Well, it looks like a lot of worrying was for naught. The semi-credible attempts of two anti-Semitic nuts to make it to New York's congressional ended tonight, both by sizable margins. With 69% reporting, Hakeem Jeffries is blowing out Charles Barron 74.5/25.5 in NY-8 Democratic primary. Jim Russell did a little better in the NY-17 Republican primary, but only reached 35% against Joe Carvin (94% reporting).
Jeffries crushing victory over Barron ratifies something we should have already known: Black voters can indeed be trusted to hear the concerns of their Jewish colleagues, and are not swayed by racialized and anti-Semitic appeals. The belief that Blacks are more prone to conspiracy theories and other harbingers of extremism has never been true, and this is just one more data point for that.
Of course, fringe candidates can sometimes gain more traction than they should -- in both parties (as Russell demonstrates further upstate). But for whatever reason, there is a mythology that Black voters are more prone to this sort of nuttery. And it's just not true. It's consistently not true, and they're proving it time and again.
Very reassuring news. In my experience, though, there really does seem to be more anti-Semitism among racial minorities -- not just Blacks, but also Asians -- in New York than anywhere else I've lived. It's very likely simply because of the concentration of Jews in NYC makes them clearly distinct from just "white people." After all, the greatest hostility toward Indians-qua-Indians by other minorities in the U.S. tends to be in Edison NJ and other places where South Asians are a significant percentage of the population; where they are a smaller minority, the bias against them is a more generalized xenophobia.
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