I think we’re just pointing out how incredibly silly (and unscientific) that “traditional system” is.
You don’t have to imagine it. I am positive it happened. The South in general has never been hostile to Jews aside from a few hate groups that target just about anyone. It has some of the oldest synagogues in the U.S. in states like South Carolina. Have you ever met a Jewish Southern Belle? I have because I went to college with a bunch of them. They are charming enough but spoiled in both directions.
Interestingly, Israel was a big supporter of Apartheid South Africa. The Jewish community in SA (who were classified as “White”) were the most anti-apartheid parts of the white South African community, the whites who stood trial with Mandela *were all Jews and several anti-apartheid Jews had to escape SA; usually they went to Israel.
International (and Race) relations are hard.
[QUOTE=astorian]
Remember how the good white folks of the Confederacy screamed bloody when Judah Benjamin was named Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State? Remember how they insisted Jews aren’t white?
Me neither.
[/QUOTE]
I always get a kick out of *Benjamin on Sale of Goods *. Sits on my shelf as we speak.
Yeah, not my country’s proudest moment. What can I say - it was the Cold War, and we needed all the friends we could get. Plus, they had uranium. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation.
Did Israeli leaders ever formally apologize?
meh. My country had no problem making deals with the Union of SA, when it suited us, we errr also needed uranium (notice a pattern?). Despite the fact that on the topic of race, S Asians were officially discriminated against by SA.
unlike Jews. Morality is a luxury in international relations at times an un-affordable one.
Did exiled SA Jews have any presence in the Israeli media, press and public life in general? Did any discuss apartheid?
This is more or less how I feel. I am treated like “other” by a majority of white people. I pass pretty well as white, but as soon as many people (not all) find out I’m Jewish their behavior changes, subtlety but noticeably enough that other people I am close to have mentioned it. I have both directly and indirectly experienced antisemitism. My daughter was disinvited from a pre school because she was Jewish. I have been called a Kike and a dirty Jew. I have had actual rocks thrown at me. More subtly my wife has a friend who insists on only talking to me about what it’s like to be a jew in America and telling me stories of the others Jews she knows, and asking me to help he identify if others are Jewish.
My world view is also, very slightly different than a Christian. Something about not being raised with a belief in the afterlife maybe? It’s hard to explain, but it’s also real.
It’s interesting to note that as late as the early 70s this would not have been a question. Jews were not white and didn’t self identify as white. There was even debate in the 60s in Jewish journals if Jews should try to become white.
It gets complicated because, well because life is complicated. But most of what you are talking about is American Reform movement Jews, which are a minority world wide. They are the majority in the US (but not by as much as you would think) , but that’s an inaccurate view of Judaism worldwide. Orthodox Judaism is on a serious upswing recently too.
I’m a Jew.
Whenever I’m asked whether that makes me white, I reply “I can pass.”
Thinking about this more. In America we seem to have two groups white and other. Other has many sub groups and who gets to be white isn’t based on skin color as much as it is assimilation to WASP cultural norms. So as those values shift so does who is white.
Right now Israeli’s in particular, but Jews in general fall more into the other category. Maybe for Gen X they were not. Maybe that’s where the disconnect is?
I wonder if I should identify as white or not. Officially I am Maori, which in most respects is considered not-white, but to look at me you’d never know it, because of my mother’s European side of the family randomly having a stronger genetic imprint. I also don’t culturally subscribe to much of my Polynesian heritage, I’m not much interested, but I am nonetheless proud of it and will stand up for it when called to.
Am I white? It depends on the context and who’s asking.
Rachel Dolezal says “Hi!”
This is probably the most cogent distillation of the bunch.
I’d quibble with “… who gets to be white isn’t based on skin color as much as …”.
Being a light enough skin tone is a prerequisite for whiteness. But as you say, there’s a lot more. Light coloration is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to wear the “white” = “rightful ruling Us not Them group” label.
The definition of “white” will morph slowly or quickly as required to ensure the main boogey-man Them of the hour are outside the definition. Light-toned mideasterners of whatever religion or nation being Exhibit 1 today.
Most American Jews, whose ancestors left the Middle East eons ago, are ‘white’ in any meaningful sense of the term. If you mean they often have (not always anymore) a distinct sense of community, and it’s rooted in big part in a long history of being ‘the other’ in Western societies, of course.
But ‘white’ as shorthand for some theoretical European/Christian descent ‘mainstream’, which is what your definition must amount to, has a lot of flaws. It always did to some degree and it’s getting less meaningful all the time. Because lots of people who aren’t by background part of that mainstream don’t ‘pass’ as ‘white’, but live a lot of their lives in contexts where people actually don’t care who is ‘white’ (though might still care about race in some other respects) and in some places and social contexts in the US it’s not clear what the ‘mainstream’ actually is. And, there are in some cases official advantages now to claiming one is not ‘white’ (though official advantage to that claim doesn’t, as a rule, apply to Jews).
