Oriental Jews, or Woke 2.0

Oriental Jews, or Woke 2.0

In Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995), a “rich old woman” shopping in their Madison Ave. grocery store irritably calls Henry Park and his father “Oriental Jews.” Her wealth matters because the store is an upscale one, and it’s making its owners, the Park family, rich too. Her age matters because it identifies her antisemitism as something of a relic. In the 90s Jews were already looking pretty white; in fact a book called How Jews Became Whit…