There are probably several, the most pervasive of which are institutionalized and reactive racism. Institutionalized racism is probably what most, if not all, countries have, which is putting one group at the top, where everybody else never is. Reactive racism is probably the categorical dislike toward the oppressive group that everybody else has a difficult time not feeling.
Institutionalized racism is more oppressive and more directly threatening to its targets than reactive racism. The problem of racism is not just what a person feels; it is whether or not that person has the power to make other people's lives bad based on his or her racist beliefs, and whether or not that person is supported by official and/or unofficial societal, professional and governmental systems in that persecution.
That's a statistics page for the 2014 U.S. Census. It lists the U.S. population as being around 318,000,000, and the Black or African American percentage of that population as being around 13%, which is around 41,000,000.
That's the Web address of a Brandeis University page for the American Jewish Population Project. It says that there were about 7.1 million Jewish people in the United States in 2014.
By contrast to black people, Jews are a minority in the United States.
I am not trying to minimize the significant advantage that skin color continues to convey in the United States. I'm sure that it is easier, even in 2016, for a white Jew than a black Christian to get into an exclusive country club and feel at home. However, it seems to me that black Americans have so much to worry about in terms of institutionalized racism that's directed at them that a significant percentage of them might not spend a lot of time thinking about the cultural prejudices in our oppressive society that are directed at groups other than them.
I have almost never met a Jew from a Southern or Midwestern state. The map at the American Jewish Population Page indicates, although it does not specify, that the majority of American Jews follow the sensible if not altogether conscious strategy of avoiding landlock.
I suspect that many Americans take one look at Bernie Sanders and think "That's a New York Jew," and do not have a corresponding feeling of wanting to vote for him. Whether or not they would say that to anyone, the assumptions that correspond with that thought are probably keeping him from overtaking Mrs. Clinton, despite his color, his gender and the egalitarian message of his platform.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, February 28, 2016 @ 8:46 a.m.