But even going back in some places this construct didn’t work. Where/when I grew up in NY area in the 1960’s, the great majority of people were Irish, Jewish or Italian (people called themselves one of those three without ‘-American’, though few of them were immigrants or their kids, 7 of my great grandparents were born in the US, but we were ‘Irish’ nonetheless). But Irish and Jews got along better as a rule than Irish and Italians did. And we lived near a de facto housing segregation line between whites and blacks. It would have been ridiculous in that time and place to claim Jews and blacks were the ‘non whites’ and Irish and Italians the ‘whites’. Jews were absolutely on the ‘white’ side of that divide, starting with physical location*. Sure there was residual antisemitism, lingering tension between Irish and Italians, general ‘white ethnic’ feeling of separateness from WASP’s, and the (actual, black/white) racial divide. But it would have arbitrary to somehow combine the first and last of those things as being the same but the others categorically different.
*as is well known, support for Civil Rights was high among Jews generally speaking but still my two best ‘block’ friends, Jewish and Irish, lived across the street and three houses down. My best school friend, black, lived a mile away, in a black neighborhood. Everyday reality said Jews were ‘whites’ as to the most basic divide.
Who is “White” in America has always been fluid thing.
There was a period in not distant American history when Italians (especially those from the southern Italy) were considered “Black.” It’s where the old derogatory word “guinea” for Italian comes from … a reference to the Guinea Coast of Africa.
Of course within Italy as well in that time the relatively darker skinned Southern Italians were often discriminated against.
And it is fairly recent history (Alessan, still true today?) that Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews (both usually of darker complexion) were discriminated against within Israel.
And Arab-American advocacy groups lobbied hard and successfully to be able to have a separate “Middle East and North Africa (MENA) racial category” (rather than “white”) for the 2020 census. By census definitions to date they are “White.”
What is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? His SNL line was good … “people just assume I’m whatever they are.” And fans of “American Gods” likely remember the line about Shadow Moon that I am thinking of.
But yeah, the issue in America is mainly being able to fit into the mainstream White culture (dominantly WASP) or one of the "other"s. Hence the cogency inherent in the humor of The Other Waldo Pepper’s comment. Many American Jews feel like we at a point that we routinely “pass” but are still very aware of our otherness. How individuals respond to that, and to the beliefs of those of alt-right fame that clearly think of us as both other and more so as dangerous other, is varied, and a mixed bag. I have no great desire to part of the country club, am aware that my father would not have allowed in (gave himself an Italian pseudonym to go on sales leads under), but neither can I or should I claim that my otherness (in America at this point in time) comes with the systemic discrimination that others’ otherness still comes with.
My aged MIL was one such Italian born in upstate NY to immigrant parents in 1925. Italians were definitely not “white” in those days in those places. Despite her ancestors coming from northern Italy and her having the same complexion I do being half English and half German.
For those who think because some Jews owed slaves that means they are “white”, ya’ll do know that black people and Native Americans owned slaves too, right? Participating and benefitting from oppression does not make someone immune from all acts of oppression.
Maybe I would feel differently if I didn’t know about anti-Semitisim. Unfortunately, I do. Whenever I’m around my father, I am reminded just how different Jews are viewed by some people. His favorite pasttime seems to be sniffing out Jews. We’ll be watching CNN and he’ll point to a random talking head and say, “That guy is a Jew. Why does CNN only hire Jews!!” Mind you, he doesn’t know that the guy is actualy Jewish. But if he doesn’t have a face like Kevin Bacon and a surname like “Smith”, that’s enough for my father.
I had a teacher in middle school–a Jewish lady. I knew she was Jewish because she talked about it a lot, but I never thought this information was important enough to mention to my parents. One day at some school function, she chit-chatted with my dad for awhile. Afterwards, he said something like “That teacher of yours. She’s from NY, isn’t she?” There was nothing “New York” about my teacher. Her nickname was the Mouth of the South because not only did she talk to any and everyone, she had a southern accent so thick it almost seemed like a put-on. Everybody in the school knew she was born and raised in Savannah (because, again, she liked to talk about herself and her heritage). It was years later, once I began to understand my father’s bigotry, that I figured out that “NY” was a codeword for “dirty Jew”.
