Since Unz is both a Jew and a graduate of Harvard (I’m neither) his ass is pretty well covered, and it needs to be, since Ron indulges in some pretty serious Cohen-counting (literally) to argue that, while Jews once earned their massive over-representation in elite schools like Harvard, now they’re relying on contacts and connections—old WASP tricks that, it seems, they’ve learned all too well.
Unz gets a little florid in his denunciation of America’s current meritocracy—I doubt if we’re “worse” than China—in fact, I suspect we’re better—but, as I say, once you get about twelve feet down, Ron has some interesting things to tell you. Briefly, it boils down to this: Asians constitute about 6 percent of the U.S. population and fill about 20 percent (very roughly) of the undergraduate slots in America’s elite colleges. Jews constitute less than 2 percent of the U.S. population and fill about 30-40 percent (very roughly) of the undergraduate slots in America’s elite colleges. So both groups are doing “well.” But if you look at outstanding high school students, measured by numbers of National Merit Scholarship semifinalists (the top one-half of one percent), the Asians are easy winners:
New York has always been the center of the American Jewish community, and at 8.4 percent is half again as heavily Jewish as any other state, while probably containing a large fraction of America’s Jewish financial and intellectual elite. Just as we might expect, the 2011 roster of New York NMS semifinalists is disproportionately filled with Jewish names, constituting about 21 percent of the total, a ratio twice as high as for any other state whose figures are available. But even here, New York’s smaller and much less affluent Asian population is far better represented, providing around 34 percent of the top scoring students. Jews and Asians are today about equal in number within New York City but whereas a generation ago, elite local public schools such as Stuyvesant were very heavily Jewish, today Jews are outnumbered at least several times over by Asians.
I take a much less apocalyptic view* of this collision of the elites than Unz does. If nothing else, intermarriage (among Jews, Asians, and us Euro-goyim as well) should soothe tensions over time. But Ron’s data do make a good read, and are worth reading.
*Among other things, Ron wants to believe that only graduates of super-elite schools can climb to the heights of the money tree these days. Well, Steve Jobs graduated from Reed, a “good” school, certainly, but a long way from Harvard. Sam Walton graduated from the University of Missouri. Warren Buffett did two years undergraduate at the Wharton school, but he got his degree from the University of Nebraska, not exactly a door-opener. H. Ross Perot, one of the first of the Eighties billionaires, did two years at Texarkana Junior College before moving on to the Naval Academy. E.O. Wilson, the “controversial” biologist, got both his BS and MS at the University of Alabama.
