# Posted 2:56 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

JEWS OF DIXIE: OxBlog's intrepid reades are on a mission to figure out why it is that Hebraic Northerners assume that anti-Semitism thrives in the states of the Old Confederacy. Gary Farber, the incisive mind behind Amygdala writes that:

I don't have any kind of statistics handy, and I'm a bit loath to do other people's online research without a darned good reason (that's a hint to try googling up some yourself), but first an observation: there are and particularly were in the Sixties and earlier, far, far, far, more "blacks" in the South than Jews. So I'm hardly surprised to see anyone testify what I'm sure is completely true: that they heard far more anti-black remarks than anti-semitic remarks, and witnessed far more anti-black acts, etc. It only stands to reason.

As an anecdote, my mother, who was quite brave, took a hitchhiking trip with a friend, down through the South to visit her brother, who was then training at an Army base, in 1942. When she allowed in conversation with a truck driver that she was Jewish, he asked to see her horns. Deadly serious, no joke, that's what he (and many people) believed. Not in NYC, of course, but that's a difference between being around zillions of Jews and never having met one.

I don't recall of any Jewish civil rights workers being shot up North (Goodman, Schwerner, Cheney, you've heard of them?). And in the Sixties, the KKK was a tad more popular down South. And many other people, of course, had lesser versions of their opinions, which had a lot to say about Jews. As does, for instance, still, David Duke and others today. Where was it David Duke was in office, again?

On the other hand, Congressman Moran is not from a Southern state.

It's almost certainly as worthwhile to distinguish between urban areas and rural areas when discussing anti-semitism, as it is "north" and "south," historically. NYC is an exceptional case, for instance, as are some other large cities, but it's not as if you couldn't find anti-semitism in rural northern states, to be sure.

I think Gary says it pretty well. And whereas his mother was asked about her horns in the 1940s, I have friends who were asked about their horns in the 1990s. (It probably didn't help that my friend's last name was Horn, but anyway.)

Reader BR, a Southern native, thinks that the premise of Southern anti-Semitism should take into account the difference between Catholics and Protestants. As he observes:

I grew up in Alabama -- Mobile to be specific. I attended Catholic grade and high school from 1948 to 1960. Not once did I hear a disparaging remark from the nuns or the brothers aginst the Jews. Oddly enought Mobile has a substantial Catholic, and I suspect, a respectablely sized Jewish populations.

Growng up, I never heard my father or anyone else saying anything bad about Jews, but the Blacks were another story. Also I do not recall any synagogues being defaced. I think the KKK was never very big in Mobile because of the relatively large Catholic population and obviously the KKK never welcomed Catholics, Jews, and Blacks with open arms (or sheets.)

PS Mobile is a seaport and it is my opinion that seaports are generally more tolerant about cultural differences.

Another reader -- one who happens to share the initials DH -- adds that all those who think of the South as more anti-Semitic should take into account the often more offensive racism and anti-Semitism of the North. As he recalls,

I lived in Atlanta, and traveled the across the deep south, but no further north than Richmond until I went to Hofstra U. ( Long Island ). I am 39, from a white, Southern Baptist upbringing. My experience is similar to the DH you quote, but coming along at the tail end of the desegregation struggle, I heard very few openly expressed anti-black comments either. Prejudice was not extinguished by any means, but race problems had become a source of regional shame. I remember being stunned to hear my roommate from New England unselfconsciously ask me, "How can you stand all the niggers down there?" The "N-word" was considered a hyper-obscenity in my southern circle of friends.

In college, my incompetence at identifying Jews by racial characteristics or surname was a source of amusement, as was my confusion of their term "JAP" with John Wayne's epithet for his enemy in old war movies. I had always thought of Judaism as a religious belief that one could not know of a stranger. The Jewish friends of my childhood were simply kids whose religion had an inconveniently unsynchronized, but recognizably similar Sabbath ritual.

White Northerners I met in college all seemed to assume that whatever racial prejudices they harbored were at least better than what went on down south, and thus excusable.

A point worth making. Last but not least, blogger Dan Gelfand adds that

among my father's generation (he's 52), the perception of southern anti-Semitism seems to have at least partly resulted from the murders of Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman. It's something that seems to have stuck in the heads of many people. That said, I don't really know how much of that perception is actually true.

In closing, I offer a thought and a joke. The thought: Northern Jews' strong identification with the civil rights movement has led them to assume that the racists of the South must have also been anti-Semites. Regardless of our white skin, we know that Teutons and Anglo-Saxons often consider us to be less than white.

And the (moderately offensive) joke:

In 1944, a lonely southern dowager sent a telegram to the local army base to let it be known that she would be glad to host two or three young G.I.'s for Saturday dinner. She requested, however, that only white soldiers be sent.

On the appointed day and time, the dowager's doorbell rang and she walked out onto her porch. Standing there were three of the blackest soldiers she had ever seen. Taken aback, she stammeringly asked them, "Are you sure your commanding officer sent you to the right address?"

Calmly, one of the soldiers responded, "I'm sure that this is the right address, ma'am. Lieutenant Goldstein never makes mistakes."

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