Actually, DSeid, I want to apologize for that last crack. Sincerely. I don’t think you are a bigot.
All the veiled accusations of bigotry flying around this thread have me a little trigger-happy, I suppose.
Hell in the Pacific (1968) was one of the early and interesting films that didn’t trat the Jampanes as evil monsters.
And as far as WWII European vs Asian movies, I dunno. Bridge on the River Kwai stands out. More recently Wind Talkers, The Thin Red Line, Empire of the Sun (one of my all-time favorite war movies), The Great Raid, Australia, …
Here’s an experiment…This Washington Post piece is about “New York Smug”, but the thing to check out is the comments. They summarize pretty well what people don’t like about New Yorkers. How much of that, I wonder, might have slopped over onto people’s attitudes toward Jews?
Similarly, discussions about why New York - and New Yorkers - might get more attention than cities and people elsewhere.
Apology accepted and appreciated.
Interestingly enough some of this thread illustrates the real points of the linked article:
Stein hasn’t, by his own admission, had to endure any anti-Semitism, he is, as he puts it, “maybe … naive” And he is. Just read CM’s rant to get a sense that some really do think that there is some narrative that “the Jewish MSM” wants to put forth and controls. He is playing with, mocking, the concern that some who have experienced anti-Semitism firsthand have over that “Jews control the media (and the banks)” canard. And again, that is naive.
Foxman (of the Anti-Defamation League), OTOH, is disingenuous. No those media heads do not just happen to be Jewish. You don’t get 35-40% of the highest honors and achievements in all those areas dealing with new ideas, creating them and managing them, coming out of members of a group that is only 2% of your population as something that “just happens”. And it isn’t just from a “culture of achievement” because many other cultural groups share that to a point that puts Jews to shame. And you don’t win Nobel prizes and Kyoto prize and Academy Awards and make the movies held to be the world’s best because of clannishness.
But he is afraid. Afraid that being proud of a culture that has produced so many so agile in coming up with the paradigm shifting ideas and/or managing those ideas and trading in them will evoke a backlash. And the Jewish control of the media canard is one spouted off by many Jew hating organizations from the Nazis to still today. He’s lived through anti-Semitism and knows how ugly it was, including in America. I am afraid too. I’m younger than him and even I have been called “kike” and “Jewboy” to my face. My dad had to use an Italian name to go on sales leads and was one of the American soldiers to liberate a concentration camp. We aren’t all as smug as Mr. Stein. The threat is still too real to mock the concern of it.
But no. It does not “just happen”. A culture created those who achieved in that way. That culture is fading and those aspects of it that were uncommon are now more commonplace. Jews spread across societies used to be the transmitters of new ideas across cultures; now the internet brings us all to the same virtual spaces. (Ironically, the group accused so often to be excessively insular, thrived because of its cultural diversity.) The fairly unique “Jewish Experience” trademark has expired, I think.
Well now I’m confused again. If it’s not coincidence, and it’s not a “culture of achievement,” and it’s not good-old-boyism (which you are calling “clannishness,” I guess) then what, in your opinion, accounts for the numbers?
See post #112.
Cultural factors of which “a culture of achievement” is only a very small part.
Think of it this way - a major part of America’s success has been its inventiveness and its inventiveness has emerged to no small degree as a result of the ideas of many cultures that have bumped into each other and created new things. Jewish culture has been doing that as a matter of course for centuries, with food, with music, with language, with everything. Making do with what is around and changing it in the process. Mixing what it had - a cultural tradition of questioning established answers, of not even letting God get away with “because I said so” (religious truths are not so much revealed in the Jewish tradition so much as debated and argued out … to absurd degrees sometimes) - with good ideas from all the many cultures that Jews have resided in, and sometimes been kicked out of with no ability to take anything with them except ideas and knowledge. And then adapting those ideas to a new land using the ideas that could be found there to make it work. What did Jews have historically? Bupkiss. Land? Kicked off it regularly. Money? Confiscated by those in charge. Left behind when Cossacks came. The only thing you could for sure take with you at a moments notice was ideas. But being spread out and kicked out so much, as a people Jews came into contact with many of them and shared them amongst themselves, from ideas of the Islamic lands to the West to points along the Silk Road. Is it a wonder that the culture emphasized a facility in dealing with new and different ideas and emphasized their value more than land, more than gold? Jews were knowledge workers long before the concept existed. Hence a tendency for those of that tradition to excel in areas that involve dealing with, trading in, and creating new ideas - be they in the sciences, the arts, the media, or whatever.
Again, this is now not so special. The world is now full of knowledge workers who all have access to the whole world of ideas. But that is a very recent development.
