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readsagain's review
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Overall rating: 5 stars (10/10)
5 quotes/ideas:
language, customs, and culture are lost…[The weakening of these, weakens the individual]
-Thus many elements-history, family and feeling, interest, formal organizational life--operate to keep much of New York life channeled within the bounds of the ethnic group.
-Without a special language and culture, and without the historical experiences that create an elan and a morale, what is there to lead them to build their own life, to patronize their own? [On Black Americans but could be also any minority group]
-Where talent counts more than "appearance" or "type," Jews are employed more readily. [Jewish]
-How 3 per cent of the population could create such an impact. In the 193o's, medical schools set tight quotas limiting the entry of Jewish students. These practices were often kept secret, but we know a good deal of them. For example, the Cornell University Medical School, located
in New York City, limited Jewish students to their proportion in the state of New York, that is, to about 1 in 7. Thus, of 8o places the Cornell school had in 1940, so were to be for Jews, 70 for non-Jews. But 7 of every 12 applicants were Jews. Thus 1 of 70 Jewish applicants and 1 of 7 non-Jewish applicants were admitted. [Jewish]
-they think first and foremost of getting into the best schools, which are the hardest to enter. [Jewish]
-But the religious institutions are so strong because they serve the social desire to remain separate to begin with. [Jewish]
Summary:
“First, the shaping of the Jewish community under the impact of the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Europe and the establishment of the state of Israel; second, the parallel, if less marked, shaping of a Catholic community by the reemergence of the Catholic school controversy; third, the migration of Southern Negroes to New York following World War I and continuing through the fifties; fourth, the influx of Puerto Ricans during the fifteen years following World War II.”
The 20% that gave the 80%:
As I have recently discovered a fascination to learn more about Puerto Rico and The Philippines in relation to USA as an empire, I came to this book learning about the Moynihan Report. This was not that report but I am sure the information is similar. I did not find Moynihan’s findings racist but rather very enlightening. I came originally to learn specifically about what he said about Puerto Rican’s and Negros (Blacks may be more appropriate these days). And I didn’t find what he said to be mean-spirited. I also learned more about the histories of Catholics, Irish, Italians and the fascinating Jewish peoples.
I am unsure why Americans are taught in schools about America being a heavenly place for “integration” and “individualism” etc. And yet the findings in stark comparison between Puerto Ricans/Blacks versus the Jewish populations are very distant from each other. We need our ethnicity, our own original groups to flourish yet are taught, for some reason, that those ideas are old-school, outdated, worthless.
It would appear that Jewish people account for about 2% of the current total US population yet are quite successful. And it seems to me that through their cultural upbringings they are more collective and tend to separate themselves- the very opposite to how the general non Jewish public are raised to have as ideals. And yet in doing for the collective, the family, the culture and not for themselves, they have greater success, financial wealth and status.
So the 20% that did the 80% was to see (in relation to the Jewish group) that to do the opposite of what the mainstream media and education is saying- remember your roots, your culture, your original language, your histories, your original religion, marry within your race, stay married, live in neighborhoods with strong aspiring people of your own race, choose a field that is representative of your race’s strength throughout history, create social organizations to help your people, spend loads of money on the education of your children, have them attempt to go to the very top universities. In short a collective and status orientation in place of the individual “we are all equal” , “pursue happiness” mantras. Such a “strong” culture can also create a backlash of people who break away from it to live different lifestyles too. It is not perfect either.
lukescalone's review
3.0
Woof, this is quite a book. I read the second edition, which has a new preface nearly 100 pages long that effectively jettisons a major part of the first edition's argument. On top of that, there is a 25 page introduction to the first edition.
The primary argument--in both the first and second editions--is that the "melting pot" was a myth. Although it had been discussed as early as Crèvecoeur in his [b:Letters from an American Farmer|704121|Letters from an American Farmer|J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177442762l/704121._SY75_.jpg|690409], the reality is that peoples did not "blend together" and fit into an assimilationist ideal. Instead, ethnicity and the maintenance of ethnicity has been one of the driving forces making "American peoples" rather than one American people. Of course, there is a blending of ethnic identity as people mix together through marriage, community relationships, etc., but the important part is that ethnicity continues. However, Glazer and Moynihan believe that the role of ethnic identity is not something static, and has been changing in the 1960s. These are articulated in three "hypotheses."
1. Ethnic identities have taken over some of the work done by occupational identities;
2. International events have declined as a source of ethnic identity, except for Jews;
3. Religion has declined as a focus of ethnic identification, especially after Kennedy's election.
Although ethnicity continued with strength until the time of the first publication of the text in 1963, Glazer and Moynihan did see stirrings that ethnic identity was weakening and was being displaced by two other identities: religion and race. By the second edition, Glazer and Moynihan had come to change their minds, and instead argued that only race was replacing ethnicity. While religiosity did grow throughout the 1950s, it stagnated and began declining during the 1960s. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of MLK, the assassination of Malcolm X, and the emergence of more militant black power movements, race seemed to rise in import.
