How Jews Became White

To see the breakdown of white ethnicities, and why America is called a melting pot, Brodkin tells us the story of the Jewish population and how they and other non-Anglo Saxon Americans were ushered into privilege. He states “I want to suggest that Jewish success is a product not only of ability but also of the removal of powerful social barriers to its realization.” He then followed that with a few paragraphs that for some reason made me think of a show about WWII called Band of Brothers. The show chronicles a company with a number of different characters with European backgrounds and occasionally their ethnicity becomes positively or negatively focused.

Brodkin the goes on to explain what that racism and difference looked like between the different whites. He talks about various paranoia and a piece called “The Passing of the Great Race” which paints the immigrants as the racist/intolerant people. Through showing the immigrants in such a light that somehow validated the idea that they were inferior to the dominant white class. Showcasing this was a line I highlighted that read “Theodore Roosevelt raised the alarm of “race suicide” and took Anglo-Saxon women to the task for allowing “native” stock to be outbred by inferior immigrants.” I was so taken back by this because 1) Roosevelt was racist (I myself admire him) and 2) that he blamed women for the fact that there were more immigrants than natives and that they needed to get to work getting pregnant. WOW!

One thing he focuses on is how Jews went a different route to their “whitening” than others by going to college and working hard. In doing this Jews faced more discrimination because Brodkin states that Anti-Semitism flourish in higher education. Through the telling of his parents experience though college and how they “overcame” this he explains the feelings of achievement by many Jews. He also seems to explain that Jews didn’t actually “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” but unknowingly took advantage of the fact that they were lifted into the upper-middle class. He does this carefully though, I feel as though he knows his parents will read this and he doesn’t want to take from their success.

In the end I liked this piece because it tells of a piece of history often overlooked in terms of race relations because the people involved are so often seen as white. Also because I have an interest in the WWII era, pre and post as well, which this article focuses around. The only thing that I wish he would address is the stereotypes that arose for the Jewish population after the fact. Such as the idea that Jews run Hollywood, almost all of them are well to do because of a business job, which stems from an interest in money and a “cheap” lifestyle. I know these things are racist but I know that in the past, by past I mean medieval era, they were thought to poison wells, be evil (horns and tail), and have irrational powers. It would be interesting to see how those changes have progressed over the last few decades.