Minority Problems: A Textbook of Readings in Intergroup Relations

jan peczkis|Friday, September 16, 2011

This anthology surveys the experiences of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, Indians (Native Americans), Gypsies (Sinti and Roma), Jewish-Americans, and Japanese Americans. Significantly, there is very little on European ethnics.


         


For all the attention that has been devoted, in Polish-Jewish relations, to the numerus clausus in pre-WWII Poland, which limited the percentage of Jews in universities to that in the general population (10%), one might easily think that such a policy existed only in Poland. The reader may be shocked to learn that the same thing existed in the United States, as described by Oscar and Mary Handlin: "In the 1920's almost every leading American college and university, formally or informally, adopted a quota system for Jewish students. Unofficial regulatory agencies made it difficult for Jews to enter almost every profession. In 1944 and 1945, some representative groups in the fields of dentistry and psychiatry went so far as openly to propose a quota system in those fields." (p. 22).

In the chapter on the perceptions that American Jews and Catholics have of each other, Arnold M. Rose has a bit of an ironic twist on accusations of Jews being responsible for the Crucifixion of Christ. He writes: "Yet there can be little doubt that a number of not-well-educated Catholics think of Jews as Christ-killers. As a matter of fact, there are probably a few not-well-educated Jews even today who believe that Jesus deserved to be crucified because he falsely claimed to be the Messiah." (p. 378).

Of course, religious prejudices have been mutual. Rose comments on how Jews see Christians: "Christians are thus followers of the false Messiah, and Trinitarians (including Catholics) are to be considered polytheists rather than monotheists, like Jews." (Rose, p. 378).

Polish-Jewish antagonisms continue in the New World: "Every Jew and every Pole `knows' that Poles hate Jews and vice versa, even if in fact some Poles and some Jews do not hate each other." (Rose, p. 378). This cannot be based on the Poles' Catholicism, as Italian-Americans are also Catholic, yet no one supposes that Italians and Jews are "supposed" to hate each other. (ibid, p. 379). However, Rose does not consider the fact that members of the Jewish side continue to attack Poles and bring up decades-old events, while Polish hostility towards Jews is generally in reaction to that.
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