Integration into Western secular society erases national differences within minority groups.

Evidence

One of the most noteworthy similarities of the process of integration into Western secular society is the gradual elision of the striking national differences among the various groups. Muslims in Western Europe represent multiple national traditions (South Asian in the UK, North African in France and Spain, and Turkish in Germany). But so did the Jews in Western Europe who came out of ghettos in France and the Rhineland, from the rural reaches of Bavaria and Hungary, who moved from those parts of ‘Eastern Europe’—Poland, the eastern marches of the Austro-­ Hungarian empire—that became part of the West and from the fringes of empire to the centre. To this one can add the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula who settled in areas from Britain (introducing fish and chips) to the fringes of the Austrian empire. The standard image of the Jews in eighteenth-century British caricature was the Maltese Jew in his oriental turban. By the nineteenth century, it was that of Lord Rothschild in formal wear receiving the prince of Wales at his daughter’s wedding in a London synagogue. Religious identity (as the Jew or the Muslim) replaced national identity—by then, few (except the antisemites) remembered that the Rothschilds were a Frankfurt family who escaped the Yiddish-speaking ghetto. ‘Jews’ are everywhere and all alike; Muslims seem to be everywhere and are becoming ‘all alike’. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 894

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Parallels the ‘Grafting & Growth’ interest in how identity categories flatten internal diversity — here the Jewish template shows how a heterogeneous diaspora gets rendered ‘all alike’ by the host secular society.
• XREF: Connects to the Rothschild/fish-and-chips detail as a vivid demonstration of how passing cultural markers become absorbed and forgotten — echoes of assimilation dynamics in The Namesake. — connects to: Aggregating distinct Multiracial groups as one category erases their differing experiences. — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 51; Lumping all non-Black multiracial people into one category erases their distinct experiences. — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 51