How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America

by Karen Brodkin Sacks

The history of Jews in the United States is one of racial change that provides useful insights on race in America. Prevailing classifications have sometimes assigned Jews to the white race and at other times have created an off-white racial designation for them. Those changes in racial assignment have shaped the ways American Jews of different eras have constructed their ethnoracial identities. Brodkin illustrates these changes through an analysis of her own family's multi-generational experience. She shows how Jews, in her opinion, experience a kind of double vision that comes from racial middleness: on the one hand, marginality with regard to whiteness; on the other, whiteness and belonging with regard to blackness.

Genres: History, Race, Nonfiction, Jewish, Judaism, Anthropology, Social Justice

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Director of women's studies and associate professor of anthropology at UCLA.

Reviews

[FIND ME ON STORYGRAPH]

Q: how likely am I to be offended by this book?
A: very.

Q: how much does that make me want to read it?
A: a lot.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was extremely interesting. For me the beginning (which was largely about upward mobility in working class Jewish immigrant communities and what it meant for a Jewish sense of community and communal ethics) was slow. But Sacks' thoughts towards the end of the book become very important and thought-provoking. Most particularly interesting to me was the idea that, given anti-semitism, the Holocaust, and the way the US builds identities for its citizens based on perceived "racial" distinctions, Jews (and other groups) got/get pushed to assimilate into American ("whiteness") and that, in the process of doing so, Jews have helped to shape the American white identity. She suggests that Jews became the interpeters of white America, while at the same continuing to feel uneasy with it. Finding themselves not accepted into a white elite for example, Jewish movie producers created a parallel universe of "bourgeois American whiteness" that they could fit into. This is a complicated idea but if one thinks about Hollywood, Kathy Lee, and Barbie one can get perhaps an inkling. Sacks also discusses how Jews have been held up as a "good minority" who managed to assimilate and succeed financially as opposed to other groups who did not (eg Puerto Rican, and Italian, and particularly African) who could therefore be perceived as comparatively "bad" minorities. Sacks discusses important subtexts to this whole construct, including Toni Morrison's thesis that the two invented stereotypes are necessary for the whole US racial construct and that it is on back of demonization of "blacks" that people can become "white." In other words, racial subordination is of course the very cornerstone of white society. Sacks also talks about how the concept and truth of the Jewish woman had to be belittled in order to fit into mainstream white society. And she suggests that American Jewish men expressed their ambivalence and fear about Jewishness, whiteness, and masculinity in their stereotypes of Jewish women. Very interestingly she suggests that the two stereotypes of Jewish women--smothering, emasculating mothers, and JAPs--are the two sides of Jewish men's ambivalence to assimilation and whiteness. It seems obvious once read. But I thought this was insightful indeed and absolutely correct to the point of being evident except that it's invisible. She discusses the thesis of David Levering Lewis--the idea that the assimilation of German Jews made them reluctant to stand up against growing anti-semitism and that the resulting inner tension impelled them to fight anti-Semitism "by proxy" by supporting African American struggles. Last she discusses at length how our institutions, rooted as they are both in slavery and in the European Enlightenment, divide everything into binary categories and so make it seem natural that we have the divisive racial and gender categories that we have--and that in fact these categories are actually expressions of our ambivalence to capitalist modernity (eg the excitiement of everything new and its emptiness). There's much more and it's hugely clarifying. The above is to give a sense of the topicality and depth of this book.

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Good (if slightly dated) overview of how Jews came to possess white privilege. Some caveats: this is really only about the kinds of Jews who *can* possess white privilege -- i.e., Ashkenazi Jews. There's no discussion of Sephardim and barely any mention of Black Jews, as other reviewers have already pointed out. It's also a bit on the dry side, in terms of the writing, and some of the author's conclusions are a little confusing given her earlier arguments. But overall I found it a good read.

[Ilana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would say this book is "important" more than I would say it is "good". It's a seminal text in studies of Jewish ethnicity and racial assignment, but it's missing important information and is pretty dated at this point.

