Ragesoss, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
With the most elusive challenges, sometimes a solution lies right in front of us. That principle guides my work as a scholar of Jewish identity in popular media, as I use the screens in front of us — the films, TV episodes, music videos, tweets, and memes that we consume every day — to defuse common real-world challenges in discussing antisemitism.
Both Jews and non-Jews commonly struggle to explain how antisemitism works in twenty-first-century America. Indeed, there are many well-intentioned people who, despite their intention to fight all kinds of bigotry, lack the tools to notice antisemitism at all. These difficulties affect many scholars, students, activists, Jewish communities, and a wide range of other concerned citizens.
Helping all these readers to better decipher antisemitism is the goal of my new book, Millennial Jewish Stars: Navigating Racial Antisemitism, Masculinity, and White Supremacy. By illuminating how Jewish pop culture stars navigate antisemitic stigmas on screen, the book clarifies how antisemitism shapes everyday perceptions, biases, and behaviors in real life. Although antisemitism can seem slippery to analyze, it is really as familiar to many readers as their favorite star or sitcom.
This book especially demystifies how antisemitism interacts with race in daily life, a topic that many people struggle to articulate because it seems so contradictory. For example, if most Americans consider Jewishness to be a religious or cultural (not racial) identity, then why does antisemitism commonly include racial elements, such as widespread bodily stereotypes about Jewish noses, hair, voices, and penises? How can these antisemitic racial stigmas impact Jews of color — like the biracial Jewish rap superstar, Drake — whose bodies do not stereotypically “look Jewish?” And how can Jews with white skin challenge antisemitism without downplaying their own white privilege, and vice versa?
Until these contradictions around race and antisemitism get untangled, they’ll continue to fuel tension between many different groups who all earnestly aim to build a kinder, safer, more inclusive world. In particular, these contradictions can fuel a misperception that fighting antisemitism hinders (rather than assists) fighting racism, and vice-versa. For example, these contradictions can produce a misbelief that white-skinned Jews who raise concerns about antisemitism are just lying in order to dodge white guilt and distract from real issues. And in return, these contradictions can drive a misbelief that all antiracist initiatives are inherently dismissive about antisemitism.
When tackling such serious issues, popular media might seem an unlikely resource. Yet even media that seem light can provide vivid examples for clarifying how antisemitic stigmas intersect with race in everyday thought. Investigating these examples can make antisemitism newly visible and analyzable for audiences who were previously unaware that (or even skeptical that) anti-Jewish stigma shapes daily life in America.
For example, when welcoming people to conversations about race, antisemitism, and Jewishness, I often find it helpful to bring up two Jewish pop culture stars: Drake and Zac Efron. Whether I’m speaking with students, colleagues, or new acquaintances in the Jewish community, I find that Drake and Efron’s names often elicit sharp surprise, and even spur twin exclamations that “Drake is Jewish?!” and “Zac Efron is Jewish?!” Upon reflection, these interlocutors consistently trace their surprise to a perception that Drake looks too Black, Efron too white, and both too muscular and handsome to “look Jewish.” But even while voicing their preconceptions about Jewish skin, faces, and muscles, many people state that they do not consider Jewishness a bodily trait, but a religious or cultural identity. Indeed, for many interlocutors, it is as novel to notice their own racial perceptions about Jewish bodies as to find those perceptions disrupted by Drake and Efron. In other words, a brief discussion about millennial Jewish stars helps these interlocutors to newly recognize their own conflicting definitions of Jewishness and their own preset images of Jewish bodies.
In turn, this new self-reflection opens the door to discussing where exactly these racial assumptions about Jewish skin, hair, faces, and muscles have come from: namely, an eight-century lineage of artistic, literary, theatrical, and pseudoscientific stigmas on Jewish bodies. Even for many Americans (both Jews and non-Jews) who have no idea about this history and who would never consciously label Jews a “race,” this history still fuels widespread tacit assumptions about how Jews look, move, and speak. And these assumptions form a rarely-acknowledged dimension of American racial “common sense,” shaping the way that many Americans subconsciously interpret the people around them — including both white-skinned people like Zac Efron and people of color like Drake.
Further, pop cultural examples can help to clarify how this antisemitic dimension of racial thinking intersects with (rather than canceling out) the racial privileges and dangers of different skin tones. Just one helpful case study is Drake’s fellow millennial Jewish rapper “Lil Dicky” (aka David Burd), who specializes in self-deprecating comedic rap. Lil Dicky often highlights how white privilege and racial antisemitism affect him simultaneously. On the one hand, in the rap “White Dude” (2013), he self-describes as white and notes how his white skin shields him from police scrutiny. Yet Lil Dicky also commonly emphasizes the antisemitic racial stigmas that can target his Jewish body. In particular, he sometimes calls himself a “kike,” an outdated antisemitic racial slur that remains popular among white nationalists, and he often describes his body in accordance with antisemitic bodily tropes, such as when calling himself a “nappy-headed, greasy Jew.” These self-descriptions highlight how a Jewish person in America today may simultaneously encounter color-based racial dynamics (like white privilege or color-based racism) and antisemitic racial stigmas (like stigmas on Jewish noses and hair).
And this intersection exposes Jews to more than just pejorative perceptions, jokes, or caricatures about their bodies: it also exposes Jews to specific forms of racial violence. In fact, Lil Dicky’s “White Dude” music video on YouTube (sadly) makes a helpful teaching tool about this threat of antisemitic racial violence, because the video has drawn ire from some white supremacist viewers. In particular, the comments section below the video illustrates that white nationalists vilify all Jews as nonwhite race enemies. For example, rebuking Lil Dicky’s self-description as a “white dude,” a commenter named “Fashmaster” (“fascist master”) jeers that “He’s not white. He’s a fucking Jew.” Similarly, another commenter writes that “Jews aren’t white, you filthy fuck.” Analyzing these hostile YouTube comments illuminates the real-world effects of jointly experiencing white privilege and racial antisemitism: in the U.S. today, white-skinned Jews like Lil Dicky simultaneously experience racial safety from police violence and racial vulnerability to far-right violence, such as the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Comprehending this duality is vital for everyone who wishes to fully map how race works in America today.
Alongside Lil Dicky, Drake, and Zac Efron, Millennial Jewish Stars also examines the “man-baby” film star Seth Rogen and the self-titled “Jewess” comedy duo Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer. Collectively, these six stars helpfully illustrate how antisemitism can intersect with varied skin tones, genders, body shapes, and media genres. By analyzing all these variations, the book invites readers to newly pinpoint many mechanisms, traits, and effects of antisemitism that commonly go unnoticed or misunderstood. Through these insights, the book aims to offer readers new clarity about their own daily lives, experiences, and world. And in turn, I hope that readers may gain new tools for challenging antisemitism.
