Meritocracy and Jewish kinship networks

By Philip Weiss | January 13, 2010

A lot of people are talking about David Brooks’s distastefully-smug column in the Times yesterday about Jewish achievement, in which he says that we are 2 percent of the U.S. population and 25 percent of this and that. And that we get all the patents in the Middle East while the Arabs smoke hookahs.

He asks how this can be, and talks about our incredible culture. I agree: it’s a helluva bookish culture. Though that same intellectual culture is going out the window now that the chief occupation of Jewish leadership is saying, Repeat after us, apartheid is democracy.

But I’d like to inject a realistic note here. How much of Jewish achievement reflects the fact that Jews look out for one another? When I had to get a partner on this website to keep it going, I was most comfortable getting another Jew. Years ago when I was at the Harvard Crimson newspaper, my Irish-Catholic friend Mary Ridge informed me that it was a “Jewish club”–we selected for our own kind; and the Crimson produced a lot of professional journalism talent. I have gotten most of my journalism work from Jewish bosses.

Jews have kinship networks as strong as other people’s, maybe more strong. All that Hollywood talent– producers are always aware of who is a Jew, and I am sure they feel more comfortable hiring Jews. Landsman. My parents liked the idea of my marrying a Jew because Jews are gemutlich, as my mom always says– family, kin. We know all the social cues, can finish one another’s sentences, etc.

And look at the New York Times, where Brooks works. Is it an expression of Jewish genius that most of the political columnists are Jewish? Tom Friedman, Nick Kristof, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, David Brooks et al. Or does it maybe reflect the fact that a Jewish family has majority ownership of the newspaper and that most of the big editors have been Jewish and at some level, unconscious or otherwise, they favor Jews?

So I think some of the amazing record of Jewish achievement reflects discrimination; and Jews are powerful enough in this society that we ought to be conscious of that. Brooks has often praised the late sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, and Baltzell said as much about the last establishment; he said that WASPs favor other WASPs, and that it was hurting the American establishment.

I venture that the same thing is happening today in the Jewish portion of the establishment. We discriminate in favor of our own; and it’s doing a number on foreign policy.

What should be done about this? Jews in powerful positions should be aware of this, and seek greater diversity in their hiring.

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