# Accept one stereotype, accept them all: True or False **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 30, 2011, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accept-one-stereotype-accept-them-all-true-or-false/583770 "2011-05-30T17:10:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accept-one-stereotype-accept-them-all-true-or-false/583770/61 "2011-05-31T22:23:56Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Right, and that’s an old argument that many biologists have been writing papers discrediting since the 1960s when Arthur Jensen first made the claim that intelligence was heritable. Such slouches as Stephen Jay Gould (a Jew by the way) have roundly rejected the idea. > > It’s definitely not settled biology, but it’s widely controversial and some of the world’s most prominent biologists have dismissed those conclusions. Gould specifically mentioned in the early 1980s how those who were advocating the idea of heritable intelligence specifically disregarded any evidence that meaningfully contradicted their conclusions. Actually, Gould was very much in the minority of academics who took this view. And subsequent research has shown he was wrong about pretty much everything he wrote on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accept-one-stereotype-accept-them-all-true-or-false/583770/62 "2011-06-01T00:59:47Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Well stereotypes are only important in how they affect individuals. If I’m a black football player and it is a stereotype that I’d be a great running back, but I’m 6’5” and have been playing quarter back my entire life up until college and a college coach doesn’t thing I have the “intangibles” to take the snaps, that perceived positive stereotype (my race’s aptitude at the running back position) hurts me as an individual (I’m white of English and Scottish ancestry just so no one is confused by my hypothetical.) Yeah, I find it unlikely a college coach would think such a thing, but I almost kinda get your point, except that I don’t, because no one is talking about stereotypes applied to individuals and used as a measure of judgement. Do I _really_ have to tell you that again? > [@](#): > > I’m not really concerned with throwaway generalized statements, I’m fine with those. However what I’m seeing is people talking about them as though they have some greater validity than that. For example Argent Towers saying that if “any people could make it work it’d be the brainy Jews” that insults me as someone who has studied history. FWIW I’m a staunch opponent of the concept of exceptionalism in general; I’m not just picking on the Jews here. While his statement was a little off, his intention was obvious: Jews: ag experience: determined: much land had been unsettled & without infrastructure for years: Jewish settlers succeeded in using land that was previously legally decreed unusable by the Ottoman Empire. You oppose that? > [@](#): > > Just three hundred years ago “brainy” would not have been a stereotype of Jews at all. Inquisition? Do you think Spain disbelieved the\* conversos\* because Jews were so easy to control? Jews as devils? Clever little shiesters aimed at stealing your soul? Merchant of Venice? (okay, maybe this is more money-grubbing, but I still think you can’t he a good con artist without a degree of smartness) Even Martin Luther warned about how ‘clever’ the Jews were. You mean all those anti-Jewish laws and pogroms about Jews didn’t rely on the stereotype that Jews were brainy- or at the very least, potentially more clever than their gentile counterparts? (I’m not sure that “brainy” really came about before the Enlightenment…) Or more positively, what about Arabs labeling Jews ‘the people of the Book’? > [@](#): > > That is a modern construct, for most of the history of European Jews they were more akin to the Amish than to our modern conception of Jews. Pbbtht! In a shetl in Poland, maybe. Jewish history is a little more varied than that. Also, I’m sure no Amish was ever a member of a royal court. 😉 > [@](#): > > It was actually only in the past 300 years or so that Jews really started to get more involved in the European societies in which they lived, and in many cases that actually meant Jews intentionally becoming as non-Jewish as possible. In Frederick the Great’s Prussia many Jews were advocating for their right to join the Prussian militias, and were doing their best to become part of the society of upper class Prussians, in so doing they adopted many of the mannerisms and styles of Prussians. This was repeated in many countries throughout Europe, this is also when you started to see the powerful Jews in banking and merchant houses because those were the fields open to them to become part of the mainstream European society. That was something Jews had been doing since the 15th C at least. > [@](#): > > One thousand years from now who knows what will be going on, but I doubt it will be the same stuff that is going on today. So I reject any exceptionalist arguments in large part because they crop up in these little snap shots of history \*\* You took the last 300 of the last 2,000 years of Jewish history and tried to make the case that because no one thought they were stereotypically brainy, Jews have not always been ‘smart’.