Some are quicker than others to get off a sinking ship. In an article in the Village Voice, Michael Lerner, editor of the liberal Jewish monthly Tikkun, asserts that "Jews Are Not White." Lerner writes, "In the context of American politics, to be 'white' means to be a beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the world—and hence to 'owe' something to those who have been exploited. So when Jews are treated as white in the United States, the assessment is not a crude physical one but a judgment of Jewish culture and civilization, history, and destiny."

"Today," Lerner concluded, "[multiculturalism] is merely the tool of an elite of minority intellectuals seeking to establish themselves inside an intellectual world that has too long excluded them. And in that context, Jews must respond with an equally determined insistence that we are not white, and that those who claim we are and exclude our history and literature from the newly emerging multicultural canon are our oppressors."

[Ed.: In 1997 Lerner admitted he penned letters supposedly written to his magazine by subscribers. "Sometimes he has to concoct a community," an associate explained to The Washington Post.]

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