Minority Group, Majority Space

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of young-adult Jews in a Southern community, this article examines strategies for the protection of self when minority groups navigate terrain that is perceived to be hostile. Although few of the participants of this study had experienced any explicitly anti-Jewish behavior directly, almost all experienced a feeling of unease living in an environment in which a public Christian identity was normative. This unease was grounded in the historical persecution of Jews (and the never-again credo with which many post-Holocaust generation Jews have been raised) and in direct experience with their neighbors' and coworkers' ignorance about Judaism and Jewish life. Study participants used a variety of emotion-work strategies, including compartmentalizing their Jewish identities, distancing themselves emotionally from coworkers, and using humor to deflect potential identity-based insults to sustain a sense of safety.