Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Acceptable Tribalism? Or Overt Anti-Semitism?
I appreciate that most people hire from within their comfort zone. And I defend it – many companies with a certain ethos would not benefit from someone with a very different background, culture, or even language. It is hard enough to communicate clearly as it is!
So this survey made me wonder: is this, too, totally OK?
When asked about Jewish participation in their industry, 23% say it’s their belief that their industry should have fewer Jewish employees.
We collected data on what industry survey respondents work in. When further evaluating industries that had at least 25 respondents, there appears to be more prejudice in certain sectors, including business, construction, education, entertainment, finance, and technology.
More specifically, compared to 26% of hiring managers across all sectors, 40% of hiring managers in entertainment say they are less likely to move forward with Jewish candidates, as do 37% of hiring managers in business and 37% in finance.
Additionally, 38% of hiring managers in finance, 34% in technology, and 31% in business say they believe their industry should have fewer Jews. This is compared to 23% of overall managers.
1 in 6 have been told to not hire Jewish applicants by leadership
Seventeen percent of hiring managers say they have been told to not hire Jewish applicants by company leadership. This is true of more hiring managers in education (30%), entertainment (28%), and business (26%).
One-third say antisemitism is common in their workplace
Furthermore, 33% of hiring managers say antisemitism is ‘very common’ (14%) or ‘common’ (19%) in their workplace, while 29% say antisemitism is ‘very acceptable’ (17%) or ‘somewhat acceptable’ (12%) at their company.
Additionally, 48% of hiring managers in both education and entertainment say antisemitism is common, while a staggering 45% of hiring managers in business say antisemitism is acceptable in their workplace.
…
Hiring managers who have a less favorable opinion of Jews are far more likely to discriminate against Jews in the hiring process. Of those with a diminished opinion of Jews, 62% say they are less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants, and 78% believe their industry should have fewer Jewish employees. Furthermore, within this group, 72% say antisemitism is common and 70% say antisemitism is acceptable in their workplace.
…
All data found within this report derives from a survey commissioned by ResumeBuilder.com and conducted online by survey platform Pollfish. In total, 1,131 hiring managers and recruiters were surveyed.
Appropriate respondents were found via employment status demographic criteria and a screening question. To take the survey respondents had to be employed and work as a hiring manager or recruiter.
These are pretty big numbers. I am quite sure that nobody would have given those same answers if they were asked about black applicants – perhaps for a variety of reasons.
My biggest takeaway is that it is now more socially acceptable to be openly anti-Jewish than at anytime since the 1960s. Which is probably not a great development.
Published in General
This is so contrary to my experience. I can’t recall anyone I have ever worked with making a negative comment, or even any comment, about someone being Jewish. I’m not saying it’s not so, I just am saying I haven’t experienced it. I worked the last 27 years working in entertainment. Perhaps that shapes my perception.
It is really depressing to see antisemitism being mainstreamed.
It’s kind of hard to believe the numbers in this survey. If true, antisemitism would be pretty much rampant in our society. I would expect to see labor law suits occurring at an almost hourly frequency.
As often as I say that anti-Semitism is increasing, I’m still surprised. Maybe it’s the limited size of the sample (in my opinion). And when we look at the survey, the reasons by those surveyed are the usual canards: too much power, too much money, etc. We haven’t come as far as some people would like to think.
In the Arab world, there is no surprise. Watch this video from Qatar.
In the US, I operate in “stealth mode,” as being Jewish has not, I have found, been generally helpful.
Next month I’ll be in the UAE, where it is now advantageous to be visibly Jewish! But my meetings are largely with Anglos – where I’ll be back in stealth mode. Anglos (Brits/Ozzies/Kiwis/etc) are much less willing to build trust relationships with Jews than are Arabs in Abu Dhabi or Dubai!
Anti-Semitism is far less prevalent and less accepted among Americans than it was when I was a kid. No mainstream American politician, writer, or entertainer’s popularity can survive espousing actual hatred of Jews, not because of how angry Jews will react, but because most gentiles are disgusted by it–which regrettably is not true in Europe and never has been. The US can be proud of that difference.
