Politico has posted Michelle Obama’s thesis in sociology from 1985: "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." The work is an at-times agonized treatise on the racial divide. Going to Princeton, the woman then named Michelle Robinson wrote, will "likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society, never becoming a full participant." Huh. Look who’s coming to the South Lawn…
Obama’s study focused on issues of assimilation and separation. She seems clearly to favor separation. She wanted blacks to identify with other blacks, even when they became successful, and to be concerned with the "plight" of poor blacks. She seems distressed by a trend she documented: that while blacks tend to associate more with other blacks before and during Princeton, once they graduated they tend to associate more with whites. Their identification went down "drastically." Many successful blacks were "ashamed" of their culture but also guilty about "betraying" blackness.
Elements of Black culture which make it unique from White culture, such as its music, its language, the struggles and a ‘consciousness’ shared by its people may be attributed to the injustices and oppressions suffered by this race of people which are not comparable to the experiences of any other race of people through this country’s history.
I am sure that Michelle Obama’s views on these matters have changed over 23 years, as she’s followed the trajectory she documented, of associating more with whites. She is now a full participant in American society. I bet her sense of blackness has gone way down.
Still, I’m fascinated by her thesis because her view of the specialness of black culture is not so different from the Jewish particularist view of the specialness of Jewish culture. So it’s where you sit. Also, the conflict she frames of "separation/pluralism" versus "integration/assimilation" is a conflict in the Jewish community too. Commentary Magazine, for instance, regularly runs scholarly statements about the unique history and character of Jews. And the Jewish political theorist Michael Walzer has said that Jews are "not simply at home" in America, we worry that we’re about to get thrown out. Sort of like Michelle Obama feeling peripheral.
Obama’s thesis and personal story show that feelings of racial exclusion/separation are wholly understandable when members of that race feel they are not full participants in society. But imagine if Michelle Obama were to express these attitudes now? Well, her husband’s campaign would be over. I don’t think many white voters would want to be represented by someone who felt alienated from the society and identified mostly with other blacks.
This was my beef with Joe Lieberman and Elliott Abrams. Lieberman ran as vice president even as he maintained membership in Jewish organizations that had firm policies against Jews marrying non-Jews, policies Lieberman did not condemn. Abrams became a Middle East adviser even after he had written a book saying that Jews who don’t live in Israel must remain "apart" from the society in which they live. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have these views. What’s wrong is to have high position in U.S. government and hold these views. They justify a dual loyalty to the U.S. and Israel in ways not so different from Michelle Obama’s feelings of being peripheral: the Jewish state is a necessary haven for Jews because gentiles will exclude them in the west.
The key difference between my ethnic family and Michelle Obama’s is that her and her husband’s complex identification issues will be keenly examined over months to come. We are going to hear about their blackness till the cows come home. We will hear them talk about their feelings about being black on "60 Minutes," or to Matt Lauer, because these feelings have such important political consequences. I am sure the Obamas will firmly describe themselves as assimilationist.
I want to see an open discussion of Jewish identity along the same lines. The sort of feelings Michelle Obama had in 1985, of separation and oppression, of betrayal and integration, are having a large and silent effect on our foreign policy.
Phil,
I am deeply indebted to you for this blog. Such insight! As a non-Jew with much positive experience with Jewish friends/partners/mentors, but with no Jewish friend who talks freely about these issues, I find your discussion is tremendously illuminating.
A comment on your comments about Michelle Obama feeling alienated from white America in college and your earlier comments to the effect that the WASP establishment has quietly relinquished power over the last fifty years in an unprecedented manner: As one with roots in that WASP establishment, it is my view that WWII, especially the realization of the horrors that followed from the institutionalization of racism and anti-semitism in Nazi Germany, and the Civil Rights movement in our own country, taught us that racial discrimination is wrong and our American community is not just WASPs, but the whole mixing bowl. Once one identifies with a community, a lot of political consequences flow from that identification. Most WASPs now identify, as you do, with "America," in its best sense, and the racism, anti-semetism and guess-who's-coming-to-dinner parochialism of our WASP history falls away, just as much of the Jewish Hillel insularity has fallen away for you. So, it's not so much a relinquishment of power, but an expansion of the community we identify with and consider ourselves a part of. The Obamas will be a great experience for America in many, many ways. With a WASP mother, an international upbringing, and a world class education, he was never really burdened with some of the negative aspects of being part of Black American culture, in the sense of having been discriminated against and having to depend on one's oppressor for one's safety and livelihood, as most Blacks were, but that is where her journey apparently started. In the White House, with all the world as their flock, her views and experience should change, and I hope their experience will finally liberate all of American blacks from the leftover internalized trauma of their long history of oppression. Again, thank you for this blog, and let's keep fighting to preserve America from all enemies, foreign and domestic!
