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[quote=Anonymous]I think this episode of the Slate Political Gabfest has some useful insight into this conversation, in the interview with writer Claire Jean Kim (starts around the 25 minute mark, 26 minutes if you want to skip the preamble from the host):

https://slate.com/podcasts/political-gabfest/2021/03/amazon-regional-economic-disparity-in-the-u-s-political-gabfest

I would encourage OP and others to listen because I think it offers some useful perspective, but the aspect that I think is missing from the conversation in this thread is the following. To make this more simple, I'm just talking about non-black (and non-Asian) Jews below, even though you'd obviously need to get into the intersectionalism at some point. But to introduce the idea:

Kim talks about how anti-Asian racism (which is her area of focus) needs to be placed in context alongside the concept of anti-blackness, not just white supremacy. Her theory is that while white supremacy oppresses all non-white groups (including Jews, who have long been and still are targets of white supremacy), there is also a strain of white supremacy -- anti-blackness -- which can be used to elevate other groups in order to further oppress black people.

So in Kim's theory, sometimes Asian people are oppressed by white supremacy, but other times they are [i]used[/i] by anti-blackness in order to oppress black people. It's a way of discussing prejudice that is more nuanced than trying to create a hierarchy of who has it worse, and I find it really useful in thinking about how these different identities operate under as systematic of white supremacy.

To bring it back to this conversation, I think it could be enlightening on this question of whether Jews have white privilege. Because it's less a question of whether Jews are oppressed by white supremacy (there is no doubt they are) or even whether they are seen as "other" (again, it's clear that white supremacists see Jews as other). But Jews are also definitely seen as more white than other groups, especially black people. So it's possible to say that Jews benefit from white privilege because they are privileged by their relative whiteness. This is not the same as saying that Jews are themselves an oppressive force, or saying that anti-semitism doesn't exist. That would be absurd. But it would also be absurd to say that Jews don't have any white privilege, even if that privilege is bestowed on them (and can be taken away) by the very white supremacy that oppresses them.

So yes, it's complicated. That sucks. But that's also why it's important to be really thoughtful about these issues and to dig deeper. I'm a white woman and I absolutely have white privilege and that privilege is very tied up in my femaleness, for which I am also oppressed. I grapple with this stuff daily and I don't have answers. But I can't deny my privilege anymore than I can deny my oppression, and I have to recognize the way that sometimes they are one and the same (white women are often used as pawns of white supremacy in ways that can individually benefit us a lot).[/quote]

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