Jews Don't Count

by David Baddiel

This – a handful of the total incidents – is why Jews don’t feel white, if by white you mean safe. And as for me: I didn’t feel white when, as a twelve-year-old at a new school, a teacher was overheard to say of me, venomously, ‘Jew’, and another teacher replied: ‘Of course.’ I didn’t feel white when, loving T. S. Eliot as a teenager, I discovered that he considered Jews to be lower than rats. I didn’t feel white when I was being beaten up in London by skinheads in the 1970s, however much I might later convert it into comedy. I didn’t feel white when a man behind me at Stamford Bridge shouted repeatedly ‘Fuck the fucking Jews!’ I didn’t feel white when I received furious tweets to tell me Mear One’s mural isn’t antisemitic, but, rather, justifiably shows ‘Zionist greed’. And, as the examples of Jews not counting have built up, I haven’t felt all that white writing this book.