California Recognizes Jewish Ethnicity While Institutions Look Away

Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1387, making California the first state to recognize Jewish identity as an ethnicity in its demographic data collection laws. Beginning in 2029, Jews in California will be able to identify as Jewish when covered state agencies collect ethnicity or ancestry information.

This is a most welcome development for those of us who have long felt uncomfortable checking the “White” box because there was no other option.

Demographic information helps us understand different populations and identify disparities. But when it comes to Jews, we don’t have the whole picture. For one thing, the FBI classifies anti-Jewish hate crimes under religious bias, even though Jew hatred isn’t necessarily about religious belief or practice.

California State Senator Henry Stern, who introduced SB 1387, described having a swastika placed on his backpack when he was a child. He explained that he wasn’t targeted because of his religious observance. He was targeted because he was Jewish.

In 2025, California recorded 289 anti-Jewish hate-crime events. Although Jews make up approximately 3% of the state’s population, anti-Jewish incidents accounted for nearly 15% of reported hate-crime events.

Another challenge exists. We don’t have a comprehensive Census count of American Jews. Instead, researchers rely on population estimates. This makes it difficult to determine whether California or any other state has disproportionately high rates of antisemitism and antizionism compared with other states. To make meaningful comparisons, we need to know the size of the population being targeted.

While SB 1387 doesn’t change hate-crime reporting, it takes an important step toward more accurate recognition of Jewish ethnicity in government data.

The Paradox of Being Counted

Of course, there’s another side to this. For Jews, the idea of governments collecting information about who is Jewish could be seen as a red flag. We know what has happened before when governments have identified, registered, and categorized Jews.

So while I welcome the opportunity for Jewish identity to be recognized, I also understand why some Jews might hesitate to check that box.

California’s law does include safeguards. Participation is voluntary, the law prohibits creating a registry of identifiable Jewish individuals, and it places restrictions on how the information can be used.

Institutions’ Deliberate Exclusion of Jews

California’s new law gives us something concrete to cite when challenging institutions about how they define minority status, even if it is unlikely to overcome the deeply embedded biases that have led to the exclusion of Jews in the first place.

For the past three years, Jewish people have endured Jew hatred in schools, workplaces, universities, and public life.

Jewish identity is routinely excluded in educational institutions, professional training programs, and organizations committed to addressing racism, discrimination, and marginalization. Jews are categorized as White or viewed solely as a religious group, and/or portrayed as “oppressors” and “White supremacists.” These libels erase our history, ethnic identity, and peoplehood.

Institutions that recognize the ethnic identities and histories of other minority groups often fail to extend that same recognition to Jews. This is itself discriminatory, particularly when Jews are excluded from antiracist education, cultural competency training, and initiatives intended to protect marginalized communities. The hypocrisy is glaring.

We see this in social work and mental health, where Jewish identity and peoplehood are largely omitted from professional education and training while ideological frameworks that portray Jews as oppressors are increasingly embraced.

When I attended graduate school in 1992, I learned virtually nothing about Jewish identity or antisemitism. More than three decades later, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), which accredits social work programs, has still not meaningfully addressed this omission in its educational standards.

Antizionism goes far beyond criticism of Israeli government policies. It rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and denies the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland.

Institutions are generally willing to condemn antisemitism, but antizionism is another matter. In a neat trick, they insist that antisemitism and antizionism are unrelated and claim to stand against discrimination while ignoring, excusing, or even perpetuating it when it is directed at Jews because of their connection to Israel and belief in Jewish self-determination.

Antizionism can be presented as a legitimate expression of social justice, while Jews who object to it are dismissed as defending oppression. The very frameworks intended to protect marginalized groups can then be used to justify their exclusion. Institutions get to maintain their commitment to fighting antisemitism on paper while avoiding accountability for the antizionism they have normalized.

Colleagues see nothing wrong with identifying as antizionist, either because they have blithely embraced libels about Jews and Israel or because they harbor hatred toward Jews themselves.

Institutions can change course, but doing so requires acknowledging how deeply antizionism has become embedded in academia over the past 25 years. Biased course materials, academic frameworks and skewed scholarship have increasingly portrayed Israel as uniquely evil, while ignoring or distorting Jewish history, peoplehood, and our connection to our ancestral homeland. These false narratives have shaped how generations of students and professionals understand Jews, Zionism, and Israel.

Confronting institutional antizionism will require more than adding Jewish identity to diversity initiatives. Institutions must critically examine what they’ve been teaching, challenge entrenched assumptions, and take responsibility for the harm these narratives have caused. If they refuse, they must be held accountable.

How can institutions address discrimination against Jews when they refuse to acknowledge who Jews are? And how can they recognize antizionism as a form of discrimination when they refuse to acknowledge Jewish peoplehood and our right to self-determination?

I hope that one day soon, we’ll look back at this period and marvel at how deeply Jew hatred infiltrated the very structure of academia and other institutions. It will be a reckoning for those who claimed to stand against discrimination but were themselves the perpetrators.