However, this leads Glazer and Moynihan to make a really weird, nonsensical argument. Throughout the course of the text, they emphasize that--over time--all immigrant ethnic groups rise in status from generation-to-generation. This was true of the Irish and Germans, this was true of Jews and Italians, and this will be true of Puerto Ricans and African Americans (written here as "Negroes"). In the second edition, Glazer and Moynihan find that Puerto Rican communities also increased in status with the second generation, but black Americans did not experience the same level of upward mobility for the second generation after the Great Migration. They argue that their failure in predicting this had two causes: First, there was faulty data--black Americans did increase in status in the wake of World War II, but declined again after the Korean war. Additionally, there were enormous undercounts of African Americans in the statistics that the authors relied on, and those who were appeared were much better off than those who did not appear. Second, African Americans, as a group, were not being "ethnicized" but "racialized." At the core of it, this second claim is why black Americans had not experienced the same upward mobility as other groups. On this, they go to bat against intellectuals and the Kerner Commission's Report, both of which argued that the failure for black Americans to rise in American status was due to white racism. Glazer and Moynihan do not agree with this, and instead claim part of the problem was white racism, but just as important was the fact that black people racialized themselves and that this was a new phenomenon. ????? Black Americans had always been racialized, and refusing to admit that (claiming instead that it happened recently) is ahistorical mumbo-jumbo.
I don't really know what to make of this book. It's an interesting look at ethnicity (and race) in New York from the 1950s-70s, especially for a research program that uses social sciences methods over humanistic ones. Yet, there are far too many oversights here for it to be of much value in the 21st century.
The primary argument--in both the first and second editions--is that the "melting pot" was a myth. Although it had been discussed as early as Crèvecoeur in his [b:Letters from an American Farmer|704121|Letters from an American Farmer|J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177442762l/704121._SY75_.jpg|690409], the reality is that peoples did not "blend together" and fit into an assimilationist ideal. Instead, ethnicity and the maintenance of ethnicity has been one of the driving forces making "American peoples" rather than one American people. Of course, there is a blending of ethnic identity as people mix together through marriage, community relationships, etc., but the important part is that ethnicity continues. However, Glazer and Moynihan believe that the role of ethnic identity is not something static, and has been changing in the 1960s. These are articulated in three "hypotheses."
1. Ethnic identities have taken over some of the work done by occupational identities;
2. International events have declined as a source of ethnic identity, except for Jews;
3. Religion has declined as a focus of ethnic identification, especially after Kennedy's election.
Although ethnicity continued with strength until the time of the first publication of the text in 1963, Glazer and Moynihan did see stirrings that ethnic identity was weakening and was being displaced by two other identities: religion and race. By the second edition, Glazer and Moynihan had come to change their minds, and instead argued that only race was replacing ethnicity. While religiosity did grow throughout the 1950s, it stagnated and began declining during the 1960s. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of MLK, the assassination of Malcolm X, and the emergence of more militant black power movements, race seemed to rise in import.
However, this leads Glazer and Moynihan to make a really weird, nonsensical argument. Throughout the course of the text, they emphasize that--over time--all immigrant ethnic groups rise in status from generation-to-generation. This was true of the Irish and Germans, this was true of Jews and Italians, and this will be true of Puerto Ricans and African Americans (written here as "Negroes"). In the second edition, Glazer and Moynihan find that Puerto Rican communities also increased in status with the second generation, but black Americans did not experience the same level of upward mobility for the second generation after the Great Migration. They argue that their failure in predicting this had two causes: First, there was faulty data--black Americans did increase in status in the wake of World War II, but declined again after the Korean war. Additionally, there were enormous undercounts of African Americans in the statistics that the authors relied on, and those who were appeared were much better off than those who did not appear. Second, African Americans, as a group, were not being "ethnicized" but "racialized." At the core of it, this second claim is why black Americans had not experienced the same upward mobility as other groups. On this, they go to bat against intellectuals and the Kerner Commission's Report, both of which argued that the failure for black Americans to rise in American status was due to white racism. Glazer and Moynihan do not agree with this, and instead claim part of the problem was white racism, but just as important was the fact that black people racialized themselves and that this was a new phenomenon. ????? Black Americans had always been racialized, and refusing to admit that (claiming instead that it happened recently) is ahistorical mumbo-jumbo.
I don't really know what to make of this book. It's an interesting look at ethnicity (and race) in New York from the 1950s-70s, especially for a research program that uses social sciences methods over humanistic ones. Yet, there are far too many oversights here for it to be of much value in the 21st century.
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