How Jews Became White Folks

I believe the authors' thesis is that the jews just like most every other minority group has faced racism and anti-semitism. The aurthor states in her second paragraph about her families heritage was how other people looked at them, "Part of my ethnic heritage was the belief that Jews were smart and that our success was due to our own efforts and abilities, reinforced by a culture that valued sticking together, hard work, education, and deferred gratification" (38). She is trying to get across the fact that the country gave herself ideas at what she should be how to live her life.
The author first gives background about how some European's were given the term being white and how others weren't. She gives credit to "the biggest and best affirmative action program in the history of our nation, and it was Euromales" (39). It was not a bill or anything but the way things worked out and how Europeans became known as white in the U.S. Karen then tells about how there were inferior and superior races and it started with the Irish (39). Throughout the history of the United States people used science to explain lots of things and there was many rumors on the inferior races of Europe. The aurthor states that "racism in general, and anti-semitism in particular, flourished in higher education" (41). The different ethnicities were looked at as being just as white as the next person and this made America look at it as "American Democracy's victory over racism"(43). Were the United States thought they had done away with all racism. But when it came to work, a college degree was considered a note of a higher class, so those two elements were dependent on each other. The military also gave a lot of people jobs and money through GI bills which boosted employment. But they denied blacks and there was still some racism around; such as the Ku Klux Klan spreadind throughout the country and educational discrimination. So minorites even though trying to make a living were stuck in the middle-class becuase of all the discrimination. Suburbanization also played a big role in this. This is the process of moving people from the cities to the suburbs. This was a problem because it started racial segregation, and moved people that looked alike towards eachother in a closer porximity.

Do you believe that any of these factors could have been avoided, or were they sooner or later going to happen?
Think hard and wonder if your family could have been racially segregated? Or could have been deported for being different, how does that make you feel?

I personally did not like reading this. It was to much of a story and a person's life than an interesting reading. I find most of the stuff we read in this class interesting but this didn't catch my interest really. I could relate and somewhat understand the reading in most parts, but it was very wordy and confusing in others. Overall it was a hard read and not a fun one, and i did not like it and vote to talk about it in class because of my and probaly many other students confusion.