Cary Adams
Phil wrote of Michelle Obama :
"I'm fascinated by her thesis because her view of the specialness of black culture is not so different from the Jewish particularist view of the specialness of Jewish culture."
No question, there is a narcissistic, Jewish-like element to the following: "…injustices and oppressions suffered by this race of people which are not comparable to the experiences of any other race of people through this country's history…"
But is this really what we need in this country today…another self-pitying, self-absorbed "my people's unique suffering" perspective proximate to a president? Look at what the Jewish Neocons and their "unique suffering" perspective proximate to Bush brought to America: The disasterous Iraq war fought on behalf of Israel.
I hope Obama's ruthless WASP half rules out over his wife's pathetic Jew/black/poor-me victim-mentality half.
The last thing this country needs is another leader sympathetic to the war-for-universal-justice-for-melodramatic-victims card. McCain is more than happy to pander to the Jews for that role.
What it needs is a president who will represent ALL Americans, not just the state-sanctioned “victim” class.
I wonder about your analogy: Is it true that as they go up the social ladder Jews associate less and less with other Jews and more and more with non-Jews? It would seem that the very opposite is true. Since some Jewish people are very rich, it is possible for Jews to club together in a way that is not true — or at least not yet true — for blacks. Hollywood would be an instance; but I suspect so would Goldman Sachs.
Brilliant essay by Phil! Particularly his point that the Obamas probably will be called upon to address the assimilation vs. exclusion issue — whereas the tendency among Jewish candidates is either to deny entirely that the dilemma exists, or to dismiss the question as intrinsically antisemitic.
When the exclusivist view costs America $3 billion a year directly (and far more in lost goodwill), it is not an irrelevant or antisemitic question to raise.
Anyone who has ever worked on Wall Street knows that Jews are an over-represented minority there, but still a minority. The only thing anyone on Wall Street cares about is money and power. Jews, WASPs, Arabs, and Asians all mingle pretty easily together.
Sorry to disappoint you Tony.
Re: going up the social ladder and assimilating … Here's an old source on Jewish intermarriage in the USA, from 2000:
"Before 1965, 10% of Jews who married, did so outside the faith.
Since 1985, 52% of Jews who married have done so outside the faith.
1 million, or 54% of all American Jewish children under the age of 18 are being raised as non-Jews or with no religion. "
From link to simpletoremember.com
/>
"All Statistics taken from Council of Jewish Federations' 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. "
I assume that because quotas in top colleges were dropped (in the 60s?) the intermarriage rate between Jews and the WASP elite at least went up. My freshman class at Oberlin College, 1979, was 50% Jewish – this was a college founded by evangelical Abolitionist Christians in the 19th Century. You go to college with people, you get comfortable with them, you intermarry. I'll bet that the Jewish graduates of Oberlin in the 1980s reflect that 50+% intermarriage rate.
My half-Jewish husband has six Jewish cousins in their late 40s and early 50s. Five of those married; only one married a full-blooded Jewish person; the other four married non-Jews or persons who were half-Jewish. (My husband and his brother I'm not counting in this group, because they are themselves half-Jewish, through their mother; hubby married me, a half-Arab, and BIL married a Christian with a Holocaust Survivor Jewish father) Of the thirteen great-grandchildren from this group of cousins, only five are being raised Jewish, with bar mitzvahs etc. Reflects the statistic above, and worse.
This group of cousins are indeed successful and many would be deemed at the top of the ladder. Their parents were all high achievers and the middle-aged cousins were raised in prosperity, with all the advantages. They do reflect the hypothesis that as people climb up they assimilate in this country.
I don't know where Mr. Lawless gets his info.
So Wall Street is just a hodgepodge of different folks, eh? Golly, I wonder where Phil gets his info about Jewish income from then? Mr Goldman Sachs, I wonder if you have an opinion?
"Consider income. According to Pew, 46 percent of Jews say their family income is over $100,000 a year. Nationally the number is 19 percent. If you turn to mainline Protestant families–the gentiles I usually compare Jews to as privileged–the percentage is just 21 percent, less than half the Jewish percentage. No one else is even close. Except for Hindus, with 43 percent of their families making over $100,000; and I have to think that number is skewed by Asian professional immigration–and by the fact that Hindus are a splinter group, less than half of a percent of the population. Jews are 1.7 percent of the population."
Anyway you look at it, they are not dying in the Middle East.
That is everything, as it is the USA Congress.
Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!