Nineteenth-century racial thought about Jews was neither uniform nor straightforwardly exclusionary.

Evidence

Moreover, not all racial thinkers in the nineteenth century saw Jews as inferior, or believed that their “race” made them unsuitable to entry into the nation-state. In the German example in particular, if continuity is sought, it should be remembered that the antisemitic parties faded very quickly, even if elements of antisemitism entered mainstream political parties. Many Jews became ardent German nationalists and the treatment and status of Jews still differed immensely in the various German states. … It was, before 1914, French rather than German society that was riven by the question of antisemitism through the Dreyfus affair, an episode that divided France not between those who were proand anti-Jewish, but between broadly conservative and liberal camps. Both sides harbored negative views about the Jews, although it was of course the anti-Dreyfusards who launched the violent and murderous attacks on the Jews across the country and into Algiers. Context is again crucial, and the Dreyfus affair was not just about whether the Jews could be loyal French citizens or not, but about the future direction of the nation. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 510

Categorization

• QUESTION: Complicates the linear ‘race-thinking leads to exclusion’ arc — worth chasing how racial formation theory handles internal variation within a racialized group.
• XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century race was a loose cultural term, not a fixed category. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 69; Nineteenth-century scientific racism reframed antisemitism as a rational natural response. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 483

Broader Connections

• Nineteenth-century race was a loose cultural term, not a fixed category. #corroborates (0.82) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 69
• Nineteenth-century scientific racism reframed antisemitism as a rational natural response. #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 483