But the problem with your take here Max, is this: you act as if culture is separate from a larger socioeconomic context. It isn’t. It’s not some essential inherent thing. For instance, Jews were (in medieval times) forced into various professions by Christian elites, which Christians themselves did not wish to do because they viewed them as counter to Biblical principles…money lending is a good example. So Jews were pushed into that role, which it turns out, was a good role to be in in an increasingly complex economic world. So too, having been pushed out of land ownership and farming in many places and barred from various trades, Jews had to become entrepreneurial which again, ended up working out…but whatever “cultural” norms developed were about the larger social opportunity structure.
In the US, for instance, Jewish immigrants were FAR more likely than other Europeans to come with experience in skilled trades in our old countries. And especially in things like garment making, Jewish immigrants came with those skills — alone with haberdashery, furrier experience, etc — at the very moment when those fields were experiencing huge growth due to the spending habits of mostly non-Jews. We did not have some natural cultural affinity for hard work or education. Traditionally, Jewish education had been limited to Torah and Talmudic learning, largely for males — so the idea that we were inherently a people of the mind, or whatever, is the kind of stuff we sometimes say out of Judeophilia and ego, but it’s not really any more true than for other people.
The biggest problem with these cultural arguments though is that it’s a set up…the very same ability say Jews are really great because x, or Asians are really great because y, erases our individual experiences, creates elevated stigma for those who don’t meet those standards (of which there are MANY), and then invites people to ascribe sinister norms upon the same groups, side by side with the “positive ones.” So “being good with money” matches with “and you control all of it, and manipulate the money supply.” “Being good at science and math” pairs well with, “not being a people person,” or good with interpersonal communication…even for Black folks who are often stereotyped with supposedly “positive” sounding generalizations as “athleticism” — this easily pairs with “not very intelligent.” Because we (wrongly) assume there is an inverse relationship between athleticism and brain power.
