How Jews Became White Folks

In “How Jews Became White,” Karen Brodkin discusses what Jews went through in order to gain more rights in the United Sates years ago. In this section, overall, the Jews became more privileged and were recognized more as equal to whites (the dominant group). They were able to do this through post-war economic prosperity and government assistance (43). However, African Americans were not as privileged and were still dealing with discrimination. In the beginning, Brodkin addresses that Blacks, Jews and immigrants were at one point in time all discriminated against among the dominant groups within America. She goes on to say that there were about 3-4 major European races one of which were Jews, who were considered to be the “worst of all” (41). According to Madison Grant in The Passing of the Great Race, his nightmare was “race-mixing” and believed that “the cress between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew” (40). Significant numbers of Jews were the first Euro-immigrant groups to enter college to get a higher education and received discrimination because of it (41). It was believed that Jewish success was because of hard work and s high value of education. While Jews had social mobility, they were still limited. As Brodkin grew older, she sates, “our ethnic backgrounds seemed so irrelevant to high school culture” and Jews were viewed as white (43). Before the war, Americans as well as Jews were defined by occupation, education and income (45). After the war, white racist violence increased against blacks making the dominant groups turn antiblack. Blacks were discriminated in the education and occupational system. The Federal government supported racial segregation. Segregation against blacks kept them out of the suburbs because of the rating system and refusal to guarantee loans which made it almost impossible for African Americans to borrow money for home improvement or purchase.
After reading this I find it interesting to see the transitions in racism. Eventually, religion and origin did not matter and privilege became solely based on skin color. One positive thing I can take from this is that it was good that people were able to overcome some forms of racism which gives me hope that racism that exists today can be overcome. How would life have been back then and even now if there was no such thing as racism? Would we find something else to discriminate against?