March / April 2006:

The dark side of being white
A new book by Emory prof Eric Goldstein recalls how American Jews have grappled with race and their own identity. What he found is shocking, but it may be the most important Jewish history book you’ll read this year.

Story by Bradford R. Pilcher | Photo by Erik S. Lesser


As I walk into the small bagel and breakfast joint in the early rays of dawn, I get the sense that I’m going to be tested on my homework. I always get this way when I meet professors, a sort of lingering guilt from college when showing up for class was a not-so-small victory. On this particular morning, however, all I have to do is nosh on bagels and talk with Eric L. Goldstein, one of those feared professors — in this case, from Emory University.

The topic of conversation is his new book, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity. The title makes it sound almost like something a non-academe might write, but forget that. This is a scholarly tome, chockablock with end notes.

Ever the dutiful reporter, I’d spent most of the preceding weekend reading and taking notes. When I step inside the diner, I take a seat at a table near the door and order a Coke. Goldstein is also sitting … at another table across the room. All that research and I’d forgotten to find a photo of my breakfast partner.

This is not starting well.

My only consolation — that he hasn’t found out what I look like either — is shattered when he walks over and asks if I’m, well … me. Shortly thereafter, we’re settled at the same table, this one tucked in the back next to a window with shades drawn providing a sense of relative privacy amidst the closely clustered tables. I’m curious as to why the unassuming Emory professor — and alumnus — was drawn to the subject of Jews and race.

“It was my thesis,” he deadpans. After a pause he volunteers to elaborate. While taking courses at the University of Michigan’s grad school, Goldstein was studying race in American history. “What I realized was there wasn’t much research on Jews and race in America. Most discussions of immigrants focused on their assimilation and rise in American society as an entirely positive thing, but they weren’t looking at it through the immigrants’ eyes, because they often had to sacrifice a great deal of their own culture.”

Sensing “people writing American Jewish history weren’t necessarily attuned to that,” Goldstein began researching how Jewish immigrants dealt with the sacrifices by using the language of race to maintain their cultural distinction while climbing the ladder of white society. One Ph.D. and a few years later, Goldstein’s survey of the complex landscape of Jewish racial understanding will hit bookstores this month.

We’re talking non-stop, and the waitress has dropped by twice in an attempt to take our order, so we finally surrender and stop yapping long enough to glance at the menu. Bagel sandwiches duly ordered, I try to steer the conversation towards the end of his book.

I’m fascinated by Goldstein’s treatment of the recent Jewish hipster movement — think The Hebrew Hammer or Heeb magazine. This cultural wellspring has, in Goldstein’s words, “taken aim at any aspect of Jewish culture thought to be characterized by obedient conformity to the values of white America.” Pointing out the affinity of Jewish hipsters for hallmarks of African-American culture, the Emory don links the new Jewish culture with a rebellion against whiteness.

“It’s very much about the kind of exceptionality that is associated with African-American culture,” says Goldstein. “Some Jews would like to hold on to that kind of outsider quality. In the early 20th century, they drew a line and didn’t want to be too associated with [blacks]. Today, Jews are so integrated. They very much want to be associated.”

As the waitress puts our food in front of us, Goldstein returns to the dominant theme of our conversation. “What I see is a sort of anxiety about being too mainstream.”

That this smacks of hypocrisy, at least to non-Jewish observers, isn’t lost on the husband-father-author. His son Max recently turned four, and wife Cheryl is a lawyer at Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, making Goldstein part and parcel of the educated, well-to-do society American Jews had long sought to join.

“I think Jewish identity is just rife with contradictions,” he says. “It is in some ways an irresolvable conflict so long as there is a majority culture in America. Of course, soon we may not have a white majority. Jews might be freed to not worry so much about fitting into that mainstream.”

Is my esteemed breakfast companion making a prediction? Ever the historian, Goldstein iterates his aversion to prognostication, preferring to stick to researching the past.

“The Jewish interaction with African-Americans is much more complex than it has been portrayed in most histories,” argues the professor. “Both sides are guilty of seeing the world through the views of only their own experience. I’m not trying to say one side or the other is right, but I am trying to uncover that deeper picture and reflect the frustrations of both sides by the dominant American culture.”

Our food now off our plates and into our stomachs, I ask about Goldstein’s future plans. His next project is a book about Yiddish print culture in America, he tells me. It seems a departure from his earlier research. Not so, he informs me.

“It raises all sorts of questions about what happens to Jewish culture in a democracy and when a culture loses its language,” he explains.

As he is saying this, I’m paying attention to the bill attempting to calculate an appropriate tip. This is fortuitous, because it suddenly occurs to me that Goldstein may just be focusing on the most important aspect of American Jewish history — not the meteoric success and relative security of the community, but the price that community has had to pay to receive the benefits of America.

It’s a fascinating subject, but the paramount question is probably whether American Jewry wants to pick up that particular tab. Class dismissed.



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