Blaming Jews for the Economic Crisis

Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit conducted a survey of American attitudes toward the economy...

In order to assess explicit prejudice toward Jews, we directly asked respondents "How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?" with responses falling under five categories: a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, not at all. Among non-Jewish respondents, a strikingly high 24.6 percent of Americans blamed "the Jews" a moderate amount or more, and 38.4 percent attributed at least some level of blame to the group.

Interestingly, Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32 percent of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4 percent of Republicans did so (a statistically significant difference). This difference is somewhat surprising given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition.

Read the rest of the article in the Boston Review.