For some reason, this from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall now keeps popping into my mind:
"ALVY: Wh- How am I a paran-? Well, I pick up on those kind o’ things. You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said … uh, ‘Did you eat yet or what?’ and Tom Christie said, ‘No, didchoo?’ Not, did you, didchoo eat? Jew? No, not did you eat, but Jew eat? Jew. You get it? Jew eat?"
What about all of the above to some extent? Ashkenazi jews as a group do have a high average level of cognitive ability according to psychometric tests. There is an interesting explanation given for this, which is that because they were restricted to intellectually demanding jobs for almost 1,000 years in Europe, they underwent selection for high cognitive ability. This would explain some of the overrepresentation in academic & professional achievements.
http://homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf
That’s pretty interesting. I’ve always thought that natural selection could occur within relatively short time frames - short from an evolutionary perspective. For example I’m convinced that the relatively high incidence of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) among Caucasoids is partly the result of the Black Death having wiped out a third of the population of Europe.
That is one interesting paper. The summary of how the Ashkenazi population migrated and how their role in the broader societies developed is in and of itself fascinating and well covered. I cannot state that the rest of the hypothesis is impossible and they do present a strong argument. I’d be interested in hearing some expert presenting the argument against their hypothesis as well … I fear my interpretation may be slanted against accepting it.
Chen, play out a scenario with me.
What if that hypothesis IS true? Honestly I do not want to be in a circumstance in which the answer I have to give to the question of why so many Jews in positions of influence in our society is that one. Spoke apologized for his/her earlier comment but boy, if just supposing a cultural factor triggered that as a knee jerk response … can you imagine how it would play among others if the answer given after full analysis really was that statistically Ashkenazi Jews are hereditarily smarter than average especially in verbal and math areas, and thus more likely to produce more of the leaders in the spaces of ideas? That circumstance would evoke resentment especially if true.
Just as a what if. Can you see making that argument, even if, or maybe especially if, it turns out to be one well supported, would do anything other than evoke Jew-hatred, and a reactive rallying around the concept that, no, it is all good-ole-boy Jews looking out for each other and/or Jewish conspiracy as preferred things to believe? Human nature being what it is, do you think that if, hypothetically, the facts strongly argued against it, that such would at all make such beliefs at all less pervasive? Or more pervasive?
DSeid, you keep reverting to the words “clannishness” and “conspiracy” as if to suggest bigotry against Jews.
Just to be clear, good-old-boy networks are not a phenomenon exclusive to Jews. When white protestants are in positions of power, they will tend to hire white protestants. When black people are in positions of power, they will tend to hire other black people. (Witness the several successful reverse discrimination cases in city and county governments in the Atlanta area.) I suspect successful networking accounts for the number of South Asians who are running hotels and convenience stores these days. (I assume you wouldn’t argue that South Asians are culturally or genetically predisposed to being good at owning 7-11s?)
So I don’t mean to imply that there is anything sinister going on in Hollywood…at least not intentionally so. But the problem is that networking within one particular group can lead to exclusion of qualified candidates from other groups. And it also creates the potential for successful employment discrimination lawsuits (which was my initial observation in this thread).
I think you should steer a wide berth around genetic explanations. That way lies madness. Jews, of all people, should know that.
It’s hard for me (anyway) to imagine a field of nonethnic*, nonreligious achievement where Jews are known to congregate, yet contains zero (or just token numbers of) non-Jews. They’re always there in some significant percentage. You didn’t have to show your dick at the door of the Brill Building. Nobody boycotted 20th Century-Fox after Darryl Zanuck took over. Even “The” New York Intellectuals had their Edmund Wilsons and Dwight MacDonalds.
The question ought to be: Is there an outcome making it harder for an equally able and well connected non-Jew to find a position equivalent to the same person who’s a Jew? And I would ask the same question about New Yorkers and Southern Californians, if only as a control.
- Another question that might be asked: At what point is a field of work or culture “ethnic”? As opposed to, say, regional or multiethnic?
I think you fail to appreciate the utility the explanations you innocently suggest have had to anti-Semites through the ages. And how Jewish successes trigger Jew hatred.
Whatever the explanation Askenazi Jews have tended to reach positions of power and influence and, in particular academic success, in every society in which they’ve been given an opportunity to do so. At the risk of incurring Godwin’s wrath I submit that by the 1920’s the Jewish population of Germany was small, less than 1%, but highly accomplished. Yeah, they were barred from becoming judges and the like, but they had served in WW1 in a higher percent than any other ethnic or religious group of their countrymen, were leaders in business, many professions, culture, and major figures in politics, “such as foreign minister and vice chancellor in the Weimar Republic. The Weimar constitution was the work of a German Jew, Hugo Preuss, who later became minister of the interior.” And of course there were German Jews who were intellectual forces in the Communist movement as well … Marx ring a bell?
