Jews not only monopolized money-lending prior to the fourteenth century, when Christian prohibitions against usury broke down. The dispersion of Jews throughout the know world, east and west, also gave them international advantages in global trade and finance because family and tribal linkages were maintained on an international scale. The earliest terrible pogroms against the Jews occurred in northern Europe after the year 1000, the year of the “millennium,” when Christians (but not the Jews) believed the world would come to an end with the second coming of Christ. As the year approached, more and more Christians tended to become debtors and Jews creditors, Christians naturally believing they would not have to pay off loans after 1000. Additionally, Christians tended to give their wealth to the church, hoping to secure favorable positions in the afterlife, while Jews continued to pass their wealth on to their children. When the world did not end in 1000 A.D., economic tensions were inevitable, and for the following three centuries Jews were slaughtered throughout Europe in Crusades and pogroms.
The fact that the Jews throughout the ages have been a mighty force behind the expansiveness of the global economy has in no small way contributed to their survival. In no less a way has this Jewish instinct for survival through promotion of general economic growth contributed to the survival of Christianity, as in the Middle Ages. For while Christianity is not intrinsically biased on the economic issue, neither does it provide a counterforce. In other words, during contraction the Christian impulse is wholly redistributive, which does nothing to arrest the contraction and turn the economy once again toward expansion.
I was listening to Neal Boortz while on the treadmill the other day and the talkmaster was answering a caller’s question about the difference between racism and bigotry.
Racism is belief in the superiority of once race over another. A racist may actually like another person but still feel they are inferior in some way. A white person may be friendly and work with blacks but may feel that they are not qualified or capable to be president. Such an attitude would be racist. Nazis believed in their inherent racial superiority to almost every ethnic group but their own. They were the supreme racists.
A bigot may or may not believe in a racial or ethnic group’s inferiority but may just not like them. If a white person believes Blacks are their genetic equal but just does not like them because of their culture or behavior then that person would be more accurately called a bigot than a racist.
Boortz introduced the concept of a “culturalist”, one who believes their culture is superior. A belief in God, family, modesty and a work ethic may make some feel their belief is superior to a culture with less emphasis on those values.
I like the word “ethnocentric” to describe many American’s “culturalist” bias. An ethnocentric tends to see through only from their cultural perspective and is largely ignorant of other cultures. American Christians may have a difficult time understanding non Christian beliefs, and being largely a majority often find it difficult to understand minority ethnic groups in their midst or the behavior of other ethnic groups in the parts of the world where they are not a minority.
The ethnocentric tend to be less conscious of their bias than the bigots or racists. It is more a disease of ignorance than malice. Travel and education can overcome ethnocentricity. As many immigrants work their way up the American economic ladder their neighbors become less ethnocentric.
“Kenyans of the Kalenjin speaking Nandi people of the Great Rift Valley hold the top sixty world times in the three-thousand-meter steeplechase. Yes, that’s right – all sixty.”* While we can acknowledge racial differences, even superiority in specific skill sets, that does not mean that they should be treated any more or less equal as moral human beings and citizens. (I am not certain that this athletic edge is absolutely racially induced, but that is an amazing statistic.)