Firstly, as others have (correctly) noted, the book is almost solely about the Ashkenazi American experience, and does not acknowledge or discuss non-Ashkenazi culture. This is an enormous missed opportunity for several reasons; it fails to consider the cultural distinctiveness of other Jewish ethnic groups, which has major implications for the construction and assignment of identity.

Sephardic Jews from Western Europe (Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands) were among the earliest Jews to come to the US in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and many of them had an important roles in the building of the country. Brodkin also doesn't consider the fact that a not-insignificant number of non-Ashkenazi Jews (Sepharadim and others) very much do pass as white.

Brodkin likewise doesn't take American "Jews of colour" into account, whether these are ethnic Jews of non-Ashkenazi ancestry who are not white in appearance, or non-white American converts to Judaism. These people are also American Jews, and they play a role in Jews' construction of racial identity, and in the racial assignment of Jews.

Secondly, the book is now dated (it was first published in 1998, and one chapter was published in 1994). It's simply no longer current in terms of discourses around Jewishness and race/ethnicity, or discourses around race/ethnicity in general in the 2010s and 2020s.

While I wouldn't not recommend this book, it's best read in concert with/alongside other texts on Jewishness and race/ethnicity, particularly alongside David Schraub's paper "White Jews: An Intersectional Approach" (AJS Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 2019). Other recommended readings on this subject are listed here: Bibliography: readings on Jewish race/ethnicity, whiteness, and antisemitism

A third problem with this book is that it tries to be autoethnography, history, and historiography simultaneously, and doesn't excel at any of those – the personal elements of Brodkin's narrative are scant (but present enough to be noteworthy and to make the reader wonder how much this book is an attempt at self-exculpation), and the historiography is limited to a few criticisms of other, earlier writers' paternalism and racism (in the latter chapters). The history is relatively scholarly and well-researched, but the writing is unbelievably dry.

[Sidney Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This scholarly research helps put into context the struggles of JOCs within the dominant Jewish community and culture of "yiddishkeit" in a historical perspective and provides a basis of rapproachment and dialogue for positive relations and community growth within the increasingly diverse Jewish community. A very insightful and interesting study of race relations from the point of view of a Jewish anthropologist. The title belies its critical investigation into the social, political, ethnic and economic realities of Jewishness and race. A must read for anyone seriously interested in multi-ethnic Jewish dialogue and rapprochement.

[Hipalevsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting questions and analysis, but she was reaching beyond her own scholarly expertise yet still wrote a very dry scholarly analysis featuring mediocre writing and a purely scholarly tone. I would have loved to see this book written for a popular audience instead, with clear and engaging writing, recognizing the limits of her understanding and focused more on delving into the fascinating questions she raises about the role of race, class and gender in shaping Jewish identity rather than focusing on arguing for her own interpretations being the correct ones.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

A great concept - Jews' transformation from 'other' to White - if that transformation has in fact taken place, and if Jews identify themselves as White at all - but HORRIBLE execution. This book is based on personal experience, not research - I hope someone does a real scholarly look at this issue soon!

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astonishing dissection of the construction of race/class/gender, and where Jews fit in. My one issue with this book is that it totally ignores that Jews of color even exist. A pretty gaping omission from an otherwise thorough and clear analysis.

[Omni · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was completely disjointed and difficult to follow. It had some good information, but most of it wasnt on the given topic. Brodkin discusses labor, class, gender, and politics quite a bit in relation to Jewish American history. It really is more of a book on the Jewish American experience from the turn of the 20th century onward. For that alone it would be interesting were it not sporadic.

[Karen]

The book is dated, which isn't its fault. It's also a personal ethnographic text, filtered overwhelmingly through Brodkin's own family history, which was by design but just does not work for me in this execution.

I abandoned this book in favor of Eric L. Goldstein's The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, which is an academic history and is excellent.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book, that I wish was longer. I felt like I would have liked more examples and a more thorough flushing out of her ideas and that there was so much more to be said. Perhaps she'll write a follow up.



