In what sense? Were they not allowed to buy in white neighborhoods, join white unions, or marry white people?
Another way to think about it is, if you are questioning it the answer is no. No one would think to ask if Chris Pratt was white.
I would never think to ask if Gal Gadot is white.
What?
MENA is a common acronym in the finance and business. There is nothing new about it, it is decades old.
This is the issue I see. It’s fine for people to take a subjective approach of saying how they feel they are ‘the other’ in American society to some degree based on any variation from some ‘white’ standard they subjectively apply.
The problem comes IMO with the example I gave. In Queens/Nassau county in the 1960’s white and black neighborhoods were quite distinct (sadly it’s not 100% different now, although it’s pretty different because the two areas I grew up in are heavily Asian and Hispanic respectively now whereas pretty much just white/black then). Jews were on the white side of that divide, no ifs or buts or subjectivity, as obvious a social fact as you could come by. That’s not changed by Jewish people legitimately feeling there was also some separation of themselves from a ‘WASP’ mainstream, or even being further from it than us ‘Irish’, or the Italians. But white/black was a huge deal, and Jewish folks were simply and obviously on the white side of that divide in every day reality.
IOW there’s a real limit to making up your own definitions of things. ‘Fluid’ but you can still end up with ridiculous characterizations based on what has happened in the past, as well as today. Jews perceiving themselves ‘still somehow separate from the mainstream’, perfectly reasonable. ‘Antisemitism isn’t dead’, I agree (including some elements on the far left as well as the ‘alt right’). There’s much more of a problem IMO with Jews using the rhetorical device ‘I don’t consider myself white’ given the past and present reality of the race problem in US. I could even see legitimate grounds for taking offense at that affectation by some. And I find it ridiculous frankly though not offensive.
Yet here we are.
Hey, I find it ridiculous and offensive that white supremacists despise us, but they do.
Jimmy: There’s gonna be a war, man, I can see it. There’s gonna be a war between the blacks and the whites. You ain’t even gonna need a uniform no more. This ain’t gonna be a war where you pick your side, man. Your side’s already picked for ya.
Ray: Well I know whose side I’m fighting on. I’m fighting with the blacks. The whites are gonna get their heads kicked in!
Jimmy: You don’t decide this shit, man. Your side’s already picked for ya.
Ray: Who are the half-castes gonna fight with?
Jimmy: With the blacks, man. That’s obvious.
Ray: What about the Pakistanis?
Jimmy: The blacks.
Ray: What about, think of a hard one… What about the Vietnamese?
Jimmy: The blacks!
Agreed. Although give the tone of that post, I’m not sure I agree with the “respect” part.
Apparently.
Do not ask me how I know this. Observant Jews gave their slaves the day off on the first and second, and last two days of Passover. Do not ask me how I know this.
“Gal” is both a man’s and a woman’s name in Israel-- at least, I know a couple of men named “Gal”; so: 1) Gal Gadot’s parents gave her a boy’s name, or 2) it’s short for something or 3) it’s both a man’s and a woman’s name. If you are a man, it’s pronounced “gall,” like in “gall bladder,” and I assume that for Gal Gadot it’s the same.
Yes, “Guy” is a man’s name in Israel (Gai would be a better transliteration, but the two “Guys” I know, one who is Israeli, and one who is an American-born son of an Israeli, spell it “Guy”), so while I have no idea whether she has a brother with that name, it is possible. One “Guy” I know has a brother named “Ariel,” which is a man’s name, Disney notwithstanding.
My cousin, an American-born Ashkenazic Jew, with dark hair, green eyes, and fairly light skin, married an Israeli-born man with dark skin, who has an Ethiopian mother, and a Sephardic father (whom I have met-- his mother is actually lighter-skinned than his father). In America, people usually refer to him as “black,” but occasionally as “African-American,” which makes him laugh. When you ask him or my cousin his ethnicity, they say “Jewish.” He checks the box that says “other.” Their kids check “other” as well. I’m not sure what she checks. To make a point, I think she sometimes checks “other” and fills in “Jewish.”
It may be the issue you see, and certainly I see it as well, but it is not the only issue I see.
For example I am very cognizant of history. And Godwinizing is unavoidable here … German Jews immediately before the rise of Hitler were not so “other” and really were part of mainstream German culture, or at least thought they were. They thought they were passing for being accepted and even respected members of society. Jews, less than 1% of Germany’s population, were among the leaders in the scientific, medical, economic, cultural, intellectual, and even in the political/diplomatic realms in Weimar Germany. Far right hate groups were relatively marginalized until the rise of the political outsider who just made up shit. It was about as good as it had gotten for Jews in Europe. Personally that history makes me hesitant to ever forget that I am “other” and that otherness could become a big deal at any time, from both elements of the right and the left. You are free to think that is paranoid but such is how I feel. White supremacists do not count me as part of “White” and never will; and current times are seeing those hateful clowns growing in numbers.
