most middle-class Jews in the west are functionally white in terms of their social relations tbh. Insisting otherwise is part of how Israel’s crimes are justified. Like how is a secular Jew in New York or whatever different to an American-Irish, american-German or whatever whose family arrived 100+ years ago? There’s no country the O’Malleys can go to do genocide just for fun (unless they have a Jewish grandma or something I guess)
Jews inhabit a (unhappy) middle ground where yes they are functionally white especially middle and upper class as you point out but considered a separate ethnic group with no home country (Israel doesn’t count) and have historically been othered. The lines are extremely blurred and it can even vary on circumstances. In short its a long and complex conversation to have and almost nobody has it in good faith, least of all the Bazinga in Chief
considered a separate ethnic group with no home country (Israel doesn’t count)
This is fascinating since Israel has explicitly invited them in and that’s not something that most other types of Americans can do.
Even most of us whose parents were foreign nationals are unable to obtain residency status from those countries wo significant effort and only if you qualify under intentionally very narrow circumstances.
Jews inhabit a (unhappy) middle ground where yes they are functionally white especially middle and upper class
This is also fascinating; the type of American that I am is WELL over represented in the lower classes and working poor of this country and it’s an historically verifiable common missconception (ie lulac) that will we will be accepted as any white American if we can break into the middle class or beyond in significant enough numbers.
I get that the concept of “whiteness” changes; but I’ve never heard Italian-Americans, or Irish-Americans, or any other type of hyphenated Americans express these sentiments before. In my experience; it’s only those of us w a lot of melanin in our skin that express something similar to what you said and even Israel treats Jewish people w similar melanin concentrations the same way.
Please forgive the ignorance in my question: I didn’t mean to offend. my experiences with my white passing family members taught me that Americans will accept them as one of their own wo hesitation, but the rest of my family and I get the hyphenated American treatment.
There are non-white Jewish people. Being Jewish is totally outside the purview of race. Hatred and bigotry of Jewish people is not based on their race. That’s why people talk about anti-semitism and not racism.
I do agree that because most of this shit is entirely made up by people to gain more power and so it can seem confusing at times. I also believe it’s important to wrestle with the confusion to not conflate oppression different groups of people face. Italian, Jewish, and Irish people calling themselves people of color simply because of those ethnicities/nationalities is an issue and should be called out
my comment regading the isreal treatment of jewish people with high concentrations of melanin was a reference to the isreali’s efforts to grey rock african; latin american; and south asian jews from immigrating into isreal, where they openly welcome european, american, and canadian jews without similar grey rocking.
also: there’s an easily verifiable historical record of Italian, Jewish and Irish people being treated similarly to people of color in the eastern united states and canada, but i agree that it can sometimes be problematic to still use this as evidence of prejudice today; especially so considering that the version of whiteness that we use today coexisted with the anti-non-white discrimination that the italian, jewish, and irish experienced in the eastern united states.
the book “the great arizona orphan abduction” has fascinating examples of irish and italian-american immigrants fleeing discrimination in new york who then went on to perpetuate the same type discrimination against mexican-americans in arizona. (imo: this was more troubling since the mexican-americans weren’t immigrants; they had been in the area since before it had become american territory; like the palestinians had been in palestine before it became modern isreal and also because the perpetrators experienced the same discrimination that they were doling out, so they knew how wrong it was, but did it anyways).
Everything when it comes to Jewish identity comes with a ton of nuance. I’m not Jewish, but I have known Jews throughout my life and even for them it’s not something they all agree on. Part of that is because Judaism is a religion and Jew is an ethnic group (with many racially separate sub-groups) with some pretty unique qualifiers. For example some only consider you Jewish if your mother was Jewish. If your dad is and mom isn’t then you’re half Jewish. There are also secular or atheist Jews who are not religious but still part of the group. Some among that number have no ties to the ethnic group (let’s say they got adopted as a baby by a Christian family). It’s a super complex thing.
And Israel doesn’t help the conversation at all with their bullshit ethnostate acting like they are the “Jewish homeland” when you have European Jews with no genetic ties to Israel at all - their ancestors were converts centuries ago as part of the diaspora.
It’s actually one of the fundamental things that makes antisemitism such a dogshit idea that must be fought at every turn. Where do you draw the line? Who’s in and who’s out? The same way that racist codes like Jim Crow “one drop” rules were always arbitrarily enforced bullshit even when they tried to pin it down with their anti-science eugenics and calipers.
But it is a super fascinating subject and if Jewish comrades wanna talk about it I’m sure you’ll learn loads more from them than a guy like me.
As for the white passing thing, yeah, it’s crazy. I can share an amusing anecdote tangentially related to the subject of passing: my grandpa was a native and when he went to Chinatown dudes would just talk to him in Cantonese because they thought he was one of them. He’d get all flustered and apologize, it was funny stuff.
my grandpa was a native and when he went to Chinatown dudes would just talk to him in Cantonese because they thought he was one of them. He’d get all flustered and apologize, it was funny stuff.
I can relate: I used to get this a lot from native Americans and didn’t understand why until I took a DNA test. The test said I was 2/3rds native American and it shocked me since my family lore establishes that we’re mostly Spanish w a single drop of native American ancestry; the older generations still continue to insist that we’re almost entirely Spanish despite the DNA tests results showing that we’re even more sub Saharan African than Spanish.
