Why not?
I do wonder how much is generational divide in how we view what it means to be white. Someone mentioned growing up in the 60s and that Jews were obviously white because they were non black. That’s one way to see it for sure. I didn’t grow up then, but will note for his tip city that the 60s was when Jewish groups were actively lobbying to be reclassified official as white from Oriental.
Another was to look at it is to say that non white is any minority group that is being persecuted, still, but the majority. Hispanics by the “not black” definition would also be white. Ethnically most are. At least as much as anyone else. But, I think you would be hard pressed to find many Hispanics who identify as white.
Maybe you say that Jews don’t fit this role either. I think that’s naive, but it’s true we don’t have it as bad as Muslims or Hispanics or Black’s right now. At least not in the states. But. The anti semitism is still very real. I mentioned once already that my daughter was disinvited from her first pre school when they found out we were Jewish. I have had actual rocks thrown at me for being a Jew. As I get older I find myself being more and more observant but I work in sales and would NEVER wear a kippah to work. It would destroy my sales numbers. Similarly I go out of my way to hide that I am Jewish, just in case, when I am in clients homes.
So, I pass. To some I am white enough to be the oppressor. Sure, I get that. But at the end of the Day, even if I’m white also I’m a white Jew. That’s not the same as being just white. On the flip side, everyone else is Goyim white or not.
See this is the crux of what I was saying. Being “White” is being treated as if White = evil and so people are trying to justify why although their skin is pale they are in fact white with an asterisk.
I don’t want to hijack, but thats’ an obvious misstatement. I elided a couple of steps. Arabs introduced Arabic poetry to Sicily, which during the multicultural reign of the enlightened Norman kings in the 11th–12 centuries, inspired the Sicilian School, the very first movement in Italian poetry, which in turn went on to inspire Petrarca and Dante.
Maybe? Again it’s also possibly generational but I never thought of it as white = evil. Just white equals the majority population who don’t have to consider their identity every time they interact with a new person.
If just being pale was enough then is Gael Garcia Bernal white? He looks about as white as Gal Gadot.
Or a ‘black’ albino, paler than either?
Being treated as evil by who?
I don’t think light-skinned Askenazim are labeling themselves as White* because they want to avoid being associated with evil White-no-asterisk people.
They’re saying they see some hefty fraction of White-no-asterisk people who insist that Ashkenazim can be at best White* and at worst something far lower on White-no-asterisk folks’ idea of the social totem pole.
IOW, it’s not that Jewish people don’t want to be part of the White club; it’s that the White club doesn’t want them be part of the club. So White* is as “good” as they can get.
:rolleyes: Bullshit. Then neither is African-American, or Asian or White or Jew.
Sorry I don’t see the logic there. You haven’t explained why white supremacists hatred of Jews (where true) makes Jews not whites. It has nothing to do with whether it’s ‘remarkable’ there are strains of anti-Semitism in anti-black groups. Again, there are strains of anti-Semitism in some black groups (Farrakhan and company), is that remarkable? no need to answer, since it similarly has nothing to do with the point.
White supremacist anti-Semites are people who hate non-whites, and often also hate Jews. The fact that they hate both doesn’t make both objects the same thing. And similarly in white societies riven by hatred between Catholics and Protestants, Serbs and Croats, and on and on, there’s no logic to say the object of intra-white hatred must not be white. Nor to judge the object must be non-white because the haters also don’t like non-whites. Back when anti-Catholicism was significant in the US most anti-Catholics also didn’t like blacks, so back then Catholics weren’t white?
I agree with this, but that doesn’t preclude me from being White in all meaningful senses. People can discriminate against or be prejudiced against Jews while still considering us “White”. Some White people discriminate against women regardless of their skin color, so just because we are Other (in some contexts) doesn’t make us non-White.
Thank’s for the semi-acceptance of the validity of my POV. 
But you’re kind of misrepresenting it, or I didn’t say it clearly enough. I didn’t assume as a kid Jews were white because they weren’t black. We Irish, Italians and Jews (in something like comparable numbers each) lived in the white neighborhoods. Blacks lived in black neighborhoods. When I started grade school kids from the black neighborhoods basically went to the black schools (again this is close in NY area). As school district policy changed allowing parents to petition to send their kids to another school, many black parents did and the % of blacks in our school rose. Then quite a few white families moved. My best Jewish friends from school all moved while we were still there, anecdotal yes but what happened. Eventually we moved though our ‘excuse’ would be my parents took different jobs in the NYC school system and we moved to another place near the City on other side which was almost all white (heavily Jewish and WASP).
