Rothenberg - How Jews Became White Folks

Paula Rothenberg in chapter two How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America starts out by explaining the history of how the Europeans were split up into different categories of superiority and inferiority. In America, race was seen as a scary thing in the early 1900s, which resulted in some people trying to stop immigration. Jews in America were seen as the inferior white race. The author elaborated on how education was very important to the Jewish culture at that time being that they made up a large percentage of the students who attended college. It wasn’t until after World War II that the Jews experienced a social change in regards to their ethnicity. The Jews started being treated like the superior white group. The cause of this was the GI Bill of Rights that was created in 1944, which gave military veterans certain privileges. The United States, however, did not want to let the African American veterans receive the same benefits. So it was easier to make the racial discrimination happen between white and black races only verses superior whites, inferior whites, and blacks. For the white race, this bill lead to a huge rise in the lower class attending college, as well as the increase of homeownership. The Africans Americans on the other hand were even more discriminated against. The overall thesis that Rothenberg was trying to get across was the idea that as Jews were accepted into the white category and received the status privileges associated with being white, the African Americans were treated in the opposite way by experiencing more segregation and racial injustices. I didn’t quite understand what the GI Bill all entailed. It made me wonder how the black people were denied their veteran benefits other that the fact that some were dishonorably discharged. Also, when suburbanization was talked about, I wondered if federally subsidized housing laws were state mandated or federally? I found this reading somewhat confusing since I did not know a lot about the GI Bill and Federal Housing Administration. I felt that the author got slightly off topic of how Jews became integrated into the “white” race. It seems that at times she became more focused on what was being done to the African Americans, but I understand why she needed to bring that into light.