“All the energy Grandma put into cooking went directly into us. There was nothing metaphorical about the process. It was pure calories. She cooked for us, and we ate for her. She gave us love on a plate and we gave it back by cleaning our plates...food was love.”

“We all had a sense that each of us was the first generation to make a new world - my grandparents immigrated, my parents moved beyond the small world of the immigrant ghetto and took on the entitlements of middle-class life, and I rebelled against the homogeneity of that life. With each generation, we emphasized our social invention, with no continuity from our parents save our rebellions against them.”

“As with most chicken-and-egg problems, it is hard to know which came first. Did Jews and other Euro-ethnics become white because they became middle-class? That is, did money whiten? Or did being incorporated into an expanded version of whiteness open up the economic doors to middle-class status? Clearly, both tendencies were at work.”

"It is important to remember that, prior to the war, a college degree was still very much a ‘mark of the upper class,’ that colleges were largely finishing schools for Protestant elites. Before the postwar boom, schools could not begin to accommodate the American masses. Even in New York City before the 1930s, neither the public schools nor City College had room for more than a tiny fraction of potential immigrant students.”

"The FHA believed in racial segregation. Throughout its history, it publicly and actively promoted restrictive covenants. Before the war, these forbade sales to Jews and Catholics as well as to African-Americans...Even after the Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants in 1948, the FHA continued to encourage builders to write them in against African-Americans. FHA underwriting manuals openly insisted on racially homogeneous neighborhoods, and their loans were made only in white neighborhoods. “

"In sum, the temporary darkening of Jews and other European immigrants during the period when they form the core of the industrial working class clearly illustrates the linkages between degraded and driven jobs and nonwhite racial status. Similarly, the "Indianness” of Mexicans and Asians, as they became key to capitalist agribusiness, stands as another variant on the earlier constructions of blackness and redness. I am suggesting that this construction of race almost is the American construction of class, that capitalism as an economic organization in the United States is racially structured.”

"The word ‘ethnicity’ did not come into use until after World War II, when it became the word of choice in academic and public-policy vocabularies to describe those who had been formerly discussed as members of a less-than-white race, nation, or people.”

“The entitlements of whiteness depend upon their denial to nonwhites. Those who became Euro-ethnics in the late 1960s and 1970s - Irish, Jews, Poles, and Italians, for example - have as part of their ethnic heritage a racial assignment as not really white. For white ethnics to claim their whiteness would seem to depend upon denying equal entitlements to nonwhites.”

"Jewishness itself also changed rapidly in the postwar decades. In 1957... only 3.5% of all Jews married non-Jews. This was as low a level as when Jews were segregated by anti-Semitism. However, that figure masked changes that were already in motion. By the 1980s, Jews were marrying non-Jews as often as Jews, and by the 1990s more Jews married non-Jews then married Jews.”

“We should look at our histories not as models to emulate but for insights, new ideas and conversations...For American Jews, this requires confronting our present white racial assignment. The Yiddishkeits of memory were forged under conditions in which Jews were considered less than fully white. Those ghettoized conditions forced Jews to depend on one another...The privileges of whiteness, especially occupational and residential mobility, which were extended to American Jews after World War II, dissolve that forced interdependence. If external racism contains the class, religious, and political differences that have always marked Jewish communities, what will preserve those aspects of the culture today?”

[Larkin Tackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Jews Became White Folks… was published in 1998 by former UCLA Anthropology Professor Karen Brodkin Sacks, who interestingly later became active in the BDS movement. It’s scholarly and was hard to get through, but does a good job telling the story of how Ashkanazi Jews (there is little mention of Sephardic or jews of color) becoming White in the early 20th century. Because of her academic background and her own experience, she spends much more of the book on her family's story as an example of the social, gender, cultural, and economic development of the majority Jewish community than she does about Jewish race relations or Jews beliefs about race. For me personally, it read like an anthropological study of my own Jewish family, especially the women. For example, her discussion of married Jewish women frequently taking in borders made me wonder if this explains the number of guests my grandmother and mother had in our homes growing up.

