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What would happen concerning tuition if a single mom is earning $25,000 per year, just over 200% of the poverty level. 15% would be a huge chunk for someone like that. I always think about public policy from the standpoint of people earning below $35,000 and who have no chance of buying a house. We all have to be up front about the fact that many Jews, even with substantial education and skills, don't have a great deal of money or opportunity. The same is true for synagogue membership, when everyone has a similar percent.

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Yes - this is where the old financial aid model comes in. The "affordability" initiative is for families making a lot more. To my understanding schools will always try to work out individual needs.

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The essays of the composer Richard Wagner are compiled in a book published by the University of Nebraska press. His essay on the Jews and music demonstrates racial prejudice based on appearance and physical features. This is one historical precursor to Nazism based on the Jews not having an Aryan appearance. Yes, there are light skinned Jews who may "pass" as having an Anglo appearance. However, many Jews are brown. I am brown. My hair is similar to that of Michelle Obama in her photo going to the gym with her hair natural and not straightened. Discrimination based on a brown appearance is a continuum, not binary. Yes, I pass for "white" enough to not be stopped by the police. Yes I can rent an apartment easily. But that may also be because I am quiet. But I didn't pass for "white" in high levels of academia and industry, where white skin and blond and straight hair give people passage into job opportunities for which a brown Jew with unruly hair is considered an outsider. Apply for any high level university faculty position and you will see how quickly Jewishness becomes a liability, if not a deal breaker. And darker Jewish women had a difficult, if not impossible, time in the "marriage market." As for privilege, yes, some Jewish people have wealth. But that doesn't happen in Jewish families where there are elders or others who needed full time care in a nursing home before the days of Medicare and Medicaid. Nothing in my life experience with respect to career or social life approximates the experience of women with very white skin and straight hair.

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