Antisemitic Attitudes Among Young Black and Hispanic Americans

Key Findings:

This study seeks a better understanding of how anti-Jewish attitudes manifest among racial minority groups in the United States. It also aims to address the question of why racial minorities, particularly Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, might hold anti-Jewish views in the first place.

Several possible explanatory theories are discussed, including group competition, anti-White attitudes manifesting as antisemitism, anti-Israel views, and demographic/behavioral confounders that are themselves sources of antisemitic attitudes (such as education, church attendance, and/or political ideology). 

Researchers identified the current younger generations to be more racially diverse, more educated, and more religiously secular than older generations. They also noted their distance from the Holocaust, the changing shape of the Israel/Palestine conflict and the shifting salience of today’s religious messages. All of these factors were predicted to influence young Americans’ exposure to and/or attitudes towards Jews.

Both samples were asked three specific agree/disagree questions about Jews:

1. Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America.
2. It is appropriate for opponents of Israel’s policies and actions to boycott Jewish American owned businesses in their communities.
3. Jews in the United States have too much power.

The results of the study find evidence of higher rates of antisemitism among Black and Hispanic respondents compared to White respondents, especially among young people. Black and Hispanic respondents are far more likely to agree with all three antisemitism measures than White respondents are. 

The data clearly show that these differences in rates due to race are present on both the ideological Left and the ideological Right, though overall agreement with antisemitism is higher among all racial groups on the ideological Right. Controlling for potential confounders, such as education, geography, and church attendance, yielded the same results.

The theory that negative attitudes toward Jews are simply a reflection of negative attitudes toward Whites (in which Jews are incorrectly evaluated by Black and Hispanic respondents as stand-ins for White Americans) is inconsistent with the data.

In political evaluations of Israel, racial minority respondents expressed more favorable views overall than White respondents did (66% of young Black and 54% of young Hispanic, versus 50% of young White respondents). This data suggests that perception of the Israel/Palestine conflict does not exclusively nor even mainly explain the higher rates of antisemitic attitudes among Black and Hispanic respondents. This is despite greater likelihood of Palestinian solidarity among Black versus White Americans, and despite young Black and Hispanic respondents being especially likely to agree with boycott of Jewish businesses in protest of Israel.

This research estimates that the roots of anti-Jewish attitudes among American racial minorities are complex, and that existing theories individually cannot explain the origins of racial minority antisemitism particularly well.