The spike in anti-Semitic violence shows the limits of combatting bigotry with shaming

Or what if human beings are tribal creatures who tend to divide people into groups, associating with and valorizing some, dissociating with and demonizing others? In that case, what we call bigotry might be much harder to drive out by moral education than we tend to assume, since new experiences and provocations can always reawaken it. Think of Palestinians and those passionately committed to their cause associating Jews who have no direct connection to Israel with the actions of its government in Gaza and occupied areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank. When they act out with verbal and physical violence against Jews, it is recognized as anti-Semitic bigotry. But it's the underlying, unjustified association — the lumping together of an American Jew walking down the street in Los Angeles with the Israeli government — that is the bigotry's source. And yet woke activists regularly insist that white people everywhere are inherently guilty of moral transgressions against people of color simply by virtue of being white. How does that act of association differ from the one underlying pro-Palestinian violence against Jews around the world? Or think of the way political correctness often simply changes which groups get valorized and which demonized. Back in my youth, mild-to-moderate levels of demonization among a wide range of groups was quite common, fueling the popularity of the Truly Tasteless Jokes book, which then encouraged the perpetuation of that demonization.