below is a list of things people claim were responsible. How much to blame were each of these things for the financial crisis? (a great deal; a lot; a moderate amount; a little; not at all)
Wall Street financial institutions
Individuals who took out loans and mortgages they could not afford
The Jews
Do you favor or oppose each of the following as part of a new economic stimulus package, if that meant in the short term an increase in the national debt?
-Tax cuts for business in order to help save and create jobs
Strongly favor
Somewhat favor
Somewhat oppose
Strongly oppose
-Creating new jobs in government agencies
Strongly favor
Somewhat favor
Somewhat oppose
Strongly oppose
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/30/response-by-malhotra-and-margalit-to-their-critics/
1) Though the article does not mention it, the study has not been peer-reviewed and Malhotra has declined to share his data. By going to the popular press, Malhotra circumvents peer review, but to justify not sharing his data, he invokes the fact that the study has not yet been peer reviewed. Peer review is a vital part of academic quality control where prominent authorities in a field check each other's work, normally prior to publication. Work that is not peer-reviewed is not normally considered fit for academic publication. Though the popular press has no such standards, academic work cited there is usually work that has been published first in academic journals (since this is how journalists get access to it) and therefore has been peer-reviewed.
In response to questioning about the lack of peer review, Malhotra wrote: "Media outlets tend to do a good job saying whether the research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or not. Nowhere is our BR piece did we say that this paper was published or vetted by peer-review. I trust the public to process and update based on those cues." Although he claims media outlets tend to say whether work has been peer reviewed, he himself, writing in a “media outlet”, did not do this. He apparently assumed that if he did not mention peer review explicitly that the public would assume the work was in fact not peer-reviewed and "process and update" (i.e., discount credibility) accordingly. In fact, the popular press normally cites published academic work without mentioning peer review, which the public does not understand. A Google search for “peer review”, as of this writing, shows no mass media sources in the first three pages of results, reinforcing the observation that peer review is seldom mentioned there. There is nothing in the article to indicate that the study should not be given the same credence as any other academic work, but for anyone who accepts the legitimacy of peer review, it is hard to see how it could be.
After some insisting, Malhotra acknowledges that he should have made this clear "I think making all of this abundantly and obviously clear would have been optimal. However, I still believe that exciting new research should be shared and explored." However, he is not really sharing his research - his study - and he is certainly not leaving us free to explore it. He is only giving us some conclusions with selected supporting data points.
2) In response to discussion of the preceding concern among others, Malhotra speaks of this study in terms that seem much more qualified than he does in the article. The article draws definite conclusions presented without caveat. In discussion, Malhotra describes the study thusly: "the intent was supposed to be an opening salvo and introduction to a research agenda. Think of it as the first step in my inductive reasoning process, which I am very comfortable sharing with the world to elicit feedback."
3) The question about "The Jews" has as its premise that it makes sense to place blame on an ethnic group, and acceptance of this premise is part of what is taken to denote anti-Semitism. But no option specifically rejects the premise; even holding "The Jews" blameless does not reject "The Jews" as a category.
4) Malhotra himself has admitted that simply specifying "Jews" instead of "The Jews" may have gotten a different result or a result that would be interpreted differently. It is not clear that all respondents will understand the intended distinction between "Jews" and "The Jews", however. Grammatically, the distinction is arguably spurious: people often use the definite article when selecting one from a limited menu of choices. The difference is chiefly an artifact of the characterization of "The Jews" as a monolithic historical agent in the history of anti-Semitic rhetoric. It is unlikely that all respondents are familiar with this history. The fact that blame of "The Jews" varies inversely with education is consistent with the notion that the differences between respondents are in their understanding of the question, rather than their substantive views. Malhotra has provided no way to separate this effect from the anti-Semitism he claims to have found.
5) Malhotra has also conceded in discussion that some of the anti-Semitism he noted may simply be a result of people's tendency to select, on average, from the middle of a set of options, since 4 of the 5 choices assigned some culpability to “The Jews”.
6) Malhotra has said that the strongest finding of his study was the second survey, which was intended to verify that the conclusions drawn from the first were meaningful. As Malhotra put it in the article: “To assess more deeply whether the tendency among a subset of Americans to blame the Jews is meaningful, we conducted a controlled experiment.” This survey measured opposition to tax cuts for big business among groups that had (or had not) received cuing about the ethnic identity of Bernie Madoff (who is Jewish).
This second survey provided an opportunity to support or undermine the position that Democrats were more anti-Semitic than Republicans. One would expect Democrats to tend to oppose such tax cuts as part of their general political philosophy. However, if Democrats are anti-Semitic, they should take this position by an even stronger margin relative to other groups when Madoff's ethnicity is mentioned or suggested. Did the data show this? Malhotra was asked this question in two different ways by two different people and declined to answer, ignoring the question in one case and claiming not to understand it in the other.
7) Malhotra tests the thesis that Democrats are anti-Semitic against the thesis that they just “blame everyone” more, which seems an odd alternative, since blame is usually at least somewhat selective. To test this he looks at the tendency to blame borrowers who took loans they could not afford, which he finds stronger among Republicans. By using this position as a control for anti-Semitism, he is positioning it as a neutral position in terms of racial and other prejudices – otherwise, the anti-Semitism he claims to be measuring could be an artifact of another kind of prejudice, and, indeed, there is reason to believe this may be the case.