Once I was flipping through old photographs of my father as a young man. With his big loose curls and bushy mustache, the first thought that came to my innocent young mind was “Daddy looks like Mr. Kotter!” My daddy flipped when he heard me say that. “I ain’t no dirty Jew!” he spat. I didn’t know that Gabe Kaplan was a Jew, but my father sure did.
I don’t know how my father would feel if I came home with a white guy on my arm. He was well-behaved when my sister married her white guy, so I guess he’s fine with it. But I know he would lose his mind if I ever brought home a Jew. I don’t even think it’s about the religion thing, since he doesn’t have a problem with progressive Muslims, like my cousin-in-law. It’s a racial thing.
Obviously I wouldn’t appreciate some blonde-hair, blue-eyed American Jew talking about how their woes are just like African Americans, because that would be factually wrong. But black people don’t have a monopoly on oppression, and we shouldn’t be used as the meter stick of who gets to call themselves a POC. To me, “whiteness” is not just about how people look. People keep talking about pale skin like skin color is the only feature used to “peg” someone. No American hears “light-skinned Hispanic male” on the six o’clock news and thinks, “Oh, they mean a white guy!” Albino black people don’t magically become white just because they have the “white” skin tone. Syrians refugees are pretty dang pale-skinned, but that doesn’t stop people from calling them a “brown horde”. So skin tone does not determine who gets to be “white”. And neither does continental origin, since much of the supposedly “white” country of Russia is actually Asian.
This parallels my experience, even if not exactly.
Due to having the complexion of a vampire I am always initially identified as “white”… until somehow or other the Jewish half of my heritage comes up. There is always at least one person who then says he/she “always” knew I was Jewish, starts making assumptions about me, etc.
I’ll forgive the Irish lady who simply assumed, based on my last name, that I went to synagogue and not to church… it actually wasn’t a totally off-base guess and when I stated I was only half Jewish and did not practice the religion she said nodded and said she hoped her assumption hadn’t been offensive, she did still find American ideas about ethnicity and religion confusing. I didn’t get a sense of her being a bigot, she had simply made a guess based on one thing and changed her assumptions based on more facts, like any open-minded person would do.
But the husband of a former co-worker ALWAYS insisted on addressing me in Hebrew. Because “you’re Jewish”. Um… sorry, it’s NOT installed at birth (yes, he did seem to think this. Or something. Not someone I spent a lot of time around when I could help it). No matter how many times I told him I spoke no Hebrew he keep speaking to me in that language. Very bizarre. Also told his wife he should stop inviting me to their church (yay!) because I should go be with the “saved Jews”, i.e. “Jews for Jesus” or some such (bwuh?).
Oh, and I’ve been called kike. Among other things. No rock throwing (thank goodness!). Oh, and at one point a boyfriend was told to stop dating me or he’d lose his position on a cultural affairs board (he told that lady where stick her opinion and wound up marrying me).
My world view is significantly different than a Christian’s being as I am a NeoPagan. Many US Christians are as aware of the overwhelmingly Christian bias of our society as fish are aware of the water they swim in.
But… the whole question of whether or not Ms. Godot is white or not is amusing to me because, as I said, I am vampire-pale so always identified as “white” on first viewing by others, yet my ancestry is very similar to hers - the difference being my ancestors moved to Missouri rather than Israel. If she isn’t white then neither am I. But all my life my society has told me I’m white. Really, it DOES come down to what you look like first, then whatever “contamination” (one drop rule) you may have in your background. After which the bigots say “oh, she’d be such a lovely girl if she wasn’t X”.
Ghetto edit: Because I look very white I get to hear bigots talking bigotry because they think I’m in their camp. I learned a long time ago to be careful in correcting their assumptions because they can get REALLY pissed off at mistaking a “mud person” for white.
In my society, I am viewed as “black”. But in other societies, I might be considered “white” or some other “non-black” category.
It just underscores the arbitrariness of “whiteness” or “blackness”. Israelis who do not consider themselves “white” are no more or less crazier than Brazilians who consider themselves “white” despite being darker than a paper bag. It is American arrogance to think that our definitions should overrule other societies’ definitions. I’m shaking my heads at Americans who think they have the right to tell someone from another country that their identity is “wrong” by citing American history. WTF.
Your last sentence reminds me of the old “Funny, you don’t look Jewish” quip. If Jewishness isn’t racial, then this shouldn’t even be a thing. Just because it is a “thing” that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense is kind of besides the point. If enough people think there’s a “Jewish look”, then you’ve got people being thrown in a category based on appearance. Sounds like “race” to me.
No you don’t. You self-identify as clever, that’s for sure, but your argument is very far from the clever satire you believe it to be. If you insist, though, I’m happy for you to be barred from all public restrooms, as gunships are.