But outside the mainstream, the extremes of left and right have been picking up on one of the most durable and poisonous of mankind’s uglier prejudices. From dimwits like Ilhan Omar (“It’s all about the Benjamins, baby!”) to the morons at Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us!”, it’s a case of alleged enemies discovering they have something in common after all.
The study described in this post sounds dubious to me, although it may be an honest one. Saying that 40% of people doing entertainment hiring are covert discriminators against Jews is a little weird; it would be like saying that Motown Records thinks there are too many blacks in the music business.
These percentages are about triple what I’d have expected. It’s so shocking it’s hard to believe! No, it’s not ok.
Agreed. And the 37% of people in Finance? So all the non-Jews in finance think there are too many Jews in the industry?
I kid, I kid.
I haven’t seen it either. I’d push back hard if I did.
Agree. This survey doesn’t fit my experience. Maybe in a few sectors of education and the ‘nonprofit’ world…but as a general phenomenon in business? Doesn’t seem likely.
I used to be surprised when Europeans referred to specific neighborhoods in their city to be “the Jewish quarter”, probably less out of prejudice than habit; if Jews were restricted to certain places for centuries, it’s natural for the distinctions to linger. It had creepy overtones, though. They seemed to be only vaguely aware that US cities do not have “Jewish quarters”. In fact, in the two places I’ve lived, New York City and Los Angeles, posing the question would make people laugh out loud.
I wonder what they mean by ‘hiring manager’, and how the survey recipients interpreted the term. I’ve always used it to refer to the manager to whom the new person will report and hence has (or at least should have) the final decision on who gets hired and who doesn’t get hired. But I often see ‘hiring manager’ used to refer to an HR person who is involved in recruiting.
I agree. I would like to see more detail on how the survey(s) were conducted. In polling, it is very easy to find what you are looking for.
Not just big, but crazy. Question: How does one know if the applicant is Jewish? It can’t be on the application form. Is it based on stereotypes of names or appearances?
When I was a senior deputy DA I was involved in the interviews of prospective applicants. It never occurred to me to consider an applicant’s ethnic background. Or am I just being naive?
What percentage of the people in finance in NYC are Jewish? Half? More? How could they avoid hiring Jews?
The HR person probably screens candidates before the real hiring manager sees them. I assumed the survey meant HR recruiters and not the real manager.
From the link: “To take the survey respondents had to be employed and work as a hiring manager or recruiter”
Per my earlier comment about the ambiguous meaning of the term, this implies that the people responding to the survey would have been HR people or professional recruiters. I’ve hired lot of people, but have never had the title ‘hiring manager.’
Chicago doesn’t have a Jewish Quarter. It’s got a Jeweler’s Row – Wabash Avenue from Washington to Monroe, give or take. It had more than the average number of gents in Hasidic garb, but then there’s a couple of synagogues a few blocks away.
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the concept of “too many Jews in tech.” If I ever had hiring instructions, they were more along the lines of “get someone who doesn’t break out in a cold sweat if he sees an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer.”
To the ideological Left, Jews are just more privileged white people at best, Zionist oppressors at worst. They don’t score very high on the intersectional caste system. Academia overtly discriminates against Jews (and Asians) despite a large Jewish presence, so it would not surprise me if the same has become true in the entertainment field.
I’ll take your word that anti-Semitism is less accepted than when you were a kid*, but it seems much more prevalent and socially-accepted today than it was in the 80’s and 90s (granted, I was a very young child for most of the 80s, so my perception was compromised). Personally, I blame academic leftism and internet edgelord culture for that perceived increase.
*My understanding is that there was a drastic national shift away from anti-Semitism in the wake of the Holocaust, helped by the fact that it was perpetuated by a national enemy while the war made the country more united in general, but I have no reference for comparing relative levels between post-war generational epochs prior to my own experiences.
There’s a film post somewhere in the issue of ethnic casting. In a day when the very idea of casting an actor outside of the racial or even just the ethnic group he or she is portraying on film is controversial, it’s remarkable that Jewish people seem to have little or no objection to seeing non-Jewish casting of Jewish characters. Some examples are Hector Elizondo in Nothing in Common; John Turturro and Rob Morrow in Quiz Show; Ali MacGraw in Goodbye Columbus; Aidan Quinn in Avalon; and most iconic of all, our conservative pal Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments.