There has been much arguing in the mass media, particularly from those figures and in those venues most respected by Republicans, that the cause of the financial crisis has been government efforts to encourage minority homeownership, generally understood as Black and Latino, not Jewish, homeownership. While blaming borrowers does not necessarily imply blaming racial minorities, the reverse is not true, because it is as borrowers that racial minorities have played a role in the crisis. Those who blame blacks must blame borrowers; no other option makes sense. To be fair, one could blame minority housing initiatives without being racist, but those who are racist would obviously have a bias in this direction. Therefore, the group that blames minorities because of racial prejudice constitutes some portion of the group that blames borrowers. Is it a significant portion? There is much other evidence both that racism against these groups persists and that some believe that minority housing initiatives are responsible for the crisis, so this group is unlikely to be insignificant.
In conclusion, I think it would be wise for anyone before citing the claims made in the Boston Review article to wait for Malhotra and Margalit to publish their work in a peer-reviewed venue and then see if these claims are still made, are still made without caveat, and withstand scrutiny.
Also, most standard studies like this rely on alternating between affirmative/negative questions - since people are more likely to absent-mindedly say yes to a question than no. What we've been shown of this study suggests that only affirmative questions were asked, thereby inherently increase the number of seemingly anti-Semitic responses, if only be a few percentage points.
In a similar vein, I can't help but find it suspicious that there's no figures on how many democrats or how many republicans were polled. If the total sample tended too heavily towards one group or the other, small sample size irregularities could be obscuring a more reliable measurement of the frequency anti-Semitic ideas. Especially since this study claims to have been based in the Bay Area, a sample of Republicans too small to be really worth it could have easily played a part in this study.
None of this is meant as a cover for either political group. Both of them have their anti-Semites. But this is Sociology. This is a science. Tests need to be repeated and studies need to have scientific rigor in order to absolutely determine the objective reality of (in this case) which groups are unfairly blaming the Jewish population. We need a deep understanding of exactly who's biased and why, in order to effectively combat it, and that's not possible from one study alone.
Some responses/corrections:
1. The sample was national, not based in the Bay Area.
2. There was a substantial number of Republicans and Democrats to observe a statistically significant difference. In the sample, 28% of respondents were self-identified Republicans and 39% were self-identified Democrats, in-line with Gallup surveys conducted at the time. The others were unaffiliated. Given the limited word count, we could not present all the data we wanted to in the article.
3. I agree and encourage future replication. I am a trained social scientist and this was a scientifically-conducted study of public opinion. We encourage future robustness checks, including the ones you mentioned. We did measure blame of other groups (e.g. homeowners, Wall street bankers), and did not find that Democrats blamed all groups more. But testing for different ethnic groups is a very good idea.
4. We hope that people will go beyond the Democrat/Republican finding (although we should have downplayed this), and look more at the experimental results, which show that signaling ethnicity in news reporting can have spillover effects.
You will never rid the world of losers and they will always need someone to blame. "THE JEWS" is convenient. What else is new.
I'd be a bit shocked by the obtuseness of a Professor of anthropology in this regard, but for some reason "Joe Passadino Anthropology" on Google turns up nothing.....
living within the US all my life, it seems as though jews are the most respected race.
everybody wants to be jewish...and if they are, they make sure its known..
so..antisematism...existed 50 years ago.
not now ladies and gentlemen...
there are other races/relgions that are recieving more racist comments, more unwanted comments, etc. i think the author should stop wasting his time and start writing on
whats happening now..
not something that has been discussed over and over and over and over and over again...to the point of nauseation
if i hear antisematism again i think i'll lose my sanity...because a)it no longer exsts and b)jeduism is the most respected religion in the states.
did i mention im jewish??
As others have concluded, this paper is essentially a fallacy; ie, incorrect reasoning was used to draw this conclusion.
I honestly blame the writers of article for posting such absurd, nonsense.
_
The question itself triggers a response. Thing of it from a different point of view:
- If one were to ask, as they have asked, were Jews responsible for [insert anything financially related]? The answer would automatically be yes, as the association between wealth/money/banks and Jews is known, despite being untrue in today's society as Christians are equally, if not more by sheer number, involved.
(This association, by the way, is something you should read up on as it is important to know about to the origins of money: it exists only because Christian religion didn't allow receiving of interest, until of course they found a loophole, which is fine as loans and capital are essential in an economy and is why "ALL" are involved today.)
Anyway, of course Jews would be involved. So would Christians. This crises was caused by a lot of people in the financial sector, and by default a decent number of people in this sector are Jewish (again though, the majority Jew/Money association is no longer relevant).
So, the data in this study is corrupted. The question was FAR TOO BROAD, eliciting an obvious response.
________
I actually question the intelligence of the writers, and those who took the study. What education have you received; what college did you attend; what experience do you have with research?
This is truly shameful and embarrassing. Author, I feel embarrassed for you.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Read the comment above (post 58). Pure truth.
Why this study was conducted in the first place? I have no idea.
Does no one see that the question asked is akin to asking:
Were managers and officials at Toyota responsible for problems with their cars in the last year or two?
THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION IS OBVIOUS - as is the answer to the one asked and talked about in this article.
What about Goldman Sachs? What were they? A bunch of Italians?
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/30/response-by-malhotra-and-margalit-to-their-critics/
He said that he thought the open review of the Internet might be making peer review obsolete. However, when some of us asked to see his data, so as to conduct such an open review, he refused, on the basis that it had not yet been peer reviewed. In the Crooked Timber discussion where this article was discussed, he suggested that he was rushing it into publication here prior to peer review, so as to be topical and provocative, which would not be possible if he waited two years for it to go through the normal academic process of refinement and review necessary to see print in an academic publication. Two years later, here we are.
For a summary of some of the problems with this study, see comment # 52. Note that Malhotra has not responded to that comment, though he has responded to more recent ones, showing that he is monitoring the thread.