Karen Brodkin and Dalton Conley, Essay Example

Discuss how Karen Brodkin and Dalton Conley make the link between race and structural forces like education, occupation and wealth.

In the article “how Jews became white” Karen Brodkin shows the journey of this group of people from their status as immigrants to citizens of the America. Together with other euro ethnic communities, the Jews were regarded as inferior people and hence they had no rights in America. Over the years, they dealt with challenges ranging from attaining an education, employment and the ultimate accumulation of wealth. In this period, college education was reserved for the native Americans. When the chance opened up for Jews to pursue an education, they embraced it completely and focused on occupational careers that helped them secure jobs. But as much as they were getting educated, majority settled for jobs that were beneath their training. They continued to focus on jobs such as fashion and media, which give rise to the major business empires seen today.

Various government policies lead to the whitening effects of the Jews. They include: assimilation of euro ethnic immigrants and transformation of education curriculum. Assimilation of euro ethnic immigrants led to the incorporation of the Jews in an extended version of whiteness. This was brought about by the loss of respectability for anti-european and anti-sematic racism. The transformation of the educational curriculum also played a major role. Through this process, Jews were able to study course that were occupational oriented helping them to become middle class citizens.

The link between race, education, occupation and wealth is also highlighted in the article why wealth matters for blacks. In historical times, blacks were considered as slaves hence they could not own any property. With the introduction of colleges, the black population getting an education which helped them secure jobs in the society. Getting jobs meant that they could acquire wealth which was quite important as it gave them a sense of fulfillment.

According to Conley, income cannot be used to measure wealth. This is due to the various factors such as income level and person’s expenditure. The amount of money one makes can influence greatly the amount of wealth a person can get. Personal Expenditure is the amount a person spends at any given time. This can influence what amount of wealth a person can obtain. For instance, person with a substantial salary but spends largely is not able to acquire much wealth as compared with one who does not spend a lot. Thus I concur with the author that income is not a definite tool to measure wealth.