Anti-Semitic attitudes hide inside seemingly fair-minded item phrasing

Evidence

The A-S Scale items were phrased so as to express a subtle hostility without seeming to offend the democratic values that most subjects would feel bound to support. Each item has a kind of fair-minded and reasonable veneer. It is sometimes rather difficult to find the sting. The following item is a good example: “The trouble with letting Jews into a nice neighborhood is that they gradually give it a typical Jewish atmosphere.” How could it be otherwise? Surely Jews will produce a Jewish atmosphere. They will at any rate do so if one thinks of Jews as “categorically different from non-Jews.” However it is just this saliency of “Jewishness” which the authors consider the beginning of anti- Semitism. … In the second place, if one thinks of “Jewishness” as a set of acquired traits which are subject to change then it is not inevitable that Jews should produce a characteristic neighborhood atmosphere. The atmosphere might chiefly depend on the occupation and education of the residents—Jewish or no. If however the ethnic category has innate ineluctable qualities then the “typical” atmosphere must always be there. … Notice next the use of the expression “letting into.” One can only “let in” someone motivated to enter. If the outsider did not wish to come in he would have to be invited or urged or dragged in. How easily we assume that “letting into” is the only possible expression and yet by doing so we attribute to the ethnic category an “intrusive” impulse and that is part of the investigators’ definition of an anti-Semitic frame of mind. … Finally there is hostility to this intrusive group in the clever use of the words “trouble” and “nice.” Clearly the neighborhood is expected to be less “nice” if it acquires a typical Jewish atmosphere. The item, then, contains all the essentials of anti-Semitism, but they are so artfully expressed that the statement at first appears innocuous. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 449

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: close textual analysis of how bigoted claims smuggle in their premises through ordinary diction (“letting into,” “trouble,” “nice”) — a technique for spotting and dismantling coded prejudice.
• DEFINE: Shows the ‘innate vs. acquired traits’ distinction underlies harmless-sounding claims about ethnic atmosphere.
• XREF: connects to: Anti-Semitic findings about American workers were suppressed to spare American opinion — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 675