Ashkenazi Jews were definitely fully white by the 90s that’s a hard point, I think most country club bans were overturned in the late 80s, Seinfeld was the most successful show on tv and everyone was living in the end of history where there wasn’t anything silly like racism to light skinned minorities.
Before then it was a process. You might have a Jewish doctor or lawyer, but there were degrees of othering and exclusion.
There’s an episode of Golden Girls where all of the ladies and their dates were going to a country club to eat in the club restaurant, and the friend who invited them—and who is a member of the club—pulled Dorothy to the side and said they can’t go because the date Sophia was bringing is Jewish. So it was still a thing in the late '80’s. But I can see it being on the way out at this point; the audience gave a big cheer when she told the friend to leave and that their friendship was over.
country clubs were notorious for being very wasp and lagging behind the rest of the country. The depiction of American Jews as the loud tacky leopard print gold-chain wearers does suggest that othering was still taking place and american jews didnt ascend to pure white status until like after that.
Probably why it was a plot point in the show, those restrictions were getting challenged legally or being considered outdated at the time. But by the 90s mostly all gone.
![[CW: racism] We’re so close to getting an answer to the question of whether Italians are white](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/85f32639-4f7a-45cc-b969-7c80edfe8504.jpeg){kind=link}
Ashkenazi Jews were definitely fully white by the 90s that’s a hard point, I think most country club bans were overturned in the late 80s, Seinfeld was the most successful show on tv and everyone was living in the end of history where there wasn’t anything silly like racism to light skinned minorities.
Before then it was a process. You might have a Jewish doctor or lawyer, but there were degrees of othering and exclusion.
There’s an episode of Golden Girls where all of the ladies and their dates were going to a country club to eat in the club restaurant, and the friend who invited them—and who is a member of the club—pulled Dorothy to the side and said they can’t go because the date Sophia was bringing is Jewish. So it was still a thing in the late '80’s. But I can see it being on the way out at this point; the audience gave a big cheer when she told the friend to leave and that their friendship was over.
country clubs were notorious for being very wasp and lagging behind the rest of the country. The depiction of American Jews as the loud tacky leopard print gold-chain wearers does suggest that othering was still taking place and american jews didnt ascend to pure white status until like after that.
Probably why it was a plot point in the show, those restrictions were getting challenged legally or being considered outdated at the time. But by the 90s mostly all gone.