Gentiles and Jews and Blacks and Whites

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more information.

I’m going to describe my bright high school years, and I want to know if my high school experience reminds you of another social dynamic that exists in the United States today. Here we go.

Bright High School Years

I went to high school on Long Island in the late 70s. The town I lived in was roughly 50 percent Jewish, 50 percent gentile. Accordingly, my high school’s student body was roughly 50 percent Jewish, 50 percent gentile. But just because the student body was evenly split between Jews and gentiles doesn’t mean school-related demographics or results were evenly split. Here’s how various school-related metrics were skewed:

Household Income

Jewish households were richer than gentile households. Jewish breadwinners were more likely to be professionals or businessmen. Gentile breadwinners were more likely to be civil servants. As such, Jewish households were more prevalent on the east side of town where the larger and more costly homes were built. I lived, like most gentiles, on the west side of town—the gentile ghetto, so to speak.

Single-Parent Households

Single-parent households were very rare in my community. But divorce and tragedy did occasionally visit. And when they did, they always seemed to visit the west side of town. The few classmates I knew who lived in a single, female-headed household were all gentiles.

Teachers

Most of the teachers were Jewish, but not by a gargantuan margin. My guess is that 60-65 percent of the teachers in my high school were Jewish.

Academics

The highest-achieving students were decidedly Jewish. Jewish kids got better grades, had a stronger affinity for faster-paced and more challenging academic classes, and were more likely to score above 1200 on the SAT. Not surprisingly, the valedictorian and salutatorian of my class were both Jewish, and most of the students who advanced to Ivy-League colleges were Jewish too.

Gentile students, on the other hand, were the lowest-achieving students academically. Gentile kids got the worst grades, had a stronger affinity for shop classes and slower-paced, less rigorous academic classes, and were more likely to score below 1000 on the SAT. Not surprisingly, high school dropouts during my bright high school years were invariably gentiles, and most of the kids advancing to community college or trade school were gentiles too.

Athletics

When it came to sports, gentiles were decidedly better. Gentiles captained most of the teams, garnered most of the trophies and all-county honors, and were the only ones I remember ever winning athletic scholarships to college.

Discipline

Most of the class clowns were gentiles, and most of the suspensions were handed out to gentiles.

Crime

Crime, whether on campus or not, wasn’t an issue during my bright high school years. There were no street gangs in my community, and I don’t recall a single classmate of mine being arrested. But my classmates were far from angelic and thuggery, however minor, did raise its ugly head from time to time. So students were occasionally bullied or relieved of their lunch money. And when such nastiness transpired, and it was inter-sectarian in nature, it was far more likely to be gentile on Jew than Jew on gentile.

Partying

By today’s standards, partying during my bright high school years was remarkably reserved. Most of my classmates didn’t party, and those who did pretty much stuck to beer or pot. My school’s partiers skewed gentile but not by a wide margin. The biggest partiers, however, were more likely to be gentiles. I don’t ever recall a single Jewish kid passing out a party or needing to get his or her stomach pumped. Nope, the flotsam of a keg party gone wrong was almost always gentile rather than Jewish. It’s not surprising then that the male and female students voted Class Sponges in our yearbook were both gentiles.

Sex

Again, by today’s standards, sex during my bright high school years was remarkably chaste. No girl got pregnant, and maybe a dozen of my classmates experienced “paradise by the dashboard lights” before they were graduated. This means that 98 percent of my classmates left high school as virgins. But if sex skewed toward any particular religion, it skewed gentile. Gentiles were more likely to date, and gentile girls were more likely to be “easy” (i.e., guys were more likely to hit a double or a triple with a gentile girl than with a Jewish girl).

Manufactured Division?

