ext_3096 ([identity profile] nolly.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] xiphias 2009-02-11 06:28 pm (UTC)

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I grew up in the rural South, and directly encountered zero stereotypes or myths about Jews. Not because everyone was absolutely openminded -- given other racial epithets and actions I observed, I wouldn't believe that -- but because it was so far off the radar, it never arose. I would read books where someone was described as "looking Jewish" or "having a Jewish name", and those phrases were completely meaningless to me (and largely still are, though I have enough datapoints now to sort of have an idea, just not a very firm one). I never knowingly met a Jew until my senior year in high school, and that was a friend I'd known for months before the subject of religion came up -- and when it did, it was no big deal, not just for me, but for anyone in our social circle. Mileage obviously varies, but in the parts of the South I know, anti-Semitism just wasn't an (expressed) issue.

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