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-- The Irony of Living in the US
The Irony of Living in the US
On the same day, in the same paper (the New York Times), there were two contrasting visions of whether America is a land of opportunity. This totally blew my mind.
Version 1:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/o...GVQWoawz34iOaYg
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A Jew in England [vs. the US] Robert Cohen NEW YORK � When my father was about to emigrate from South Africa to England in the 1950s, a friend of the family suggested that a change of name was in order because it would be unwise to pursue his career in Britain while called �Cohen.� My Dad, a young doctor, said he would think it over. A few days later he announced to the friend that he had decided to make the change. �To what?� she asked with satisfaction. �Einstein,� he deadpanned. And so Sydney Cohen came to London and in time had the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) bestowed upon him by the queen, and was named a fellow of the Royal Society (founded 1660), and, most important to him, became a member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. In all, it can hardly be said that he encountered barriers in the land of Benjamin Disraeli. He embraced his adopted country, my family was assimilated and Jewishness became the minor key of our identity. That was most of the story but not quite all. A couple of things have recently stirred deep memories of being a Jew in England. The first was Nick Hornby�s screenplay for the movie, �An Education,� set in 1960s London and rendering with acuity a subtle current of prejudice. It is captured when Emma Thompson, playing the proper headmistress of a girls� school where a precocious 16-year-old student has taken up with an older man, exclaims �A Jew!� upon discovering the identity of the rake. Her voice quivers with distaste. The second was reading my colleague Sarah Lyall�s account of the controversy stemming form the Court of Appeal�s decision about the Jewishness (or not) of a boy trying to get into the JFS, or Jews� Free School, in London. I won�t go into the case here but will say that I found the court�s ruling that the criteria for Jewishness must be �faith, however defined� � rather than family ties � quaint. Nobody I know ever defined a Jew, or persecuted one, on the grounds of whether or not he went to synagogue regularly. �An Education� put me back in my London complete with Dad�s old Rover model. But it wasn�t just the cars. It was that faint prejudice floating around with its power to generate I�m-not-quite-one-of-them feelings. In the late 1960�s, I went to Westminster, one of Britain�s top private schools, an inspiring place hard by Westminster Abbey, and was occasionally taunted as a �Yid� � not a bad way to forge a proud Jewish identity in a nonreligious Jew. The teasing soon ended. But something else happened that was related to the institution rather than adolescent minds. I won a scholarship to Westminster and would have entered College, the scholars� house, but was told that a Jew could not attend College nor hold a Queen�s Scholarship. I got an Honorary Scholarship instead. This seemed normal then but appears abnormal in retrospect. So I wrote to the current headmaster, Stephen Spurr, asking what the grounds were back then on which Jews were not admitted to College; whether the same regulation still exists; when the practice was changed (if it was); and how Westminster defines, or defined, Jewishness. Spurr e-mailed answers. �I am afraid I do not know� was his response to my query on why Jews were barred from College; �Absolutely not� on whether the regulation still exists; no idea on when it was changed (if it ever existed); and, on the definition question, �We do not try to determine Jewishness.� That piqued rather than satisfied my curiosity so I wrote to my old English teacher, John Field, who inspired my lifelong love of literature, and he was far more forthcoming: �The demography of London began to change markedly in the 1930s with refugees from mainland Europe, and when the school returned to London after five years� evacuation, the number of Jewish applicants slowly began to increase. The bursar and registrar was an ex-Indian Army colonel with the kind of views you would expect such a background to provide. I recall archiving his notes on Nigel Lawson� � later Britain�s chancellor of the exchequer � �when his parents brought him for interview in 1945 or 46. On the lines of �Undoubtedly a bright and clever child. Very Jewish of course.�� Field continued: �Colonel Carruthers (his real name!) almost certainly operated with a Jewish quota in his mind when admitting people to the school, and at some point in the early 1960s got the Governing Body to agree to a new condition of entry to College: the candidate should �profess the Christian faith.�� He added: �So in the 1960�s Westminster acquired a reputation for being unwelcoming to Jewish families. Maybe the examples of yourself and John Marenbon� � a brilliant Jewish classmate of mine, now a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge � �prompted John Rae to persuade the governors to scrap the condition of entry to College.� Rae was headmaster from 1970 to 1986. Westminster, like Britain, has changed. Openness has grown. Bigotry�s faint refrain has grown fainter still. But I think my old school should throw more light on this episode. And I still believe the greatest strength of America, its core advantage over the old world, is its lack of interest in where you�re from and consuming interest in what you can do. |
