Framing the Word "Jew", Jewish Bodies, and White Nationalist Antisemitism

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 5: The Subjectivity of Racial Identity

Abstract

This study analyzes the intersection on antisemitism and racism in the United States by exploring how white gentiles in the U.S. frame the word "Jew", Jewish bodies, and incidents of white nationalist antisemitism. In focusing on white gentiles, I seek to break the tradition of antisemitism scholars who focus on Black, Muslim, and Black Muslim antisemitism within the U.S. (Raab 1969; Blakeslee 2000: 151-204; Schoenfeld 2004: 103-112; Shapiro 2006; Goldschmidt 2006: 194-197; Perry and Schweitzer 2008: 291-305). Rather, this study focuses on the antisemitism of the most powerful actors within U.S. society--white gentiles (Feagin 2017;2018). As noted by Religious Studies scholar Cynthia Baker, people identified as Jews “have not, in fact, owned the word Jew or controlled the discourse about it—or even much used the term—for most of the past two thousand years” (2017:3). Yet, there remains no sociological investigation of the ways white gentiles in the U.S. frame this word today. Furthermore, there is a dearth of sociological research that explores the ways white gentiles construct the male and female Jewish body and impose racial identities on Jews in the U.S. through constructs of Jewish personality and physicality. As it stands, much of the sociological literature regarding race and ethnicity relies on anthropological work that is over two decades old when addressing racial identities are imposed on Jewish Americans (Brodkin 1998). Finally, this research also contributes to the sociological study of race and ethnicity by exploring how white gentiles view incidents where white nationalists engage in racialized forms of antisemitism

Author

• Thaddeus Atzmon, Texas A&M University