This is America, these dynamics are nothing new. This is what America did to AA for HUNDREDS of years and still does in terms of the incarceration rates. Americans consistently discriminate against other ethnic minorities.

So why you are surprised by this same conduct towards Arabs is just unbelievable. It is a part of American culture to discriminate against minority ethnic groups. Surely as a Jewish person you understand that. Why you would think that Arabs would be treated differently is to seemingly not understand American culture. 

His response was, almost literally, "I don't care what happens to them after what they did to us." A perfect example of the conflation that underlies racist attitudes.

Of course! What else would a descendent of people so barbaric that they enslaved, tortured, brutalized, sired and sold their own flesh and blood be expected to say? 

This is the American way!

Not sure why you didn't link to the most astonishingly racist (as disinct from the more humdrum racist) "plank" offering from Peretz this week, the one about how Arabs, I kid you not, have no sense of humor, as evidenced by the shenanigans of some Israeli radio DJs calling up a Beirut burger king and asking for burgers the size of Nasrallah's balls.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=29444

(The guy they get on the phone, btw, is just polite and a bit dim--which i guess supposedly illustrates that humor is a foreign concept to him??? Anyway, it it totally not worth clicking through to the link, if you've ever listened to a bad AM radio prank or Cookypuss, which of course Peretz has not.)

Very weird stuff--how Marty has to attribute the idea that Arabs have no sense of humor to his old friend, etc etc ... and, pretty sick, I'm afraid.

However, there are, as they say, cultural issues. For example, there was an article in the weekend NYT 'News of the week in review' about how Iranians often will say what they think you want to hear. The author struggled a bit with this, carefully noting that he wasn't actually saying that Iranians are liars... but then, what was he saying?

So why you are surprised by this same conduct towards Arabs is just unbelievable.

I don't detect any surprise in what Matt wrote.

when multiple Iranian presidents talk about destroying Israel in the context of a need to acquire nuclear weapons, we are routinely assured that they don't mean what they say.

The Iranian presidents aren't Arabs, of course, but let's let that go while we're busy working our way through your right-wing stereotypeville. The passage that you think you're contradicting, Sebastian, said:

This is (apparently) because Arabs, unlike regular people, never say what they mean...

C'mon. Read what you're disagreeing with.

I don't detect any surprise in what Matt wrote.

OK, then what's the significance of the post, what is to ponder. This type of racism is vintage Americana.

It's probably worth mentioning that this might be a decent strategy for the Democrats to use (although it is fairly risky) -- it fits with the stuff Kerry was saying in the campaign but it's a bit sharper of a critique. Something like, "these Muslims attack us on 9/11, and the president declares war against those muslims. There is something racist and a bit blind about that."

You can't have your big guns using the word "racist" necessarily but they could make the point more subtly. It's a very inflammatory, but I think reasonable and correct, criticism of hawkish republican policy. It would be interesting to see how they'd defend themselves in the public square.

I think the email's author was being very careless in his diction. "Move on" could obviously have some pretty negative resonances with a population like the Jews, who have been uprooted in countless ethnic cleansings. But I agree that it's not a necessary reading of the author's use of "move on" to say he's an eliminationist; your alternate interpretation is certainly plausible, and the fact that it was ignored out of hand shows that even among very savvy analysts--and though I disagree with Josh and Matt fairly often, they're sharp cookies--blind spots can be difficult to overcome.

The significance is that as a culture we've developed a hypersensitivity to antisemitism,,,,,while no one ever calls supporters of America's mideast policy on their overtones of anti-Arab bigotry

Huh? I guess not...If you support Arabs you are anti-semitic. . This just seems like circuitous reasoning. It is abundantly clear even in this forum that anyone who is supportive of the Palestinian position and questions Israel's 'right to exist/defend herself' is branded anti-semitic. Any one who is anti-Arab is deemed pro-Israel. Morover, many Israel's express a vehement hatred of Arab muslims just as rabid as islamis jihadist spew about hating Israel.

No one accepts that a person can see both sides. The issues about Israel are polarized on the basis of race and religion. I do not even know if it is racism, as it seems to be more about religion when it comes to Israel. i.e. God vs. Allah

My problem is I do not see what is of note about this blatantly  transparent racism or my God is mightier than your Allah attitude.

Not all racism is treated equal here.

Of course not!! This is America. There is a pecking order for racism and it starts with division amongst the European ethnic nationalities then moves to jews and progresses from there to asians then blacks to hispanics. Note how the racism is more 'mainstreaam' acceptable the more pigmented the skin is. Note also the divisions based on religions i.e. Catholics/Protestants vs. Jews and Muslims.

The Poles, Germans and Slavics all discriminated against the Italians and all them discriminated against the Irish and all of those groups discriminated against the Jews and then all of the former collectively discriminated against the blacks and asians...and any other people of color.

What the heck is new about this?