Call me nuts, but the great gentile/Jewish divide described above is eerily similar to the great black/white divide that has long plagued the American landscape. Only one of the nine metrics put forth above favored gentiles over Jews—athletics. In every other metric, Jews did better. Likewise, only one of the nine metrics put forth above favors blacks over whites today. Blacks do better in athletics, and whites do better in everything else.*

*Quick aside: Just want to make it clear that by saying “everything else,” I’m referring to the eight metrics outside of athletics outlined above. I’m not saying that outside of athletics, whites are better than blacks at everything. I’m just saying that when it comes to household income, single-parent households, academics, etc., etc., whites are doing better. Also, I’m not saying that white performance on any of these metrics is particularly admirable. In other words, whites have a lot of room for improvement. The amount of self-sabotage in the white community—be it unwed motherhood, drug addiction, or everyday sloth—is appalling. 

Given that there is much racial strife today between blacks and whites, you might assume that there was much sectarian strife during my bright high school years. And if you made that assumption, you would be incredibly wrong. Gentiles and Jews got along swimmingly during my bright high school years. There was no self-segregation along religious lines in the cafeteria, there was much inter-sectarian dating, and abiding friendships were routinely formed between gentiles and Jews. Half of my friends in high school were gentiles, and half were Jewish. And to this day, that same inter-sectarian dynamic remains. I basically keep in touch with four of my friends from my bright high school years—two are gentiles, and two are Jewish.

So how, given the lopsided metrics above, did gentiles and Jews manage to coexist so admirably? Here’s how.

1. There were no gentile activists back in the day.

There were no “community organizers” on the west side of town when I was growing up. In other words, there were no hucksters using the above metrics to sow sectarian division. No one was whispering in our gentile ears about “Jewish privilege.” No one was saying that we received poorer grades and suffered more suspensions because Jewish teachers had “implicit bias” against us. And no one was “storming the Bastille” with blow horns and “Gentile Lives Matter” signs whenever the rare instance of Jew-on-gentile thuggery occurred.

2. My fellow gentiles and I weren’t deranged tribalists.

And because we lacked gentile activists growing up, we never got “woke,” and we never devolved into deranged tribalists. In other words, we were able to recognize the unequal results betweens gentiles and Jews and dispassionately assess the fairness of those unequal results. And we correctly viewed that those unequal results were fair. Jews were better at academics because Sol was more likely than Sal to go home and do his homework, and gentiles were better at athletics because Sal was more likely than Sol to go home and lift weights and play sports. It was as simple as that. And another benefit of us not devolving into deranged tribalists was that we never developed a “crabs in the bucket” mentality. A gentile around the block from me got accepted to Stanford and a gentile up the block from me got accepted to Dartmouth and never for a moment did my gentile friends and I imagine that they were selling out and “acting Jewish.”

Final Thoughts

The position taken here is that the unequal results between gentiles and Jews during my bright high school years are eerily similar to the unequal results between blacks and whites today. My fellow gentiles and I did poorer than our Jewish counterparts on a number of important metrics because my fellow gentiles and I were more focused on playing the short game (i.e., immediate gratification) than the long game (i.e., delayed gratification). Our Jewish counterparts preferred the long game. Likewise, blacks do poorer than whites on a number of important metrics today because blacks are more focused on playing the short game. Whites are more apt to prefer the long game.

The position also taken here is that my fellow gentiles and I benefited immensely from a lack of “community organizers.” Since we had no one whispering in our ears about the scourge of “Jewish privilege,” we had no illusions when it came to assessing our biggest problem. Our biggest problem wasn’t “systemic anti-gentilism.” Our biggest problem was systemic self-sabotage. Blacks today aren’t nearly as fortunate. No one is whispering in their ears about the scourge of “white privilege.” Every major organ in our society, from our schools to our board rooms, is screaming in their ears about the scourge of “white privilege.” And because blacks today are inundated with deranged activism and deranged activist rhetoric, it’s hardly surprising that most blacks today have been sucked into the perdition of hyper-tribalism and would rather tilt at windmills (“white privilege”) than address the true cause of their most pressing problems (systemic self-sabotage).

For a more learned take on the positions expressed in this post, check out chapter four of the book, “The Unheavenly City Revisited.” The chapter is titled “Race: Thinking May Make it So,” and it begins on page 47 of the ebook linked below.

The Unheavenly City Revisited, by Edward C Banfield

And if you prefer a less learned, guy-on-the-street take, check out the below YouTube video.

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.