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.Greeks were apt to be entrepreneurs restauranteurs, theater owners, foodprocessors or professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers.The ca-reer of Alexander Pantages was typical of wealthy ethnic minorities.Hecame from a middle-class background but made his fortune in the enter-tainment world.After emigrating to the United States and working at oddjobs, he made money in gold in the Yukon and then made a fortune in themovie-house business, owning at one time a chain of eighty theaters.TheSkouras brothers also owned a large number of movie houses, and SpyrosSkouras became president of a major Hollywood organization, TwentiethCentury-Fox.Although the careers of Pantages and the Skourases were ex-ceptional, most Greek Americans were ensconced in the upper middle classby the 1980s.Slavic peoples also began largely as unskilled workers in industrial Amer-ica, but the second and third generations did not improve their positions asfast as some others of European descent.The working-class districts of Amer-ican cities were often centers of Polish, Hungarian, and Russian life, of neatand well-kept houses, not prosperous but substantial.Like the Irish beforethem, the Slavs prized home ownership and invested their savings in theirhomes and neighborhoods.Disproportionately members of the working Ethnic Mobility in Modern America 171class, their offspring were mainly trade unionists and blue-collar workers.Asurvey of Slavs in Connecticut in the 1960s showed, for example, that 40 per-cent belonged to unions.Slavic Americans generally had incomes lower thanthose of the Irish or Jews or white Protestants, and their educational levelswere also low.They had often found schools important for mobility in-hospitable, and many dropped out before completing high school.Although just reaching the middle-income level in the 1950s and 1960s,many Slavs were nonetheless continuing their educations, moving up theeconomic ladder, and finding better jobs.One scholar has concluded thatthroughout the 1920s and 1930s college attendance for Polish American menincreased but lagged considerably behind the national norm.By the 1950s, heargues, Polish American males were just as likely to attend college as otherwhite males, and a decade later Polish American women reached the nationalaverage for white women.Among Slovaks, Slovenes, and Croatians, the pacewas just a bit slower than that of Poles.These upward trends were confirmed by a study the United States Com-mission on Civil Rights published in 1986.From census and other data thecommission found that Americans of southern and eastern European de-scent had achieved educational and earning parity with other whites of Eu-ropean background, meaning Germans, British, Irish, and Scandinavians.The commission noted that when millions from southern and eastern Eu-rope arrived after 1880, they generally had about four fewer years of school-ing than other white Americans and earned considerably less in their un-skilled jobs.The third generation coming of age in post-World War IIAmerica had caught up with and even surpassed other whites.They had bet-ter jobs than their immigrant ancestors, earned more, and were well edu-cated.The study found both men and women from southern and eastern Eu-rope to have equaled their white counterparts from other areas of Europe.Of course the success of Jews, whose ancestors hailed from Poland, Rus-sia, and Rumania and who earned relatively high incomes and were quitewell educated, would in part explain the results of the study, but even non-Jewish descendants of immigrants from eastern Europe did well.At the bot-tom of the income scale, the commission discovered proportionately fewerpeople of southern and eastern European descent living below the povertyline.The commission concluded:The results reveal that along virtually every dimension, Americans ofsouthern and eastern European ancestry have generally succeeded aswell or better than other Americans.This does not imply that many in-dividuals of eastern or southern European heritage have not sufferedfrom prejudice; it only suggests that for the groups as a whole, there is 172 Ethnic Mobility in Modern Americano overt indication of current and widespread discrimination againstthem in the labor market that is, the excellence of group-specific dif-ferences that cannot be explained by standard economic variables suchas those accounted for in this report.However, this assessment does not mean that the children and grandchil-dren of southern and eastern European immigrants were uniformly success-ful.Sometimes children did not do as well as their parents.Many second-generation Jewish businessmen were dismayed that their professionallytrained children earned less money than they did.Moreover, in all groupsthere were poor people.Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the toppositions in American society did not open up for many minority groupmembers until the 1970s, and most key posts in leading law firms, busi-nesses, and banks are still filled by old-stock Americans.The trend toward amore open executive suite was evident, but only in recent decades havemembers of most minority groups been hired solely on the basis of talentand ability.Just as Irish, Germans, and, later, Italians did, the descendants of Slavs,Greeks, and other eastern Europeans became active in political affairs.In theearly 1930s Anton Cermak became the first Czech mayor of Chicago, butmost breakthroughs occurred later.Like so many other immigrants, Czechswere slow to become involved in politics; but the second and third genera-tions began to assert themselves more effectively [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Greeks were apt to be entrepreneurs restauranteurs, theater owners, foodprocessors or professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers.The ca-reer of Alexander Pantages was typical of wealthy ethnic minorities.Hecame from a middle-class background but made his fortune in the enter-tainment world.After emigrating to the United States and working at oddjobs, he made money in gold in the Yukon and then made a fortune in themovie-house business, owning at one time a chain of eighty theaters.TheSkouras brothers also owned a large number of movie houses, and SpyrosSkouras became president of a major Hollywood organization, TwentiethCentury-Fox.Although the careers of Pantages and the Skourases were ex-ceptional, most Greek Americans were ensconced in the upper middle classby the 1980s.Slavic peoples also began largely as unskilled workers in industrial Amer-ica, but the second and third generations did not improve their positions asfast as some others of European descent.The working-class districts of Amer-ican cities were often centers of Polish, Hungarian, and Russian life, of neatand well-kept houses, not prosperous but substantial.Like the Irish beforethem, the Slavs prized home ownership and invested their savings in theirhomes and neighborhoods.Disproportionately members of the working Ethnic Mobility in Modern America 171class, their offspring were mainly trade unionists and blue-collar workers.Asurvey of Slavs in Connecticut in the 1960s showed, for example, that 40 per-cent belonged to unions.Slavic Americans generally had incomes lower thanthose of the Irish or Jews or white Protestants, and their educational levelswere also low.They had often found schools important for mobility in-hospitable, and many dropped out before completing high school.Although just reaching the middle-income level in the 1950s and 1960s,many Slavs were nonetheless continuing their educations, moving up theeconomic ladder, and finding better jobs.One scholar has concluded thatthroughout the 1920s and 1930s college attendance for Polish American menincreased but lagged considerably behind the national norm.By the 1950s, heargues, Polish American males were just as likely to attend college as otherwhite males, and a decade later Polish American women reached the nationalaverage for white women.Among Slovaks, Slovenes, and Croatians, the pacewas just a bit slower than that of Poles.These upward trends were confirmed by a study the United States Com-mission on Civil Rights published in 1986.From census and other data thecommission found that Americans of southern and eastern European de-scent had achieved educational and earning parity with other whites of Eu-ropean background, meaning Germans, British, Irish, and Scandinavians.The commission noted that when millions from southern and eastern Eu-rope arrived after 1880, they generally had about four fewer years of school-ing than other white Americans and earned considerably less in their un-skilled jobs.The third generation coming of age in post-World War IIAmerica had caught up with and even surpassed other whites.They had bet-ter jobs than their immigrant ancestors, earned more, and were well edu-cated.The study found both men and women from southern and eastern Eu-rope to have equaled their white counterparts from other areas of Europe.Of course the success of Jews, whose ancestors hailed from Poland, Rus-sia, and Rumania and who earned relatively high incomes and were quitewell educated, would in part explain the results of the study, but even non-Jewish descendants of immigrants from eastern Europe did well.At the bot-tom of the income scale, the commission discovered proportionately fewerpeople of southern and eastern European descent living below the povertyline.The commission concluded:The results reveal that along virtually every dimension, Americans ofsouthern and eastern European ancestry have generally succeeded aswell or better than other Americans.This does not imply that many in-dividuals of eastern or southern European heritage have not sufferedfrom prejudice; it only suggests that for the groups as a whole, there is 172 Ethnic Mobility in Modern Americano overt indication of current and widespread discrimination againstthem in the labor market that is, the excellence of group-specific dif-ferences that cannot be explained by standard economic variables suchas those accounted for in this report.However, this assessment does not mean that the children and grandchil-dren of southern and eastern European immigrants were uniformly success-ful.Sometimes children did not do as well as their parents.Many second-generation Jewish businessmen were dismayed that their professionallytrained children earned less money than they did.Moreover, in all groupsthere were poor people.Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the toppositions in American society did not open up for many minority groupmembers until the 1970s, and most key posts in leading law firms, busi-nesses, and banks are still filled by old-stock Americans.The trend toward amore open executive suite was evident, but only in recent decades havemembers of most minority groups been hired solely on the basis of talentand ability.Just as Irish, Germans, and, later, Italians did, the descendants of Slavs,Greeks, and other eastern Europeans became active in political affairs.In theearly 1930s Anton Cermak became the first Czech mayor of Chicago, butmost breakthroughs occurred later.Like so many other immigrants, Czechswere slow to become involved in politics; but the second and third genera-tions began to assert themselves more effectively [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]