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In Job Hunt, College Degree Can�t Close Racial Gap Johnny R. Williams, 30, would appear to be an unlikely person to have to fret about the impact of race on his job search, with companies like JPMorgan Chase and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago on his r�sum�. But after graduating from business school last year and not having much success garnering interviews, he decided to retool his r�sum�, scrubbing it of any details that might tip off his skin color. His membership, for instance, in the African-American business students association? Deleted. �If they�re going to X me,� Mr. Williams said, �I�d like to at least get in the door first.� Similarly, Barry Jabbar Sykes, 37, who has a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, now uses Barry J. Sykes in his continuing search for an information technology position, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life. �Barry sounds like I could be from Ireland,� he said. That race remains a serious obstacle in the job market for African-Americans, even those with degrees from respected colleges, may seem to some people a jarring contrast to decades of progress by blacks, culminating in President Obama�s election. But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field � in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven. College-educated black men, especially, have struggled relative to their white counterparts in this downturn, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates � 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent. Various academic studies have confirmed that black job seekers have a harder time than whites. A study published several years ago in The American Economic Review titled �Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?� found that applicants with black-sounding names received 50 percent fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names. A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did. The discrimination is rarely overt, according to interviews with more than two dozen college-educated black job seekers around the country, many of them out of work for months. Instead, those interviewed told subtler stories, referring to surprised looks and offhand comments, interviews that fell apart almost as soon as they began, and the sudden loss of interest from companies after meetings. Whether or not each case actually involved bias, the possibility has furnished an additional agonizing layer of second-guessing for many as their job searches have dragged on. �It does weigh on you in the search because you�re wondering, how much is race playing a factor in whether I�m even getting a first call, or whether I�m even getting an in-person interview once they hear my voice and they know I�m probably African-American?� said Terelle Hairston, 25, a graduate of Yale University who has been looking for work since the summer while also trying to get a marketing consulting start-up off the ground. �You even worry that the hiring manager may not be as interested in diversity as the H.R. manager or upper management.� Mr. Williams recently applied to a Dallas money management firm that had posted a position with top business schools. The hiring manager had seemed ecstatic to hear from him, telling him they had trouble getting people from prestigious business schools to move to the area. Mr. Williams had left New York and moved back in with his parents in Dallas to save money. But when Mr. Williams later met two men from the firm for lunch, he said they appeared stunned when he strolled up to introduce himself. �Their eyes kind of hit the ceiling a bit,� he said. �It was kind of quiet for about 45 seconds.� The company�s interest in him quickly cooled, setting off the inevitable questions in his mind. Discrimination in many cases may not even be intentional, some job seekers pointed out, but simply a matter of people gravitating toward similar people, casting about for the right �cultural fit,� a buzzword often heard in corporate circles. There is also the matter of how many jobs, especially higher-level ones, are never even posted and depend on word-of-mouth and informal networks, in many cases leaving blacks at a disadvantage. A recent study published in the academic journal Social Problems found that white males receive substantially more job leads for high-level supervisory positions than women and members of minorities. Many interviewed, however, wrestled with �pulling the race card,� groping between their cynicism and desire to avoid the stigma that blacks are too quick to claim victimhood. After all, many had gone to good schools and had accomplished r�sum�s. Some had grown up in well-to-do settings, with parents who had raised them never to doubt how high they could climb. Moreover, there is President Obama, perhaps the ultimate embodiment of that belief. Certainly, they conceded, there are times when their race can be beneficial, particularly with companies that have diversity programs. But many said they sensed that such opportunities had been cut back over the years and even more during the downturn. Others speculated there was now more of a tendency to deem diversity unnecessary after Mr. Obama�s triumph. In fact, whether Mr. Obama�s election has been good or bad for their job prospects is hotly debated. Several interviewed went so far as to say that they believed there was only so much progress that many in the country could take, and that there was now a backlash against blacks. �There is resentment toward his presidency among some because of his race,� said Edward Verner, a Morehouse alumnus from New Jersey who was laid off as a regional sales manager and has been able to find only part-time work. �This has affected well-educated, African-American job seekers.� It is difficult to overstate the degree that they say race permeates nearly every aspect of their job searches, from how early they show up to interviews to the kinds of anecdotes they try to come up with. �You want to be a nonthreatening, professional black guy,� said Winston Bell, 40, of Cleveland, who has been looking for a job in business development. He drew an analogy to several prominent black sports broadcasters. �You don�t want to be Stephen A. Smith. You want to be Bryant Gumbel. You don�t even want to be Stuart Scott. You don�t want to be, �Booyah.� � Nearly all said they agonized over job applications that asked them whether they would like to identify their race. Most said they usually did not. |
Re: The Irony of Living in the US
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| Originally posted by HardTranceProd On the same day, in the same paper (the New York Times), there were two contrasting visions of whether America is a land of opportunity. This totally blew my mind. Version 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/o...GVQWoawz34iOaYg Version 2... the story right next to it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/01race.html My question is, who do I believe? |
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