Brodkin describes significant discrimination against Jews (along with Irish, Italian, and other European immigrants) in professional occupations and unions during the ealry 20th century. “Although many Jewish workers were skilled in the printing, carpentry, painting, and building trades, Jews were frozen out of these occupations almost completely, just as they were frozen out of the highly unionized transportation and communication trades.”

Some of the most interesting parts of the book dive into the distinctions between non-Jewish White people, Jews, and Black people from a woman’s perspective. Discussing her family, Brodkin writes, “Our Jewishness was racially a middle place to experience middle-class womanhood. In relation to ‘the blond people,’ mainstream white folks, the women of my family felt different. However, in relation to African Americans, we experienced ourselves as mainstream and white.”

Her discussion of major structural shifts in the mid-20th century--like the GI bill that she and others have called the most significant affirmative action measure in US history and disproportionately helped White men (including Jews), as well as the elimination of Jewish quotas--starts to identify when the Jews shift to whiteness began. “If Boston is any indication, just over 1 percent of all Jewish men before the war were doctors, but 16 percent of the postwar generation became M.D.'s.” Redlining, racist FHA loans, segregation, etc. are forms of de facto and de jure discrimingation that didn’t apply to Jews. “The myth that Jews pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps ignores,” she writes, “the fact that it took federal programs to create the conditions whereby the abilities of Jews and other European immigrants could be recognized and rewarded rather than denigrated and denied.” In fact, Brodkin argues that Jews became a preferred minority group. “By the late 1940s, not only did economic and social barriers to Jewish aspirations fall away but the United States, perhaps in part from guilt about having barred Jews fleeing the Nazis, perhaps in part from a more general horror of the Holocaust, became positively philo-Semitic in its embrace of Jewish culture.” She goes on, “White America embraced Jews and even Jewishness as part of itself.”

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is over twenty years old, which makes it a little bit dated. Like many of the other reviews have said, this book does not cover where the current conversation on race and the Jewish community is at. The author also writes the book in such a way which implies that her and her family's story is a common story of Jews in America. Although her family's story may feel familiar to many American Jews, it leaves out many, especially those who did not settle in New York.

Even with those issues, I do think that it is a worthwhile book for American Jews to read. Understanding our past is a way to move forward and try to build a better future. Understanding where the conversation about Jews, Whiteness, patriarchy and assimilation was twenty years ago is helpful knowledge for analyzing the issues we face today, especially how the White Jewish community purpurates racism whether towards other Jews or non-Jews.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Analysis of Assimilation and Whiteness

What I liked: The focus on how not just Jews, but other European immigrants, were considered “not quite White” until they were allowed into the mainstream with post WWII policies that excluded blacks. Jews, Irish, Italian and other ethnic immigrants became White at the expense of Black Americans. Also appreciated the analysis of misogyny played and the role capitalism in creating a necessary underclass.
What I didn’t like: The academic language made it a bit of a slog to read. I can’t even count the times she used the word “hegemony/ic” and there were many times that a more straightforward syntax would have been preferable. The sections in which the author used her own family’s story were most relatable.
All in all, an interesting addition to the analysis of Whiteness.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to give it 3.5 stars. Historically fascinating and offers details and context to Jews in recent American history. However, it does regard Jews as Ashkenazi Jews, and through this fails as incorporating race from the perspective as different types of Other. In a book about race, this sort of blind spot becomes increasingly apparent.

