The Alarming Significance of Culture

I’ve always wondered what makes Jews so successful.  Always a minority in each country they’ve inhabited (with the recent exception of Israel), Jews are disproportionately represented among the most wealthy, powerful and accomplished citizens in the world today.   They’ve done this despite a millennia’s long history of persecution and oppression.  Why have they achieved so much, while other groups facing similar conditions have failed to raise themselves out of poverty?

Many American blacks point to the election of Barak Obama to the highest political office in the land as a triumph of the civil rights movement.  And in many respect it is.  The eradication of de jure discrimination has opened unprecedented opportunities for middle class blacks to achieve their highest aspirations.  On the other hand, the majority of blacks in America have succumbed to the worst social pathologies: high poverty, unemployment, crime, broken families, and incarceration rates that greatly exceed other races – even controlling for education and income.  When these statistics are pointed out, black intellectuals and activists usually blame the persistent effects of racism for the plight of the masses.

But is this really true?  Both Asians and Jews – who have achieved disproportionate success in this country – also share a history of racial discrimination.  Many of them came to this country with nothing, and have managed to dig themselves out of poverty.  The difference really comes down to values.

One episode that brought this home was when I was lounging on my couch late one night and flipping through the cable channels. It’s remarkable that with so many channels these days – there’s never really anything worth watching.  But I happened to turn to a program documenting Jewish mobsters in America.  Some of these guys were ruthless killers and degenerate thieves.  But the thing that stood out about them is that they never raised their children to grow up to be mobsters.  Some of their families had absolutely idea what they did for a living, and assumed that they were just legitimate businessmen.  Others helped out the more legitimate members of their family by paying for their education and investing in real estate and other legal businesses.

Right after the show on Jewish mobsters ended, another program began.  It was about a black family from Arkansas that took over the drug trade in Detroit.  Like the Jewish mobsters, the black criminals displayed a similar level of violence and cunning.  Like the Jews, they started out dirt poor; they also preyed upon their own kind.  However, there was one striking difference.  The black mobsters stayed in the ghetto where they peddled drugs.  They never invested in the education of their other family members.  In fact, when it became obvious to them that the law was closing in, they didn’t leave.  They stayed and ultimately got arrested, even though they had amassed millions and could have gone anywhere in the world.

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