By David Baugher

Special to the Jewish Light

The Anti-Defamation League’s global attitude survey is drawing attention across the Jewish world and the local branch of the organization is no exception. 

“The reality is that bias is, in fact, there,” said Karen Aroesty, regional director of the ADL’s Missouri and Southern Illinois office. “If we don’t acknowledge it and don’t work to be an active part of breaking down that bias that exists on so many levels, I don’t think we are helping ourselves.”

Aroesty said the survey reveals that stereotypes are still fairly strong, particularly in other parts of the world and even here at home. She noted recent events in Overland Park, Kan., where Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. is accused of targeting the Jewish Community Center and fatally shooting three people. 

Aroesty, whose office covers the greater Kansas City area and the site of the violence, said that Miller, a longtime white supremacist who also uses the surname Cross, was clearly out of the mainstream. She said a more difficult problem could be seen by subsequent  comments of Mayor Dan Clevenger of Marionville, Mo. Clevenger, a friend of the suspect, said he opposed violence but expressed agreement with some of Miller’s views on Jews.

Clevenger later resigned in the wake of the controversy set off by his remarks. “This guy in Marionville, Mo., is essentially what I see as the real problem, and I think it is the problem represented in the poll,” Aroesty said. 

One number in the survey that stuck out to Aroesty was that 70 percent of those expressing anti-Semitic beliefs had never met a Jew.

“That they have these beliefs without even necessarily acknowledging that they even knew anyone Jewish is extraordinary,” she said. “I think that is represented by the poll globally as well as by what we know here in Missouri. People accept the stereotypes and don’t question them.”

The result is that those who hold more nebulous anti-Jewish stereotypes may pose a bigger problem than more vocal neo-Nazi sympathizers.

“The issues of rampant anti-Semitism that are expressed in the extremist world are certainly something we have to worry about,” she said. “But I think people in the Jewish community are well aware of the much more subtle bias expressed by people who have questions about Jews in business or who make assumptions that Jews are all very wealthy, that they stick together or think they are somehow special.”

Aroesty said those attitudes might come out in conversations about Israel or complaints about someone missing work because of a Jewish holiday. All too often, the individual on the receiving end doesn’t want to make waves or be perceived as a troublemaker. 

“A lot of folks just don’t address it,” she said. “They let it slide when someone says something.”

St. Louisans should take the time to ask what they can do to reduce bias and educate others, Aroesty said.

“It is hard to do that. It is really hard to put yourself out there in that way,” she said. “But that’s what I would hope people would try to do.”