Hidden Racial Discrimination in the United States

The dark-skinned U.S. president elect Barack Obama symbolizes a disengagement from racial discrimination among the vast majority of American people, which has existed for over 200 years. However, a Chinese proverb says, “a centipede doesn’t topple over when it dies.” The Israelis invaded Gaza Strip where Palestinians live. I am afraid this will lead to more hidden discrimination toward the Jewish community from the far right and far left wings of American society.

Foreigners who have lived in the U.S. for a long time know that only WASPs are ranked highly in American society. The word “wasp” originally means hornet, but it is also an acronym that stands for white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant in American English. People who intended to be at the highest positions were required to meet these three conditions in the early years of America. Forty-seven years ago, John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, was elected President. He broke the third conventional practice of being a protestant. Obama broke through the first two practices, white and Anglo-Saxon, but met the third by being a protestant; it was not easy for him to win.

Since there was history in the world, there was racial discrimination, especially the Chinese people. Foreign-born Chinese are used to calling local people “old foreigner” and “black woman,” unaware of its implication of discrimination and contempt. There are still a few people in the U.S. who call American Chinese “Chinaman” or “Chinks,” which carries the same insulting tone. This article aims at honestly analyzing the deep-rooted and hidden prejudice towards the Jews in the U.S. and exploring the reasons why the Israeli invasion of Palestine could be counter-productive.

Among the 300 million people that populate the U.S., there are only about 5.6 million Jews, 1.45 million of whom live in New York, including the bearded Hasidic Jews. Yet, their influence far exceeds their population: finance, lawyers, accountants, media, education, they occupy the leader positions in all walks of life. The bosses of the influential “New York Times” and “Washington Post” newspapers are Jewish.

Jewish people are more innately intelligent than white people. They also emphasize on education like the Chinese, which enables them rank among the best in any schools. Harvard has a non-written “Jewish quota,” which limits the school to admitting no more than 40 percent Jewish students every year. They must do this because if they admitted students according to their academic results, classes would have risked being filled by Jews. The counter strategy of the Jewish was to found their own university. Yeshiva University is known as the “Harvard of the Jews.” Its standards are as high as Harvard but all students are Jewish.

Broadly speaking, the phenomenon of anti-Semitism has been greatly reduced in the U.S. during last four decades. The extreme right wing hated Jews in the past, with Patrick Buchanan, who ran for president twice, as their representative. The vast majority of whites gradually changed over the past prejudices, but prejudiced Latinos and Blacks, as well as shaved-headed neo-Nazis, replaced them.

Jewish organizational power is strong. They have thousands of associations with each in charge of different matter. The most authoritative, the American Jewish Committee, has hundreds to respond by one single call. The Anti-Defamation League was established against racial discrimination long time ago, so as to investigate closely the phenomenon of discrimination against Jewish people in the U.S. It found that in spite of a substantial improvement in the country, 17 percent of Americans dislike Jewish people, with 35 percent of Latinos and Blacks among them. Surprisingly, there are still 3 percent of university students who don’t like Jews, not knowing whether it is because their academic results can’t catch up with the Jews.

Five weeks ago, this column mentioned Bernard L. Madoff’s case. He used a Ponzi system to defraud investors. It is like a duplicate of the Hong Yuan Securities Co., Ltd case 30 years ago in Taiwan. The slow response to Madoff’s scheme has caused a big shock in New York because the affected are all Jewish tycoons. Many Jewish bosses living in the Eastern District of the city suddenly became absolutely destitute in just one night. Several friends of WASPs wrote emails to inform me this. We could imagine how pleased they were from the bottom of their heart.

Although the Jewish community has great influence in the media, the Israelis led the troop to invade Gaza Strip two weeks ago, and the general public, watching the scenes of Palestinian parents carrying their innocent children to the hospital every day on television, question why the U.S. struggled to support Israel while disregarding the world opinion. Ignoring Bush, why didn’t the fearful and righteous Obama dare to speak up? Obama’s answer was that he had not yet taken office and there could be only one president in the U.S. in order to avoid the media continuing to ask.

The extreme right-wing originally had a deep resentment towards Israel. This is one of the reasons why Israel is always the biggest beneficiary of the foreign aid program in the American budget every year. Israel acquired $2.4 billion in American aid last year. Each Israeli got $3000 if the aid was divided by the total population of 7.28 million in Israel. No wonder some people say that Israel is brought up by the U.S. By exploring the reason, the Jewish have big credit in their lobbying work in Congress over many years. The right-wing, who always think that Washington politicians ignore people sufferings by spending money like pouring water, will advocate a big cutting off of economic aid to Israel this year under the pretext of the state treasury predicament caused by the financial tsunami.

Nevertheless, the American extreme leftists have sympathy for the 25.5 percent of Palestinians among the total population in Israel suffering differential treatments, oppressed by the Israeli government for many years. The left wing analyze the issue from a fair and just point of view and have come to the phase where the U.S. should re-examine the entire Middle East issue, especially what stance should be taken over the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Despite the Israeli army’s invincibility in the Gaza Strip, because of the public opinion pressure from the world, Israel has announced a “cease-fire” for three hours every afternoon. If they don’t stop it at the right moment, when the hidden racial discrimination towards the Jews for many years finally comes out, I am afraid that their gains will not make up for their losses.