But I agree that it's not a necessary reading of the author's use of "move on" to say he's an eliminationist; your alternate interpretation is certainly plausible

Yes...somewhat similiar to how they describe it as 'playing the race card'....is this the 'jewish card'?

The difficulty with this perspective is that the victim is being told they have no reason to protest when they are the injured party. Rather they are being told 'get over it' which is I supsect what 'move on' meant.  Analogous to telling blacks,  slavery/jim crow is over...move on.

 even among very savvy analysts--and though I disagree with Josh and Matt fairly often, they're sharp cookies--blind spots can be difficult to overcome.

Or perhaps individuals and/or ethnic minorities have the antennae to detect when they are being 'racially impugned' based on their experience with the mainstream and how ethnic/racially/cultural bias is far more covert today. Whereas, those who do not bear the stink of discrimination or racism are deaf to it.

As Frederick Douglas said 'the man who suffered the wrong is the man to demand redress-the man struck is the man to cry out'

When Tony Snow (jokingly) thanked Helen Thomas for the "Hizbullah side of the story",  was it "quasi-racial bias"?

I found that to be blatantly racially/ethnically bias and insensitive. Nothing quasi about it,

I wanted to reach through the tube and smack that WASPY sneer off his face so hard it would dangle like an earring. 

Is this your normal response to people who agree with you? "You shouldn't have made that point because it was already obvious to me!" Sheesh.

I don't think the post is criticizing consistent opposition to all ethnic states.

And let's add to that- racism is rarely owned up to even when acknowleged/known to one's self, which is not always the case.  Millions of Americans will say "oh of course I'm not against the good Arabs" and then turn right around and send one of those horrible forwards about how all of Islam is bad- essentially, that there are no (or very few) good Arabs to support- and they're all on our side.

This is the perfect example of the old saw about repentence being the first step to recovery.  Before we can go about changing our relations with the Arab world, we need to acknowledge that, yeah, some of our actions have been driven by an irrational force- i.e., racism.  But in doing so, if we're actually going to change things, we need to deconstruct precisely what that force has been and how it's influenced policy and practice. 

Let's face it America generally is a country that defines it's citizens by race...Italian-American, Mexican-American, African-American, Polish-American, Irish-American, etc. We are taught from an early age to "judge" people by skin color, ehtnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. So why would anyone be surprised that any kind of debate like this would be dominated by these biases?

Precisely! Which is why I did not 'get' the significance of the original post...like DUH?

no. it makes you a truth teller

Can we possibly stop conflating race and religion? Not all arabs, by a long shot, are muslims, and not all muslims are arabs, either.

And unless you want to suggest the people accused of hating "arabs" have no problem with the Nation of Islam, I'd suggest they're probably not racists, they're more "religionists".

Hating somebody on the basis of their race is catagorically wrong, but hating somebody on the basis of their religion is only contingently wrong. If you can't hate somebody on the basis that they hold and live by hateful beliefs, what are you allowed to hate them for?

With a president who makes fun of reporters who wear dark glasses to protect vulnerable eyes, who justifies taking us to war to get them before they get us, who finds it necessary to attach a demeaning nickname to anyone and everyone who works with or near him, who pretends to be hard-working Texas cowboy but lives on a "sprawling ranch" paid for ultimately by the Texas taxpayers who were hornswoggled in the Texas Rangers Arlington Ball Park land deal, who truly believes he can do no wrong as long as he says the Lord made him do it, you can understand a question like:

If you can't hate somebody on the basis that they hold and live by hateful beliefs, what are you allowed to hate them for?

What about criticizing the idea of establishing an ethnic state by the forced expulsion of the previous population of a region? That's what's always seemed rather the most indefensible thing about Israel. On the one hand, one certainly has people who criticize Israel because they don't like Jews. This is clearly unacceptable. But people who criticize Israel because they don't like "the idea of a Jewish state" seems a more difficult question. If Matt means people who don't like the idea of a Jewish state because they don't like Jews, then Matt is kind of making a distinction without a difference. But what about people who don't like the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. Personally, in the abstract, I have a hard time sympathizing with the idea.

Now, saying that one thinks the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine which entailed the seemingly permanent forcible expulsion of a large portion of the previous inhabitants of the area was unjust, is one thing.

Saying that we should rectify this injustice by envisioning the permanent forcible expulsion of the current inhabitants of the area, most of whom personally had nothing to do with the founding crime of Israel, seems to be quite another. But envisioning, for instance, the establishment of a secular binational state in which both Israelis and returning (and remaining) Palestinians would be welcomed, seems more naive and unrealistic than racist in any way. All other things being equal, such an idea is a lot more appealing to me as a lax Reform Jew than a Jewish State run in some significant ways by Orthodox rabbis. Of course, all other things aren't equal, in the incredible amount of hatred which both sides have for each other at this point makes such a solution impracticable for the foreseeable future. But I don't see as it's morally repugnant.