[Kati Higginbotham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating book, but really poorly edited. I’ve never stopped reading a book because of grammar before, but oh man, it’s bad.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given all the focus on race in the U.S., the historical perspective of how Jews and other non-northern European immigrants became white is fascinating. Before the 1920's, Italians, Jews, Polish, etc. immigrants were labeled as such. At some point, European immigrants all became white. In the U.S., race is a construct used to empower/oppress individuals and groups and create different classes based on economic opportunity. For example, Jews were labeled non-white and then became white. A ridiculous proposition in my opinion. Sadly, the binary racial classification of black or white has remained fixed in opposite poles. Is this immutable? For racial justice and real change to occur, the question must be asked and the answers cannot be "no." I felt the writing was a bit repetitive as Brodkin stated her point clearly in the beginning. However, this book successfully exposes many of the fallacies of assigning a racial identity to others.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scholarly work that explores how a once despised group became part of mainstream American culture. Brodkin explores this transformation in a way that highlights the racism of the nation and how becoming white has impacted the Jewish community. In America, groups that were once seen as non-white can become white if they adopt white behaviors and are neither Black nor Red. Jews made the jump after WWII driven by American sympathy for Jews due to the Holocaust.

As dire and dry as some of this book is, Brodkin concludes with a statement about Judaism (better, Yiddishkeit) that feels pretty good: The heritage of Yiddishkeit has much to recommend it - its messianic faith in the inevitability of a just world to be brought about by human agency, and the view that honor and success come from serving the community.

[Zhelana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had some interesting ideas, but took way too many words to say them. Also, way too few chapters, and that's annoying. But anyway, the general gist of the book is that Jews were not white when they did menial labor and jobs that were reserved for not white people in America, and when they became middle class, they also became white. I'm not entirely sure what that says about race in America. There was also a big section on women, and I was never quite sure how that fit in with the thesis of how Jews became white folks. I guess this book was alright.

[Lizz Goldstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great look at the history of the American cultural view of Jews in this country, and how Ashkenazi Jews viewed itself. I really enjoyed it and felt very connected to this history. However, I would be curious to see Brodkin write an updated version that speaks more to the reality that not all Jews are white or Ashkenazi and how this view of Jewish American culture has affected Sephardi Jews and Jews of color.

[Tamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting how different generations of Jews see themselves and how this evolved over time, including how we are perceived by American Society. However, I don't think any Jew could completely understand what it's like to have non-white skin. We still have the privilege of being able to hide our ethnicity if we want.

[Eli Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative, includes lots of information and context I wasn't aware of and did a great job connecting to better known race issues like the G.I. Bill and Affirmative Action. Definitely worth the read.

[Mim · Rating 4 out of 5]

22 years later and this is still or rather continues to be pertinent. It was well written and annotated, as it is a text book. I kept reminding myself of that as well as the publication date. The systemic racism is very well explained, and the move from non-white to white was illuminating.

[Dara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Thought-provoking. Makes many good points, though I think she doesn't fully prove some of her arguments. I don't need to agree with all aspects of the book, to find elements useful.

[Josh Fogelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting sociology book. Become a little too scholarly and repetitive for me to be really interesting, but the first chapter or two was fascinating, while my attention held.

[Peter Eckstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me understand the concept of whiteness in America as it relates to being Jewish.

[Andrew Sperling · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely dreadful book -- ahistorical, factually incorrect, with not a hint of legitimate historical research, and with plenty of erasure regarding the American Jewish experience.

[eliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting but dense

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book was published in 1998, I found the book to be very timely given current controversies about race in America. I was drawn to the book by the title, although after reading the book, I think that the title is somewhat misleading--this book is not exclusively about Jews in America, but rather about how we think about race in America in general. I only rated the book as 2 stars, however, because I thought that the author generalized too much regarding "the Jews who became white folks." I definitely recommend reading the book if only to broaden one's understanding of race in America. Sadly, in the nearly 20 years since this book has been published, I don't feel like our society has made much progress in broadening our perspectives.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an excellent analysis of race, class, gender and the American Jewish experience over the past 150 years or so. A decade and a half after the book was published, I'm curious how Brodkin would update her book.

(It helps to have a basic background in gender studies, race and class studies, privilege, etc. to understand Brodkin's analysis.)