THE RETURN OF ANCIENT PREJUDICES
In the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as Catholic immigrants poured in from Ireland and eastern Europe, an anti-Catholic wave spread over a mostly Protestant United States. The majority slur then was that Catholic newcomers’ first loyalty would be to “Rome,” not the U.S.
Anti-Semitism grew even more deeply rooted, marked by Ivy League quotas on Jewish applicants and exclusionary clauses against Jews in clubs and neighborhoods. It was no accident the Ku Klux Klan often targeted Catholics and Jews as well as African-Americans.
In the late 19th century, with the influx of Japanese and Chinese immigrants arose the “yellow peril” scare, a racist dis- trust of a supposedly workaholic group whose first loyalty was to their closeknit Asian communities and homelands, not the U.S.
Most of those injustices grew from prejudices and fears of demographic change. An original population that was mostly British, Protestant and white gradually was augmented by people who were increasingly none of those.
Eventually, assimilation, integration, intermarriage, civil rights legislation and broad education programs gradually convinced the country to judge all Americans on the content of their character rather than the color of their skins or their religious beliefs. And over the last half-century, the effort to end institutional bias against African-Americans largely succeeded.
But recently, prejudices have been insidiously returning. And this time, the bias is more subtle and harder to address than traditional racism against non-white populations. The new venom, for example, is often spread by left-wing groups that claim victim status themselves.
Progressive senators such as Dianne Feinstein, D-California, Kamala Harris, D-California, and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, have attacked judicial nominees on grounds they are Catholic, apparently because the Catholic Church and its affiliates officially disprove of abortion and gay marriage.
Feinstein complained one appeals court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, was a dubious choice because “the dogma lives loudly within you.” Hirono claimed judicial nominee Brian Buescher was suspect because the Knights of Columbus held “extreme positions.” Harris whined that the public-service Catholic organization was an “all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men.”
Recently, a number of newly elected congressional representatives — Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib — have voiced virulent anti-Israel bias that came off as anti-Semitic. And Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, compared Jewish settlers on the West Bank to “termites.”
Universities feel free to discriminate against Asian-Americans because their hard work and preparation often lead to superb grades and test scores. In other words, by distorting progressive agendas of proportional representation, they purportedly rob spots from other minority applicants.
What is behind the rebirth of those old prejudices? In short, new, prejudices.
First, America seemingly no longer believes in striving to achieve a gender-blind, racially and religiously mixed society, but instead is becoming a nation in which tribal identity trumps all other considerations.
Second, such tribal identities are not considered to be equal. Identity politics is predicated on distancing itself from white males, Christians and other groups who traditionally have achieved professional success and therefore enjoyed inordinate “privilege.”
Third, purported victims insist they themselves cannot be victimizers. So, they are freer to discriminate and stereotype to advance their careers on the basis of anything they find antithetical to their own ideologies.
The Democratic senators who questioned the morality of judicial nominees’ religion likely would not treat a Muslim nominee in the same manner. Calling any other ethnic group other than Jews “termites” might have earned Rep. Johnson congressional censure.
What once helped diminish ancient prejudices was the American creed that no one had a right to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, class or religion.
And what fuels the return of American bias is the new idea citizens can discriminate against other groups if they claim victim status and do so for purportedly noble purposes.
The more attitudes and agendas may change, the more they stay the same.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and an author.