Historically as the rest of those societies have seen this minority group succeed segments of the population, especially those who have not been succeeded so much, begin to resent them and gravitiate to neferious explanations for the success of that minority population. They suspect that this minority has too much power and is using it in some disloyal way, perhaps even in the service of some plan for their own … after all they aren’t really “us”. Invariably through history the accusations include that Jews succeed because they stick together so much, look out for each other. The themes go back to Rome:
So understand the response to an accusation that Jewish success is due to Jews sticking together in historic context. You may be making an innocent suggestion, but it is a suggestion with a bloody pedigreed. And one that is of little explanatory power. Jews are successful in Hollywood but not especially successful in Hollywood; not all that more than they are in a wide variety of other areas that are in the space of managing ideas - science, economics, literature, journalism, political consultants, advisors, chess masters, and on and on. If “good-ole-boy networking” can explain that then you need to tell me how. If statistical analysis showing over-representation is provisional evidence of discrimination, then be prepared to use it against the Nobel Prize Committee and the Film Academy and …
Oh I’d like to and I am not promoting that explanation. I prefer the one I have suggested.
But I still ask you the hypothetical - what if you read that paper and became convinced that the authors’ hypothesis is correct? What would be your response, in your gut?
You see those of us Jews who are historically aware have reason to be paranoid: the world has been out to get us. And we see that in every path the potential for madness lies. No matter what we do.
I have a suggestion that may be a little less sinister. Before there was Hollywood, there was Vaudeville and Burlesque and a thriving Jewish/Yiddish theater, especially in New York. A distant relative of mine was a principal in the Friars club (originally a small group of theater owners, it grew to a club for those in the New York entertainment world; Actors, singers, comedians, etc…)
Among his memorabilia are several clippings from “The Epistle,” the Friars’ newsletter. Dating from the teens and 20’s, there were several comments and articles about the new phenomenon of “talking pictures” that were being made out in California, and how several of the members were going out there or had just returned from checking it out (we’re talking Al Jolson, Georgie Jessel, George M Cohan, etc…)
So, you start with a New York entertainment industry in which Jews are well-represented. Now throw into the mix a new technology/ medium through which said entertainment can be recorded, distributed and sold to many more people than one can fit into a music hall. Is it really so surprising that the early-adopters of this new medium were Jews? And, considering their success, is it really so startling that they’re still there?
I’m not terribly impressed with the paper at first inspection. It makes some contradictory statements – first it says that high IQ would indicate a higher chance for economic success, then it says that in a study across different economic background, even Jews from very poor families had higher IQs. The paper states that higher economic success would lead to higher reproductive success, but gives no evidence that that is the case.
From my experience in working with students (as a volunteer tutor, not as a teacher) I feel that inherent ability is only one part of the equation for success, and that parental involvement is at least as important, if not more important. A naturally talented student can easily become lackadaisical about their work without motivation from home, while a student of about average or even below average ability can develop good study habits to achieve academic success, given enough parental (sometimes grand-parental) prodding.
Also, there is another very plausible suggestion that some others in this thread have stated, where, regardless of what industry you’re in, you can have a significant advantage over others applying for jobs in a company if you know someone in that company. Even if that person has no role in deciding whether or not you get hired, they can make sure that your resume gets looked at by the right department, for instance, whereas submitting your resume to an ordinary recruiter might not result in the right hiring managers seeing it, much less them giving you an initial callback.
Finally, let me note that it’s not uncommon for children to fantasize about going into particular industries, and for those childhood fantasies to significantly influence their eventual careers. Often, those fantasies originate from careers of people around you. If on every visit to Uncle Morty (manager of various Vaudeville talents) you see him surrounded by exciting, beautiful people, maybe you’d fantasize about being a media magnate when you grow up, something that might not occur to too many kids who grow up surrounded by blue-collar workers.
It’s true! I have a list of prominent 7-11 owners, and they’re all Asian.
We need to sic some lawyers on this pronto.
Simmer down, Uncle Leo.
Movie studios are large, publicly-traded companies. Their hiring decisions are justly subject to federal anti-discrimination law.
On the other hand, convenience stores tend to be family-run operations, either proprietorships or closely-held companies. The people working behind the counter are often owners. Federal anti-discrimination suits generally aren’t going to touch that situation.
In reality, lots of convenience stores are either corporate-owned and operated or are franchise operations and not owned by the people who run them (7-11 is one prominent example of a heavily franchised operation, moving towards all-franchise stores in coming years). And yes, they are subject to federal anti-discrimination laws.
I hope this doesn’t put a damper on your Asian-networking-clannishness-convenience-store-takeover theory.