McWilliams, Carey

Despite the whimsicality of its plot construction, Focus offers a profound analysis of anti-Semitism as an instrument of economic and political power. (In this respect Focus has more in common with Carey McWilliams s Mask for Privilege than with Gentleman s Agreement.) Miller addresses the work of anti-Semitism from the standpoint of political economy through the character of Finkelstein, a Jew in Newman s neighborhood who witnesses Newman s victimization at the hands of the (mistaken) Christian Front. According to Finkelstein, the Jew is not so much the object of anti-Semitism as its mode of operation. The object of Jew-hatred, that is, is an allocation of economic and social resources... 

Carey McWilliams, an architect of the nation of nations tradition in American social thought, stands out for his refusal to ldse sight of the overall complexity of the American mosaic and for his refusal to make race identical with the Negro in American political life. Unlike Gun-nar Myrdal and other social scientists, who would effectively expel from consideration those pegged neither as white nor as black, McWilliams demonstrated a keen sensitivity to the complex racial tableau in... 

Quoted in Carey McWilliams, Brothers under the Skin [1942] (Boston Little Brown, 1946), pp. 4, 301. See also Gary Gerstle, The Working Class Goes to War, Mid-America, Oct. 1993, pp. 316-319. 

Carey McWilliams, Brothers under the Skin [1942] (Boston Little, Brown, 1946). 

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