Week 5

The first article talks about how the Euro ethnic Jewish population assimilated in white middle class society of NY due to social mobility brought about by post war industry. Many Jews who had immigrated from Europe had brought with them applicable skills to the booming NY garment industry and eventually were the first immigrants to become small business owners. Despite their social mobility being greater than that of their fellow immigrants they often faced anti Semitism in many facets of life. Post war Anti-Semitism wasn’t a thing of the past; it had just gone more or less underground. For example, Jews were really only allowed to hold corporate positions in the industries they created, movies and garments. However, the government had expanded the definition of white in the Census, which allowed thousands of these immigrants to categorize themselves as white which gave them a push toward the middle class. The article transitioned to talk about the GI Bill and the FHS. While millions of white male servicemen qualified for thousands in academic and housing benefits guaranteed to veterans the majority of the millions of African American GI’s that were supposed to be guaranteed certain housing and job benefits saw themselves being denied their rights and forced into the lower class by institutional policy. Examples of this was not allowing black servicemen to go to white colleges, as many of the black universities were overcrowded, and denying black servicemen equal housing regardless of rank. The problem with that is with the post war boom in population made it necessary to build a lot of additional housing and restructure cities to deal with the increased population, making very specific locations where black people could live. I was this as hugely connected to the next article regarding California Lost paradise. California also had this sort of promise that it was the land of equal halves, causing thousands of black people to move to California. Well lo and behold once all of these people moved to California most African Americans were funneled to Pacoima valley, one resident described It just like Mississippi. In addition, the state passed policy which legally allowed housing discrimination by a 2-1 margin it really showed the underlying opinion of the state. This last article about the investing in whiteness really stuck with me the best. It had really never occurred to me that in no point in American history was the nation not racist.  The US was essentially the only nation giving a racial aspect to the idea of slavery, making white synonymous with free and black with slave. This is essentially the roots to all modern racism, the problem wasn’t that black people were in the US the problem was the white attitude towards it. Racism has served a different purpose for each generation, as the article states, and it went on to cite how California had segregated housing laws as struck down affirmative action. Overall, I think its interesting to go into the history of a place that might not be the most popular or publicized, what people would rather forget. But what we have to remember for today is that the remnants of these systems still hold true in the institutional ways in which white privilege is part of everyday society.