Lost in whiteness : Jews writing blacks in post-World War II American fiction

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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgetown University, 2010.; Includes bibliographical references.; Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the significance of the black presence in post-World War II Jewish American fiction. After World War II, the formerly racialized American Jews were able to embrace whiteness. Although the whitening of the Jews enabled their rapid ascent into social and economic prominence, it also forced them into a world of compulsory homogeneity. Many "whitened" Jews thus lost their sense of ethnic distinction and cultural expressiveness. Despite a desire for the social and economic status and security that accompanied whiteness, there was often resistance to the whitening process and to the accompanying repression of ethnicity. In grappling with their newly acquired whiteness, many Jews have thus consistently wavered between an embrace of white Americanness and a yearning for the restoration of their lost ethnic distinction. I will ex

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