\*\* There are so many holes in that argument…I don’t even know where to start. Does this mean that because we thought blacks were subhuman a few hundred years ago, we were correct? Nonetheless, anti-Semitism against Jews has almost always been cloaked in this scary idea that Jews were so clever, so smart, so crafty and devilish that they were a danger to society - even when they converted. They were so dangerous that at times it was a capital crime to even preach to Jews. > [@](#): > > People are fooling themselves by focusing on the temporary peaks and troughs of their societies and are seriously drinking the Kool-Aid by buying into any talk about how their people are “exceptional.” :dubious: _Temporary_ peaks and troughs? What has been temporary? > [@](#): > > I mostly think national pride is stupid. I can tell. > [@](#): > > Well, for whatever reason despite being a proud Jew you are ashamed of the history of Jews because you don’t look at it honestly. I think I’m proud and you are so angry about it, you have to twist everything into something it’s not. > [@](#): > > Jews have been **permitted** to exist by Christians and Muslims, period. This is because they viewed Jews as theological ancestors. While in the present day it is hard to believe, at one time Muslim leaders were more or less tolerant of Jews. While the holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, and various blood libels throughout European history make it seem like the history of Jews is one of barely avoiding intentional destruction, the truth of the matter is Jews flourished in Europe because Europeans wanted them there. \*Baruch atah Adonoi, eloheinu melech haolam…thank you for Christians and Muslims to let us live the last 2,000 years under torture and persecution! \* ::kowtows:: > [@](#): > > And I have long said the reason Jews are still around is because Christian and later Muslim rulers tolerated their existence. I wonder why they were needed. Maybe they were smart. 😉 > [@](#): > > Does it offend your concept of “Jews as special people” to hear that the reasons Jews survived is because they were basically pitied and given refuge by European Christian Kings? Most of them actually looked at Jews as misguided fools who would eventually convert, and felt that by harboring God’s first chosen people they were doing a good deed and being good Christians. And we _clearly_ got the last laugh, bitches! 🆒 > [@](#): > > Well, it’s easy to just say “this is bad history and incorrect information.” However the real history of Israel is it was gradually settled by Jews who came to the area with far more money, technological knowledge, and physical technology than the locals possessed, creating a grave power imbalance. Thank you for the acknowledgement that Zionists in Palestine peacefully without uprooting anyone. 😉 btw, Jews have always existed there at one point or another. You seem to have some serious insecurities about the successes of Jews. I don’t think I can help you with that one. Using your logic, the only reason _you_ exist is because someone ‘allowed your ancestors to live’. That’s awfully big of you, don’t you think? Do native tribes exist because we _let_ them? Should they be grateful? You keep missing the real point: Jews could’ve disappeared, but for whatever reason, in every pocket of the earth, they kept their religion. Not all, but enough: there are histories of Jews in places all over the world. Hell, Jews have been in the U.S. for over 300 years! Jewish philosophy has a lot in common with Western law. I couldn’t be something else if I wanted to: the core of me will always hold dear those humanistic principles. There is a reason why Jews lean Democrat, engage in social welfare, medicine, law, and teaching. It’s part of the religion. I’ve said it before: When Jews are allowed, they thrive. Jews in the Ottoman Empire were doing well for 900 years or so until this pesky thing called _modern times_ came about. Jews exist because, well, we hold steady. And I’m very grateful and proud for the _Jewish people_ before me who did. There is something called a Jewish people, a Jewish history, languages, culture/s, custom, religion, etc., because Jews before today kept a way of life. That’s what we mean when we say it’s pretty incredible we still exist. Everyone ‘exists’ by some virtue of luck; a way of life continues by virtue of sheer willpower. For 2,000 years, Jews were without considerable power: semi-autonomous, a minority group, expelled from countries numerous times, restricted, blamed, hated, etc. Major difference between Jews and colonists? The colonists didn’t have 2,000 years of persecution and weren’t spread all over the globe before coming to America. By the time the Jews starting pushing for Zion, they’d been at this shit since Moses. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accept-one-stereotype-accept-them-all-true-or-false/583770.md?page=3)