Thomas' Response

Dear Jack,

I'm very interested in your identity transformation--from a marginalized Jewish man to an essentially white American. The journey you take--from a man from a religious home with a cantor as a father--to a minstrel singer performing/stereotyping blackness--in many ways mirrors the journey that many European immigrants make. Through marginalization of another group--you are absorbed into the larger category of whiteness. In many ways, you are shown to abandon your Jewish heritage in pursuit of the American dream. The conflict you face between your ancestry and your desires as an American are real and salient--yet somehow manageable.

Integration and assimilation are particularly key. You leave the Lower East Side--an essential Jewish ghetto--in order to make it in show business. You abandon your father's religious goals. You change your name to one more American-sounding/less Jewish sounding. In essence--the battle between your Jewishness and Americaness had already been decided for you by you. The conflict was not much of a conflict after all. The problem was not your inner-conflict; it was how the world would receive you. How does a Jewish person--completely marginalized the world over--become mainstream? You proved that it's not simply enough to shirk your ethnic markers. You have to become American as a performance. Your performance of blackness in the musical was a larger metaphor for your performance of whiteness.

Sincerely,

Michael Rogin

1. Tomas Jimenez, a professor at Stanford--posited a theory that explores "symbolic ethnicity" verses real ethnicity. Real ethnicity cannot be shirked. It cannot be abandoned. It's part of your every day life--not always as a choice. "Symbolic ethnicity" is ethnicity that's worn like a costume--and this is what ethnicity is for most white-Americans according to Jimenez. Whites of Irish descent are effectively not Irish--but on St. Patrick's day they can put on Irishness like a costume. It's a choice--always a choice, and not a salient part of their identities. My question is--why is it that for European immigrants--their ethnicity became merely symbolic but for minorities it remains a salient part of their identity? I think the Jazz Singer may provide an example of how this process occurred--the de-ethnicization of whites.