![[CW: racism] We’re so close to getting an answer to the question of whether Italians are white](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/85f32639-4f7a-45cc-b969-7c80edfe8504.jpeg){kind=link}
most middle-class Jews in the west are functionally white in terms of their social relations tbh. Insisting otherwise is part of how Israel’s crimes are justified. Like how is a secular Jew in New York or whatever different to an American-Irish, american-German or whatever whose family arrived 100+ years ago? There’s no country the O’Malleys can go to do genocide just for fun (unless they have a Jewish grandma or something I guess)
Jews inhabit a (unhappy) middle ground where yes they are functionally white especially middle and upper class as you point out but considered a separate ethnic group with no home country (Israel doesn’t count) and have historically been othered. The lines are extremely blurred and it can even vary on circumstances. In short its a long and complex conversation to have and almost nobody has it in good faith, least of all the Bazinga in Chief
This is fascinating since Israel has explicitly invited them in and that’s not something that most other types of Americans can do.
Even most of us whose parents were foreign nationals are unable to obtain residency status from those countries wo significant effort and only if you qualify under intentionally very narrow circumstances.
This is also fascinating; the type of American that I am is WELL over represented in the lower classes and working poor of this country and it’s an historically verifiable common missconception (ie lulac) that will we will be accepted as any white American if we can break into the middle class or beyond in significant enough numbers.
I get that the concept of “whiteness” changes; but I’ve never heard Italian-Americans, or Irish-Americans, or any other type of hyphenated Americans express these sentiments before. In my experience; it’s only those of us w a lot of melanin in our skin that express something similar to what you said and even Israel treats Jewish people w similar melanin concentrations the same way.
Please forgive the ignorance in my question: I didn’t mean to offend. my experiences with my white passing family members taught me that Americans will accept them as one of their own wo hesitation, but the rest of my family and I get the hyphenated American treatment.
There are non-white Jewish people. Being Jewish is totally outside the purview of race. Hatred and bigotry of Jewish people is not based on their race. That’s why people talk about anti-semitism and not racism.
I do agree that because most of this shit is entirely made up by people to gain more power and so it can seem confusing at times. I also believe it’s important to wrestle with the confusion to not conflate oppression different groups of people face. Italian, Jewish, and Irish people calling themselves people of color simply because of those ethnicities/nationalities is an issue and should be called out
my comment regading the isreal treatment of jewish people with high concentrations of melanin was a reference to the isreali’s efforts to grey rock african; latin american; and south asian jews from immigrating into isreal, where they openly welcome european, american, and canadian jews without similar grey rocking.
also: there’s an easily verifiable historical record of Italian, Jewish and Irish people being treated similarly to people of color in the eastern united states and canada, but i agree that it can sometimes be problematic to still use this as evidence of prejudice today; especially so considering that the version of whiteness that we use today coexisted with the anti-non-white discrimination that the italian, jewish, and irish experienced in the eastern united states.
the book “the great arizona orphan abduction” has fascinating examples of irish and italian-american immigrants fleeing discrimination in new york who then went on to perpetuate the same type discrimination against mexican-americans in arizona. (imo: this was more troubling since the mexican-americans weren’t immigrants; they had been in the area since before it had become american territory; like the palestinians had been in palestine before it became modern isreal and also because the perpetrators experienced the same discrimination that they were doling out, so they knew how wrong it was, but did it anyways).
Everything when it comes to Jewish identity comes with a ton of nuance. I’m not Jewish, but I have known Jews throughout my life and even for them it’s not something they all agree on. Part of that is because Judaism is a religion and Jew is an ethnic group (with many racially separate sub-groups) with some pretty unique qualifiers. For example some only consider you Jewish if your mother was Jewish. If your dad is and mom isn’t then you’re half Jewish. There are also secular or atheist Jews who are not religious but still part of the group. Some among that number have no ties to the ethnic group (let’s say they got adopted as a baby by a Christian family). It’s a super complex thing.
And Israel doesn’t help the conversation at all with their bullshit ethnostate acting like they are the “Jewish homeland” when you have European Jews with no genetic ties to Israel at all - their ancestors were converts centuries ago as part of the diaspora.
It’s actually one of the fundamental things that makes antisemitism such a dogshit idea that must be fought at every turn. Where do you draw the line? Who’s in and who’s out? The same way that racist codes like Jim Crow “one drop” rules were always arbitrarily enforced bullshit even when they tried to pin it down with their anti-science eugenics and calipers.
But it is a super fascinating subject and if Jewish comrades wanna talk about it I’m sure you’ll learn loads more from them than a guy like me.
As for the white passing thing, yeah, it’s crazy. I can share an amusing anecdote tangentially related to the subject of passing: my grandpa was a native and when he went to Chinatown dudes would just talk to him in Cantonese because they thought he was one of them. He’d get all flustered and apologize, it was funny stuff.
Aka the dumbest shit ever.
I can relate: I used to get this a lot from native Americans and didn’t understand why until I took a DNA test. The test said I was 2/3rds native American and it shocked me since my family lore establishes that we’re mostly Spanish w a single drop of native American ancestry; the older generations still continue to insist that we’re almost entirely Spanish despite the DNA tests results showing that we’re even more sub Saharan African than Spanish.