Brodkin: "How Jews Became White Folks"

In this article I think that the author is really trying to say we have come a long way since the beginning of the 1900's but are still a long way from acknowledging the success of those who are a different race or culture besides "white". Throughout the article the author provided many examples of what she was trying to say. In one paragraph on page 40 Brodkin talks about Madison Grant and how Grants book hits on the idea that he is most afraid of race-mixing among Europeans. He thought that a cross between a European and a Jewish person made that individual all Jewish. Also Brodkin on page 41 says that "By the 1920's, scientific racism sanctified the notion that real Americans were white and that real whites came from northwest Europe." The article continues and talks about how Jews were confined to a small number of occupations and excluded from the mainstream corporate world. Then on page 43, the author asks a really interesting question, "did money whiten?" that is a great question because even today we can look at the rich and even famous with more respect than we would someone of the same race who was poor. But, she uses the past tense did, and I wonder DOES money whiten? Later in the article it talks about affirmative action which was suppost to promote access to education or employment for the minority. In this particular article though, Brodkin describes affirmative action as helping the men of Euro-origin. And although this policy was suppost to help the underdog in reality it was not. Should this be a suprise? If this is was a time where African Americans are still being discriminated against, how can a policy fix all the problems that people ignore everyday? If a developer can publically announce that he will not be selling any units to African Americans how can this policy be taken seriously?! In the last section of this reading the author says "Instead of seizing the opprotunity to end institutionalized racism, the federal government did its level best to shut and double-seal the postwar window of opprotunity in African American's faces." In my opinion she sounds angry. Which she should be, not only is the supposibly "land of the free" discriminating a race that just fought in a war next to whites she herself knew what it was like to be discriminated against really for a reason that she had no control over. At the same time, it angers me too. It just shows ignorance, back then and today, because we wonder why things are the way they are and in actuality it is because we created it.