Now, as I understand it Americans are a proud nation....they take pride in their nationalism/heritage/etc. But gosh, darn....pride is 'self-serving'...it's a 'major sin in every religion'.
Gee....I'll have to look down on my sinful American friends, then,....lest God smite me down too.
I think those who most espouse the 'challenging of racism' actually need to redefine their interstices with reality [yes, it's a word].
Fortunately [for me] I'm Australian, not American. We don't feel 'pride' as such....but 'luck', hence we refer to 'the lucky country'.
Don't confuse 'pride' with 'arrogance'.
There IS nothing wrong with being proud....
As someone who considers himself part of no particular race or creed, my observation, as a broad generalization, is that Jewish people, like many minority groups, are far more clanish than the majority of people.
And by clanish, I mean that they will go out of their way to help others of their clan than they would someone else even if they don't know them very well personally. This, in turn, gives them a significant material advantage over others.
It's akin to a giant fraternity where jobs, opportunities, access to capital and connections are made available purely based on the fact that they share a particular creed (in this case, Judaism).
I've seen the same sort of clanishness with nearly every other minority group so it's not specific to Jewish people. The difference is that in the United States, Jewish people have never faced much discrimination so that the native advantages of having a vast network of people there to give you a leg up based purely on a shared creed had a head start over later comers (Asians, etc.).
The fact that the examples given are almost all American Jews I think really hits home this observation.
As someone with no preconceived notions on the matter and never having belonged to any clan (whether it be a fraternity, prestigious university, religion, or race) it is something that is both fascinating and frustrating as I am a big believer in pure merit and having met some of the examples you mention above personally and knowing one of them pretty well, I think that a significant piece of their success (at least in the ones I know personally) comes not from "pulling yourself up" but more of a leg up thanks to the help of other members of the clan. I don't think it would be hard to deconstruct some of the success stories listed in the article to drive the point home.
If anything, I would argue that this topic serves more as a text book case of the power of clans and how groups of people who are tightly connected in some way tend to do far better than the general population -- regardless of whether they're Jewish, Hindu, Harvard alumni, or heck Scientologists.