This story went down the liberal media’s memory hole a generation ago. It’s time to dredge it up.
He was a friend. He gave me great advice: join Junior Achievement. JA trains teenagers in the basics of starting a business. I declined. Now, 60 years later, I teach high schoolers how to start businesses. Strange.
There was only one Asian on campus: Lily Sunada. I never knew her. I don’t recall ever seeing her.
We were in Manhattan Beach, a middle-class suburb two small towns south of the Los Angeles city line. I could walk to the L.A. airport . . . or walk home at 10 p.m. if I missed the bus, which I did once.
I knew that there was a high school in Los Angeles that was mostly Jewish: Fairfax High. It closed on Yom Kippur. It was not known for being good at any sports. It was known for its academics.
At Boys State, the American Legion summer program in politics — Bill Clinton is its most famous alumnus — I met Joel Gora. He was at Fairfax. He had just been elected Lord High Commissioner. The gentiles had student body presidents. Not Fairfax. Lord High Commissioner sounded really important. I was impressed. That was in 1958.
Two decades later, the Jews were no longer at Fairfax. They were in private schools.
What happened?
Forced integration happened. Busing happened.
DIASPORA
I read an article on this by Steve Sailer. I never knew about it. I left California in 1975. I had never lived in Los Angeles.
It should come as no surprise that hard-core liberal Jews were behind the integration, and run-of-the-mill Democrat Jews fought it.
Very quietly, whites left the schools. Jews were among the defectors.
Back then, Catholics tended to go to Catholic schools, and Protestants lived in independent school districts like Pasadena, San Marino, and Orange County.
Moreover, San Fernando Valley Jews were highly enthusiastic about public schooling. One of my older memories is hearing from my Jewish teammates on my baseball team at the local park that Catholic schools were kind of un-American. Jews went to public schools to demonstrate their commitment to civic Americanism.
But then, very quickly, they stopped.
Yet that massive historical example that happened 38 years ago at the heart of the world capital of the entertainment industry has largely been lost in the mists of time.
Sailer posted a link to an article on a Jewish Website. This is an article for Evernote. Save it.
(For the rest of my article, click the link.)