There is also the question of what is the best response to someone saying “other” as an insult. Responding with “I am not ‘other.’” seems to me to be a wrong response as it implicitly validates that being “other” is a bad thing. Hence the Italian immigrant response to “guinea” as a slur … to accept being called Black as an insult validated that being Black was something you did not want to be. Feeling the need to deny the label reinforces the negative valence of the label. I am reminded of how some straight men feel the need to deny an “accusation” of being gay. But clearly OTOH it is also incorrect to in any way try to claim that “my Blues are like your Blues” and to thereby come off as failing to appreciate the magnitude and historic breadth of structural racism that continues in this country. Identifying as “other” can unintentionally invite a sense of competition with other “others” … and in America at least there is no competition - my father could not buy property and build a home in one Chicago suburb because he was Jewish (Kenilworth - no Jews, Catholics, or Blacks allowed), but the where one could live was fairly heavily codified across all of the Chicago area for Blacks. The structural impacts of those historic policies are still with us, even if the explicit racists who created them are long gone.
I’m not seeing a good response here. From my perspective I am White and I am other than the White mainstream at the same time. While I too have been called “kike” and “Jew boy” overall I have not had my position and ability to succeed in life negatively impacted by structural factors stacked against my group. But end of day despite my current relative privilege I still feel at least as much kinship with those who do than with the mainstream majority. (While being neither.)
Not sure if I am articulating that clearly but it’s the best I can do.
Nope. That sums it up pretty well.
I’m sure Leo Frank was relieved to discover there was no anti-semitism in the south.
I didn’t say that. It is just a huge misconception that white people in the South are prejudiced against everyone and sometimes people extend that to Jews when that isn’t generally the case. It never worked that way. There were wealthy Jewish merchants in almost every significant Southern town and city. New Orleans, Savannah, Atlanta, Richmond and Charleston all had them and still do. My undergraduate university, Tulane or Jewlane if you prefer gained prestige when it was one of the more prestigious schools that did not have Jewish quotas even though lots of the northeastern schools including the Ivy Leagues did so they came South and continue t send their kids and grandkids there. Other Southern Jews have families with roots deeper than Scarlet O’Hara. The big difference is that there were never any Jewish ghettos in the South. If you knew a Jewish person, they were most likely your banker, doctor or lawyer and having one was a sign of your own personal prestige.
There is also the idea among the evangelical and fundamentalists Christians embedded in many Southern religious movements that dictate that you simply do not screw with Jews. They are God’s chosen people and your job is to protect them. Believe it or not, most people take that seriously.
I stand by my statement. There has never been significant antisemitism in the South outside of a few hate groups. There are plenty of stereotypes like being rich but the South has never been a hotbed of antisemitic thought and some Jewish families have been around in Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana since before the U.S. was even an idea. I am even a little bit Southern Jewish myself and my family takes that as a point of pride. Louisiana was the first state elect Jewish people to Congress for example.
Americans often use “white” as shorthand to “socially acceptable to those who are themselves white, anglo-saxon and protestant”. It’s not about ancestry/looks, as it is in other countries and cultures.
European Jews pass as white much of the time; the rest of the time they are plotting against gentiles from their home planet of Nibiru. Group identification is a two-way street, and the white people who care the most about racially classifying people certainly don’t think any Jews are white.
Americans seem obsessed by features and skin tone. And I say this as a person from the subcontinent, where we had/have caste systems based on the same.
In the Apartheid days, she would be considered white.
Gal is very much a unisex name in Israel. It’s fairly common, too - I had two Gals in my elementary school class in Haifa, a boy and a girl. We all called them “Gal-ha-Ben” (“Gal-the-Boy”) and “Gal-ha-Bat” (“Gal-the-Girl”). I think, like other Israeli unisex names, it started out as a boy’s name, and crept over to girls over the past 50 years or so.
Incidentally, the “a” in “Gal” is actually pronounced like that in “Car” rather than “Gall”. In general, the vowels in her name should sound something like “CAR Car-COAT”. Maybe she should have followed the Mayor of Chicago’s example and spelled her name “Gahl” to avoid confusion.
And that’s the thread in a nutshell. Israelis won’t say that some Jews are “white” and some aren’t because that would mean that we’re not one race, not one people, which goes against the entire Zionist ideal. So it doesn’t matter if we’re “other”, so long as we’re “other” together.