I share your surprise, but I think in recent history in the parts of the U.S. I’ve lived, gays and hispanics have been much more openly denigrated than Jews. I realize you specifically said ‘longstanding’, and you’re totally right. Still, many many people are very open about not liking gays or Hispanics, it’s relatively rare for me to hear blatant antisemitism.
You know who I blame for antisemitism?
The Jews!
/Jewish, so I know.
By which I infer you are not in the south. Hereabouts, especially among blacks (i am black), it’s pretty damn common. Makes me sad, it does.
I’ve seen real, live examples of anti-Semitism in Canada in 1970s. Directed against me, personally. It existed as recently as that, so I have no reason to believe it doesn’t still exist.
Ed
I haven’t seen it, either. Of course, I live in New Hampshire, and there aren’t many Jews here to hate considering they’re 1% of the population statewide.
As a total aside, the statement after the demographics makes things so much clearer in another way - no wonder I never relate to the stories about religious clashes at work
You’re are saying Blacks in the South hate Jews?
I live in New York and real honest to goodness anti-semitism isn’t big. I’ve seen more anti-Black racism than real anti-semitism. As for ethnic jokes, I hear those about every group you can think of, and usually the person telling them is willing to tell them all. When I lived in New Mexico there weren’t that many Jews so I heard very little of that kind of talk.
NH is where a girl at a traffic stop saw Mrs. Plant wearing a kippa and called her a fucking Jew.
Arkansas is where they don’t know what it is, and say, “What a cute hat!”
I take it he also doesn’t frequent xbox live (video game nerd here). If you want to hear some of the most vile, racist, trollish and in-dire-need-of-a-good-punch-in- the slacks pre-teens and adolescents, there’s your place. One of the most commonly uttered phrases there is “Dude, you totally Jew-ed me out of that point, first down, kill, etc.”
Were you in a tourist area on vacation by any chance, rather than visiting a loved one? I’m not saying that there aren’t any anti-semites in NH because luck like that is not possible so you might well have encountered a local idiot, but lots of people seem to enjoy visiting the state and being assholes to both natives and other visitors.
I haven’t seen it either. I thought that, ever since WWII, picking on the Jews isn’t cool any more.
Serious answer -
More so than other groups the Jew was the visible “other” many societies. Things go sour and “the other” is going take the heat.
An “other” that is doing better than you? Even worse.
It was before I knew her. She got the license number and called the cops. The kid was a local resident. The cop told the kid she was “harassing a middle aged woman” and Mrs. Plant exclaimed, “HEY!” 
Seems to play fairly well in Iran. Seriously, it’s not cool in much of the U.S., and I’ve never encountered antisemetism in person, but it certainly still exists here and in a lot of other places.
While I agree that the use of the phrase is racist, most people that use it aren’t deliberately trying to denigrate Jews. Fortunately or unfortunately, once a phrase enters the common lexigraph people don’t tend to consider the origins.
Consider Indian Giver, Going Dutch, Dutch Courage all of which are / could be considered to be perjoratives - how many people that use them would even think about this?
Interesting. I’ve lived at the top of the Southern states for while (Good Ol’ VA) and I’ve seen over my short lifetime:
- Foreigners/illegal immigrants (They gotta be! They’re Foreign!) Just general Xenophobia could sum up a lot of places, but I’ll try to make smaller catagories for the rest of the things:
- “Mexicans” tied with Islamic people
- Blacks
- Gays (Tied) Only cuz you can usually hate on them for one of the below things as well.
4.The Godless heathens (more so if they’re one of the above. This one’s just the plain white atheists that support abortions, the left, and communism). - Yankees (this is more tongue in cheek towards the bottom end of the spectrum [hell, I’ll make a joke or two about the crazy Non-Southerners and their fake Iced Tea and all, but it’s kinda scary when it’s at the top end- ie: they actually believe it and they tend to believe in secession and the South shall rise again sorta nuts)
- Jews
- I don’t know. The Irish? Never heard people make fun of them. Native americans get more hate than the Irish and maybe the Jews actually too. But again, all the stuff below Yankees is REALLY mild and tongue in cheek (that I’ve seen).
:Shrug: It’s a weird place the South. I love it, and think it’s filled with the nicest people, and in some places I’m just scared of it and wouldn’t visit places out of fear. Such is the duality of the South. Then again, I don’t know too many black communities, so if they hate the Jews- how would I get to find out. I come from a classification of “foreign” looking so that’s probably what skews my views in the South, as I’m more likely to see certain kinds of hate than others.
But yeah. Interesting. Anyways, yeah- didn’t really see the Jew Hate where I’m from.
Unless you counted High school lunch room assholes.
Where it was whatever made you different. Poor Jewish kid. That was his Xenophobic spot to taunt. =( That’s pretty much the only place I’ve heard taunts against “Jews” so to speak- it would always be against a specific PERSON and not the race itself. More like X belongs to the Y race, so the Y race sucks the more because it’s associated with X. And not the other way around.
I don’t know about him, but this isn’t something I’ve heard very often either. To answer your question: Atlanta, GA and Knoxville, TN.
I agree. My boss at Heritage Building Systems used the phrase in conversation with me and didn’t seem to find it offensive to me.
A lot of my black coworkers in Texas said some pretty negative things about Jews. Mainly it was just negative stuff relating to money, them “sticking together,” etc.
Odesio
Would this be a bad time to say that I heard Elie Wiesel remarked that it took the Germans longer to take the Warsaw Ghetto than France?