Hester street, in board of education, newspaper row, and courts of justice, New York is Jewish. It is actuallyan offense, an offense speedily though unofficially punished, to intimate in any public way that New York may possibly be other than Jewish. New York is the answer to those who ask, “How can a numeri¬ cally inferior group dictate the terms of life for all the rest?” Go into a New York school, and see. Go into a New York court, and see. Go into a New York newspaper office, and see. Stand anywhere in New York, and see.
But with it all one gets a sense of the insecurity of this usurpation of power. It doesn’t belong to those who have seized it; it doesn’t belong either by right of numbers, or by right of superior ability, or yet by right of a better use made of the power thus taken. They have taken it by audacity; they have taken it in such a way as to make resentment of it seem like an anti-racial movement—and that is why they have held it as long as they have.