Jews are smarter, and funnier too

A far more convincing historical thesis was put forth by sociologist Stephen Steinberg in his book “The Ethnic Myth” http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Myth-Ethnicity-Class-America/dp/080704153X, in a chapter about what Steinberg termed the “Jewish Horatio Alger Myth” http://books.google.com/books?id=98r63OBS9KQC&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=Stephen+Steinberg+ethnic+myth+horatio+alger&source=bl&ots=-jaBw4rpn9&sig=l1K5lG0_m7NhamdP6MszYaKuiWc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cExZUcr9K4j68QSL6YH4Ag&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Stephen%20Steinberg%20ethnic%20myth%20horatio%20alger&f=false

Here is an important section from an article written back in 2000 by anti-racism activist, author and educator Tim Wise discussing this general topic and citing Steinberg’s work among others http://www.timwise.org/2000/08/gore-vey-joe-lieberman-jewish-mobility-and-the-politics-of-race-in-america/

“The truth is always more complex than the fantasy. Read Stephen Steinberg’s The Ethnic Myth: Fact is, Jews haven’t all been successful, and pretending otherwise harms the less-than-affluent Jews who, thanks to the triumphalist image, are perceived as especially flawed in some way. Even as Glazer and others were developing the Jewish Horatio Alger image in the ’60s and ’70s, fifteen percent of Jews in New York City were poor or near poor, as were twelve percent of Jews nationally. About a third of Jewish men at this time were working class, not the professionals and scholars portrayed by stereotype.

And Jews who came to America and succeeded hardly came with nothing. Jews from Russia came with experience in manufacturing, commerce, or as artisans: three expanding economic sectors in the ‘New World.’ It wasn’t our culture or values that were impeccable, but rather, our timing. Our experience in the garment and textile industries fit perfectly with an economy where those industries were growing 2-3 times faster than the economy as a whole. Indeed, two-thirds of Jewish immigrants between 1899 and 1910 were skilled laborers, compared to forty-nine percent of English immigrants, fifteen percent of Southern Italians, thirteen percent of the Irish, and six percent of Poles. And blacks, no matter their skills, abilities or ambitions, were locked out of the sectors open to many Jews, seeing as how for most of this period, ninety percent were still serfs on the national plantation known as the American South.

When my great-grandfather came to America in 1910, though he was poor, and a religious minority, he was offered work the very first day that was off limits to African Americans whose families had been here for over 200 years. Not yet fully ‘white,’ he was nonetheless favored over America’s untermenschen. Over time, if he played the game, and tried hard to forget the old world ways that had kept his family and people alive, and if he took special care not to teach his children Yiddish, nor act or speak too Jewish, then he could work, save some money, send his child (my grandfather) to a college blacks couldn’t attend, who would then be able to get a house in a suburb where blacks couldn’t live, and send his children, including my father to schools that were segregated. He was a hard worker, to be sure, but one whose hard work was met by access to an opportunity structure. No shame in that, but also no model minority.

And the much-heralded Jewish cultural emphasis on education is also largely mythical. As anthropologist Miriam Slater has noted, and as Selma Berrol’s study of Jewish experience in New York City confirms, economic mobility and success — largely due to the above-mentioned good timing, pre-existing skills, and apartheid barriers elevating us over blacks — came before substantial educational gains in the Jewish community. In the early part of the century, the average American Jew (supposedly part of a culture with a special affinity for education) was a 7th grade dropout, and working class Jewish kids typically received no greater level of schooling than other working class immigrant children. Indeed, a look at pre-immigrant Jewish ‘education’ makes clear that to whatever degree learning was valued, it was largely Talmud-based instruction, for males only: hardly indicative of a special love of the life of the mind.”