In that second place, now talking 1970’s, yes in fact there were still no-Jews country clubs. We didn’t belong to a country club. My dad perceived them as WASP country clubs and didn’t want to join, but whether there would still have been actual prejudice against us as Irish I don’t know, against Jews there definitely was. But I see some posts kind of mixing those two things together, black v white and anti-Semitism which were very clearly different issues and things. And I really don’t believe that’s some idiosyncratic experience or view of mine. I frankly think that it in an era of less bigotry (certainly not zero) now, younger people treat the whole topic less seriously. To me Jews saying ‘I’m not white’ is an example of that.
And I don’t think it’s refuted by pointing out prejudices within what American society viewed as ‘white’. In a word ‘group which feels discrimination’ and ‘non white’ should not be made synonymous for good historical reasons, it distorts history. And it’s not just ‘well I see it this way, you see it that way’, though of course this is still just my opinion.
No, see, I get that “the object of intra-white hatred” could indeed be white – just as someone who happens to be anti-Catholic could also happen to be anti-black.
My point is, white supremacists who hate me don’t see me as a white guy catching some intra-white hatred, much as they don’t just happen to be anti-black; they’ll tell you that the whole point of them being anti-black is because they’re pro-white; and they’ll helpfully add that, just as they’re not talking about blacks when they’re talking about pro-white stuff – white pride and white power and white nationalism – they’re also not talking about me; they define whiteness that way.
Well I see your claim more clearly, that white supremacists according to you are saying Jews aren’t whites. But I don’t think that’s actually true by and large. The subset of white supremacists who still aim much attention at Jews typically say they seek a ‘White Christian’ society, corresponding to two different targets. And then I’d consider that actual ‘white supremacists’ are an almost negligible factor in American life. By and large prejudice is defused among an orders of magnitude larger % of the population with more subtle views they don’t admit or even realize. Again IME and IMO the ‘race’ and anti-Semitism issues were separate. Jews were whites. And to now revise this has real problems in implied rewriting of history.
African Americans have a shared tongue and history. So I think it is correct to call this an ethicity.
“Asians”, “whites”, and “Jews” don’t meet these criteria.
So I call bullshit on your bullshit.
Damn it, every time I see this thread it reminds me of Peter Sellers
I think you’ll have to do more than just assert that. I don’t believe it’s true in a meaningful sense.
Firstly, from your cite:
But mainly because the author of that article is making the leap from a study that found “there are more atheist in the US than phone polling shows” to the claim that “there are atheists among Evangelicals”. The researches quoted did not study Evangelicals; they studied “Americans”.
Why not? Blacks have been segregated into mostly black communities for hundred of years in the US. If you want to quibble that African-Americans are made up of more than one ethnicity, that would be one thing. But to say they are not an ethnicity denies that fact of centuries of living apart from white society-- and being treated differently by that society.
Can’t you say the same for Jews until fairly recently? Mostly restricted to Jewish neighborhoods in major east coast cities.
I don’t see that a black community in southern Louisiana shares enough in common with the blacks living in the Inkwell on Martha’s Vineyard to say they have a shared tongue and history. Yes, there are similarities, but also significant differences. I just think that there so much variety in experiences in the US that monstro’s statement is too sweeping. But certainly, if the case can be made I’m willing to hear it change my opinion.
This conversation has turned bizarre.
“Ethnicity” is defined thusly in the dictionary:
African American is not a racial group.
It’s not a nationality.
African Americans have their own dialect.
They have their own cultural traditions.
What is “African American” if it is NOT an ethnicity?
“Black people”, on the other hand, is not an ethnic group. It’s a racial group that encompasses many ethnicities.
The same with “White people”.
“South Asian” is akin to “South American” or “West African” or “Northern European” or “Caribbean”. Such terms do not indicate a singular ethnic group, but rather speak to a loosely defined geographic area where disparate peoples reside. It is NOT akin to “Arab”–which is what prompted this debate in the first place. “Arab” is an ethnic descriptor, not a geographic one.