Comic strip
The media item I am going to be discussing is a comic strip called Edge City. Edge City is a nationally syndicated, groundbreaking comic strip about a hip, Jewish-American family juggling relationships, careers, and tradition at the fast pace of modern life. The Ardin family consists of the husband and wife named Len and Abby and their kids Colin and Carly. There are new comic strips every day so there are new and interesting adventures about what the Ardin family experiences in their lives. Len and Abby are trying to keep up with the American dream of lifestyle, which is raising the family, going to work, making money to support the family, and keeping up with the modern lifestyle. The children Colin and Carly are also involved in after school activities, pursuing their dreams and lining up for carpool. The Ardin family is Jewish and practices the Jewish faith while living in America and having many neighbors that are Christian. The comic strip is about the family adapting to the community as a Jewish faith and they are trying to keep their family together and keep up with the modern life in America.
I feel like this media item relates to the reading of “How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America” in the reading one of the first paragraphs starts out with Brodkin saying, “I continue to be surprised when I read books that indicate that America once regarded its immigrated European workers as something other than white, as biologically different. My parents are not surprised; they expect anit-Semitism to be part of the fabric of daily life, much as I expect racism to be part of it. They came of age in the Jewish World of the 1920 and 1930s, at the peak of anit-Semitism in America” (38). What Brodkin is stating, the first time Jewish people came to America and their experience of that period of time. The comic strip relates to this piece of reading because the reading talks about the beginning of Jews coming to America and the comic strip is the story life of the Ardin family and their life in America. The Ardin family run into racism at points and it is expected because they know that everyone does not get along with each other. Brodkin states, “Racism in general, and anit-semitism in particular, flourished in higher education. Jews were the first of the Euro immigrant groups to enter college in significant numbers, so it was not surprising that they faced the brunt of discrimination there” (41). Just like the Ardin family Jewish people are successful and are living the America dream. Other around them are jealous and use their religion and way of living against them. The Ardin family get over it just as many other Jewish families do and go on living the nice life they have worked for. “By the time I was an adolescent, Jews were just as white as the next white person,” stated Brodkin (42). In the comic strip Edge City the Adrin family is an example of Jewish people and how they live and are the same as white people. Jewish are not different then white people other than what their beliefs are and that goes for any other minority.
I choose the comic strip Edge City and the Ardin family because I thought it was so interesting and fun to read. It is a good example of how Jews are part of the culture and are thought of now as white people. The Brodkin reading talks about how in the beginning Jewish people were a minority group and now they are looked at as whites and are part of the upper class. It shows that just because a group was labeled a minority we do not have to look at them in that way. I think the comic strip was a good idea to express how Jewish families are just like every other family in America.
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