re: #320 wrenchwench

It’s not outrageous to note that white people have privilege in the US, even when they are survivors of a concentration camp.

Indeed. Tour—who I’d never heard of before this thread—was clearly not attributing Holocaust survival to the “power of whiteness” as the Mediaite article disingenuously states, he was referring to their ability to “pass” once in the U.S.

But, hey, click bait outrage is what it’s all about these days. Funny that those who so vociferously bemoan the tactic are also guilty of promoting it, huh?

Anyone who claims that immigrants who could “pass” didn’t benefit from doing so is either lying or stupid. This would’ve been especially true for Jews, who have dealt with antisemitism for thousands of years. Who has never met anyone whose family’s Jewish/Italian/Polish/whatever surname wasn’t changed at some point to make it sound more WASP-ish? Precious few I would think, at least from the baby boomer generation.

Oh, and the U.S. governement backs me up on the name change thing:

Despite these facts, the Ellis-Island-name-change-story (or Castle Garden, or earlier versions of the same story) is as American as apple pie (and probably as common in Canada too, eh?). Why?

The explanation lies in ideas as simple as language and cultural differences, and as complex as the root of American culture. We all know names have been Anglicized in America (even the word “Anglicized” has been Americanized!). As any kindergartener learns, we live in a world where people ask our name then write it down without asking us how to spell or pronounce that name. Once in America, immigrants were typically asked their name and entered into official records by those who had “made it” in America and thus were already English-speaking (i.e., teachers, landlords, employers, judges etc.). The fact that those with the power to create official records were English-speaking explains much about small changes, over time, in the spelling of certain names.

Many immigrants welcomed this change. Anyone from Eastern Europe, with a name long on consonants and short on vowels, learned that his name often got in the way of a job interview or became the subject of ridicule at his child’s school. Any change that might smooth their way to the American dream was seen as a step in the right direction. Perhaps this was the case with Mr. Smiley. It was the case of another family from Russia, named Smiloff or Smilikoff, who emigrated to Canada at the turn of the century. By the time their son immigrated from Canada to the US in 1911, his name had become Smiley. […]

http://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/genealogy/genealogy-notebook/immigrant-name-changes