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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

What's interesting is that the great innovations of the early 20th century, weren't by a diverse group of people. Eastern European Jews (of which Einstein was a member) produced a disproportionate amount of those discoveries. This was despite the fact that they were among the most persecuted groups in history. Because of this, I don't think that US government policy is the major reason for the differences in the article.

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Einstein was born in Southern Germany, with ancestors that had been there for centuries. German Wikipedia describes his family as "assimilated, non-orthodox, Jewish-German middleclass" and quotes him as being grateful to his town of birth, Ulm, for part of his character. English WP says "The Einsteins were non-observant Ashkenazi Jews", and he got the arguable most important part of his education in Switzerland where he moved to early on.

He was already traveling the world and giving lectures well before the rise of the Nazis, and he "simply" didn't return to Germany when they were in power. I can't speak for him, but I would assume he would consider himself as having had a good life with ample opportunities. The Nazis simply didn't even have a chance to persecute him, if anything the FBI made a huge dossier on him for his socialist views, though even that wasn't really persecution of the kind you ascribe to him by mere association. He had plenty opportunities, he wasn't born poor and certainly not Eastern European. I can't even begin to guess where you have any of that from, but it's not from the actual life of the actual person. And if that's the only reason you think the article is mistaken, then you don't have a (valid) reason.

That does not mean that Jews didn't face sharp and harsh discrimination by the very widespread and strong antisemitism at the time. Arguably they were one of the most prosecuted people in European history. And despite all that they still fared very well in comparison to the majority population.

Which makes the narrative that the lack of success in other groups is entirely grounded in lack of opportunity due to discrimination, rather shaky.

What about some actual data? The article does offer data, not a "narrative".

They were among the most repressed human being on Earth. The entire Jewish population is still recovering from the Holocaust (based on global population level).

I often fear when researchers like the NYT author start conditioning on unchangeable characteristics like ethnicity and gender. It invariably implies a villain based on unchangeable characteristics like ethnicity and gender.

The classification of "Jews" has been the most innovative. Should we start making laws conditioned on someone being a Jew so that's non jews can become more innovative ? Does this not sound like a bad idea? (I am trying to dodge godwins law)

"Eastern European Jews" should be more like "motivated, liberal, hardworking and a terrific high school identifying talent early". There is a related thread on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15684785

Eastern European Jews had limited occupation opportunities and subject to special restrictions. Their disproportional amount in occupations that allowed them in might as well be consequence of government policies - which prevents them to do other occupations.

Also, educated richer Eastern European Jews tended to leave Eastern Europe way more then poor Jews who were numerous.

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