In her Time Magazine article, Jennifer Lee asks: But what happens if you measure success not just by where people end upthe cars in their garages, the degrees on their wallsbut by taking into account where they started? In this essay, you will detail how and why groups such as Asian and Jewish Americans have comparatively different outcomes than other groups of color in the post World War II era. Many post-Civil rights representations of Asian and Jewish Americans focus on their individual drive, use of family and culture to embarrass and discipline black and Latino groups. In this essay, you will argue that the so called model, that post-war minorities provide is an impossible model for the African American community to follow. You will highlight the structural (not culture or family) privileges that Asians and Jewish Americans benefitted from that African Americans did not. Using Brodkin’s article, demonstrate that historically, for Jewish Americans, assimilation has HEAVILY influenced by structural benefits such as the GI Bill and the post-war economy (Also, feel free to use the video “Race: The House We Live In”). For Asian Americans, use Immigration Act of 1965 to locate much of structural opportunity for “new” Asian immigration, particularly focusing on professional migration and family reunification. Draw explicitly from the policy document to demonstrate that Asian Americans used immigration to reconstruct their class status, and support this analysis using content from Lee’s “The Watershed of 1965 and the Remaking of Asian America.” Use historical evidence from Zinns Or Does it Explode,” and the aforementioned Brodkin article to discuss why African Americans did not benefit in the same way from these structural opportunities.
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