To the thread title question: Like **Darrren Garrison **said, she’s white hot.
Unless mixed with their Amerind/African neighbors, of course. But now that you mention those groups together, the thread mentions the indicators of “Jewish ethnicity” as recognized in US culture being mostly Ashkenazi/Yiddishe, but in other places it would be the Sefardim who’d define it.
Where do Andaman Islanders, or Australian aboriginals, or native Tasmanians, or Native Americans (among many, many other groups seemingly outside of this categorization), fall into this traditional classification scheme?
That’s what I figured. People get all kinds of crazy idea about race. But then, race is a pretty crazy idea to begin with.
Perhaps that is how you use the word. (I don’t know your culture.)
But I’m used to hearing it used as a race, and race is specifically cultural classification based on appearance. That’s what makes it different from ethnicity.
The most obvious example would be white Latinos. Their ethnicity overlaps with brown Latinos, but their racial classification does not.
I’m curious why you’ve decided that people who lived almost 300 years ago and didn’t know anything about human genetics should have the final say on how people today should classify themselves.
At any rate, you’re wrong. From the moment that Europeans began pontificating about race in scholarly fashion, there has always been a box for Native Americans–a group that many Hispanics are descended from. Sorry, there are no scholarly writings where indigenous Americans are lumped in with Europeans, certainly not as equals.
I mean, if we want to use old shit to inform our present-day racial classifications, why stop at four categories broken down by continent? Why not use the same system that was used just a little over 100 years ago here in the USA? According to that system, “Hebrews” are lumped in with the Slavs, which are viewed as a separate group from the other Europeans. Is this one inferior to Carl Linneaus’s system? Why or why not?
Sorry, I’m late. Watched a movie (Another one :))
You are spot on. I don’t care about Gadot’s colour categorization or in general the color of Jewishness. Maybe some other time.
I was asking the meta question. Why colour is maybe the first go-to characteristic that many Americans are obsessed with. In this case it’s even not in the realm of African-American post trauma. Why is that important enough to filter its way up on the interwebs ?
That’s why it was in General Questions.
Which “traditional” scheme are you referring to? There were many different classification schemes, not just one. Some of them recognized Native Americans, Bushmen (or Capoid), Australian Aboriginals, even Malay peoples as separate races.
I get tanned really efficient. I’m normally quite light skinned, but after two weeks in a sea resort I look really brown. I’m very proud of my strong Photochromic qualities.
I’m Jewish and I’m white but I’m also a minority.
P.S. She’s also white.
I’m Jewish, and it really depends on what time of year it is. I am so white in the winter, people who haven’t seen me for a couple of months ask if I’m OK. My skin somehow knows when it’s May. I don’t even have to go outside to get a tan. Right now, I get people who come up to me and start speaking Spanish. When I went to Greece in July a couple of years ago, I had to keep telling the natives I didn’t speak Greek.
I’m Caucasian, but sometimes I feel like I’m lying if I say I’m white. Sometimes on ethnicity forms, I check “Other,” and write in Jewish.
Defining “white”:
It seems to me that in this very group conscious era where Us vs. Them has been raised to a high art form by certain factions we’re witnessing the redefinition of the word “white.”
We used to say “WASP” = White Anglo Saxon Protestant. IOW in that taxonomy it was clearly possible to be a white Catholic or a white Jew. Or even a white atheist. It was also possible to be a white non-Anglo Saxon. E.g a white Spaniard or white Slavic or white Scandanavian. Or even a white Frenchman.
What seems to be going on today in some factions of the US is “white” is being narrowed to what “WASP” used to mean. Or at least is being narrowed to mean White Northern European Protestant.
Those are the “Real Americans”, the true ‘white’ people. Everybody else is a late-comer, a form of cultural, ethnic, and/or racial pollution. The Real Americans are quite agitated about “taking back their country.”
Asserting a particularly “pure” = exclusionary parsing of the word ‘white’ is a big part of that.
Why is this a topic of national conversation:
IMO the above is the center of the Gal Gadot controversy. She’s ‘white’ in the traditional taxonomy, but only fills 1 of the 3 squares needed to make WASP. That’s not enough to fill the new more restrictive definition of ‘white’ coming into vogue in some circles.
Hence all the people loudly shouting past one another on twitbook.
My first reaction was “Who would ever ask this this question?” followed pretty quickly by “why would you give that/those racists (because no matter how you slice it, that question is racist) free rent in your head?”
“Is she hot?” is sexist, but possibly an honest (if blunt) reaction to her good looks.
The question “…is she white?” is beyond the pale and squarely in “WTF is Wrong with you…?” territory.
To elaborate, I am white but I’m not pale and my skin does have a brown tinge that gets darker in the sun. When I lived in the Midwest I would sometimes have people walk up and speak Spanish to me thinking I was Hispanic.
ETA: I would agree the question can be very offensive in a certain context but the OP certainly didn’t mean it that way.
Maybe he wants to write a think piece and is seeking permission to call her a POC.
While I find the question incredibly tasteless, I’m not the person in question.
If that person wants to write her agent, google says its done through this website. Gal Gadot Booking Agency | Appearances | Request Fee Info.
Maybe I hang out in the wrong circles, but this thread is the only place I’ve encountered the issue of Gal Gadot’s whiteness. If large numbers of people are screaming about this, they missed delivering their message to me.
I don’t think so; I’m Jewish, and “Should we check the ‘white’ box?” is a topic that actually comes up among us.
My OP was about the cultural obsession with skin colour, as indicated by this question sparking a massive dispute. I expressed my wonderment as I couldn’t even think of a mental model for this. I needed a cultural translation. Thank you for your collective wisdom. My daughter, who is often conversing with people who are at the bleeding edge of cultural identity technology also explained the subtleness of the matter involved.
In addition, I have learned the concept of “white passing”.
I feel like a social dinosaur ! Am I sarcastic ? 
I was triggered by some articles:
Is Israeli Wonder Woman Star Gal Gadot White or a Person of Color?
50 Shades of Gal Gadot: The Genetic Truth Behind Wonder Woman’s Race
The world has changed. I’m going to sleep.
So you have magical skin?
She’s one of the Uncommonly Attractive. Sometimes I think they are their own race.