And then, the Left has no problem at all casting black actors in roles like Mrs. Cratchit in A Christmas Carol. Blacks are allowed to play whites, but woe betide the white actor playing a black character.
This is part of the total equality of everything that the woke now foolishly demand. Jews are overrepresented in finance while blacks and hispanics are underrepresented. According to Woke “logic” Jews need to be picked out to make room for black and brown people. (Not for Asians though.)
I guess no longer Arab World?
It’s antisemitism iWe, Jeez! Why even try and make it less appalling by calling it ‘tribalism’?
Maybe the “survey” had its own intentions. It seems provocative. Based on observations from outside the corporate world – HR-types re just not to be trusted.
Anti-semitism is an old and proud tradition, spanning millennia and a myriad of cultures. I am not offended by anti-semites; on top of the “sensible” reasons why they hate Jews, I believe that anti-semitism is G-d’s way of keeping Jews on our toes, in which case anti-semites are merely divine tools, unknowingly (and ironically) serving the Jewish deity by keeping Jews Jewish.
Everyone should be able to defend themselves, and our Constitution (and all “good” democracies) protects minorities. That is the ultimate protection: if I am armed, “soft” anti-semitism is not a mortal risk to me and my loved ones.
My purpose in business meetings is to achieve the goals of that meeting. All distractions that can be avoided, should be.
Horrifying numbers. Not OK.
I sure wish I could agree with you, iwe. Although we see some movement back to Judaism, I think many Jews aren’t getting the lesson that G-d is trying to teach, to our detriment. Intermarriage (and I’m guilty of it) is a major threat.
Anti-semitism is a blunt instrument, and not much fun for the recipients. But something has made the Jews the world’s exceptional people (remaining intellectually/culturally/religiously distinct in foreign lands for 2k years). I cannot find any common thread besides anti-semitism.
The entire story of Esther is about how the anti-semite Haman, by trying to kill all Jews, actually saved the Jews from assimilation.
I think I must admit that Anti-Semitism exists but I have no personal embodiment of it and no reason to think that it should.
I grew up in the de jure segregated South and I have no recollection of ever encountering any teaching or instruction by family or in church or school of any form of tribal prejudice. This is my personal experience and I cannot attribute it to anyone else. The racial prejudice concept seems to be a big element in the classification of Constitutional conservatives by the Left and any who support those principles as members of “far right extremists” and that racial prejudice or tribalism feature then goes with that classification. This is an element of public discourse that I find personally resentful.
I too, growing up in Cleveland, never heard a single anti-semitic remark from anybody I knew. On my side of town there were no Jews and nobody knew anything about them other than the stereotype that they made up a lot of doctors and lawyers.
The only time I ever heard anything derogatory was from a storefront operation in the inner city that was called the “White Power Information Center,” run by some actual Nazis (not the metaphorical ones we hear of today). Located in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood (presumably because the rent was cheap), they put out printed material and recorded phone messages that you could listen to when you called their number. The phone messages were just outlandish, openly using the “N” word for Blacks and the “K” word for Jews, whom they usually referred to as the “slimy Jews.” It would make today’s “hate speech” seem like excerpts from Little Miss Manners.
Of course when some 12 year-old boys got wind of this hilarious telephone message line, it became instant entertainment for all the gang. The message, which was changed once a week, was always delivered by the same illiterate-sounding guy who called himself Adolph Eichman, and who ranted on and on about sending the “you know who” animals back to Africa and such. I lived in an all-White neighborhood and we never saw it as anything other than a joke. I knew only a couple of kids who didn’t like Blacks.
The vast majority of anti-semitism and racism of any kind I have ever seen as an adult, comes through Mass media and not through personal experience. That might tell you something about the distortion that we get from watching “The News.”
Thanks for writing this comment. It just really irks me to be called a far-right extremist just because Support the American Constitution and Federalism. We really need to dispense with all the talk of racism and sexism when those things are not real in any significant way in America.