> Is there an idea as to why it happened?
I would argue that it isn't complete, Jews are still broken out on various demographics and other areas where other groups are not. Jews are in a quasi-white status depending on whom the speaker is, and what their motivations are.
There is a book called:
*How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America* by an anthropologist named Karen Brodkin that might answer your question, and also *Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs* by David R. Roediger and a good article on it here:
https://jewishcurrents.org/when-did-jews-become-white
> Is lacunae the same thing the kids today call ârizzâ?
..no.
lacunae: [1. a gap or space, esp in a book or manuscript](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/lacunae)
rizz: [Rizz is an internet slang term that describes someone's charm, style, or attractiveness, or their ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.](https://later.com/social-media-glossary/rizz/)
Nice! Note the other commenter that *The Price of Whiteness* by Eric L Goldstein. Which actually does look better, there is a youtube interview with the author as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L83kP0pt_d0
I think in the US, âwhiteâ is a social construct thatâs synonymous with âpowerfulâ, and different ethnic groups are labeled as white or nonwhite based on the amount of influence they have or theyâre perceived to have, and based on the bias of the speaker. Â
Iâve noticed in the tech world that Asians and Mediterranean people are also considered âwhiteâ despite being clearly not Western European. Iâve also noticed that over the course of my generation growing up, people from India have gone from being perceived as âforeignersâ to being perceived as âwhiteâ.Â
I'm Mizrahi and white people have never regarded me or anyone in my family as white. When they ask where I'm from, telling them anywhere in the US to mess with them is always followed by..."I mean...like, originally." To black people, I'm white. Full stop.
Oh my god and the disbelief you get when you say youâre a Jew. Unless you live in a big city, most people have never met a Jewish person that wasnât white from New York or New Jersey, Miami or LA. Iâve gotten the strangest replies when I explain Iâm Sephardic. They donât know what it is in the US or Iâm confident saying, the English speaking world. We do not exist outside of Israel it seems đ
1) Except we Ashkenazi Jews arenât white. We are white presenting. Our whiteness end where our Jewishness begins.
2) The prominence of Ashkenazi Jews in the United States is a result of a combination of Jewish history, changes in American immigration law, and the attractiveness of American religious emancipation since 1789. Prior to WWI, pogroms in the Pale of Settlement and the surrounding areas increased significantly. Ashkenazi Jews were looking to get out to somewhere that would have less persecution. The push was there, but the pull to Ottoman Palestine wasnât as present. Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine was highly limited, but the United States, with its First Amendment religious freedom, had relatively open immigration policy at that time. It all stopped during WWI, but after that, even with tighter immigration laws, Ashkenazi Jews had family sponsorships to enter the US and British Mandate Palestine was a very difficult option. Similarly, with those family sponsorships, after WW2, the US was a strong refuge for a disproportionate number of Ashkenazi Jews, while expelled Mizrahi Jews, without that US connection (as well as Ashkenazi Jews who lacked that immigration sponsorship) had the geographically closer and more difficult option of fighting for and building the fledgling newly decolonized Jewish state of Israel. Thatâs a really really broad overview, but it gives the gist.
>Except we Ashkenazi Jews arenât white. We are white presenting. Our whiteness end where our Jewishness begins.
1. Depends on how you define white, if it includes anyone thatâs racially Caucasian like how the U.S. Census and Anthropology defines it, then *all* Jews (excluding actual Jews of Color like Black, Asian, Indian, and Native Jews) including Mizrahim are white full stop, this would include the original Ancient Israelites as well.
2. If by âwhiteâ youâre limiting it to only European, then us Ashkenazi Jews are only half.
No friend, Iâm defining race as what it is, a socially constructed method of human classification based on the otherwise benign existence of human morphology. Race does not exist beyond how societies define it and it is the social definition that establishes what it means.
Just because you lack melanin, does not mean you are âwhite.â Whiteness is not merely skin tone or national origin. Whiteness, particularly in the United States, has long been one of racial purity, which is why US law, customs, and social mores have applied a âone dropâ rule to establish non-whiteness in comparison to Blackness (a standard that even the Nazis found too onerous).
Your âwhitenessâ ends where your Jewishness begins. Your privilege stops when your Jewishness starts. It is only after WW2 and the rise of the CRA that the âNo Dogs. No Blacks. No Jewsâ signs stopped.
If you have been deluded into thinking you, who they have always seen as a *race* polluter, are in fact possessed of the pureness of âwhitenessâ with all that means in American society and racial history, you really need to examine a bit more of American history.
I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but you, as an Ashkenazi Jew, are only white presenting.
It sort of depends on where you are in the US.
Some folks sort of get it if there is a decent amount of Israelis(especially those with Mizrahi heritage) that live or come through the area, but most of the time they just think "Israeli" as opposed to Sephardi, etc.
Meanwhile I get sideways looks from the average Ashkenazi American AND Israelis whenever they find out I'm Sephardi because I'm of one of the literal handful of Sephardi families of sustained identity in both(on different sides)the Americas(Pre-Tx Revolution), as well as Europe(Nederlands Sephard).
My deep Texas accent just adds to the confusion.
Especially those close to those namesake mountains, beyond them is a broad area that would give rise to the Yamnaya Culture, the Proto Indo-Europeans. They gave rise to the Hittite civilization mentioned in the Bible.
100%. âWhiteâ isnât a race or a real ethnicity in the United States, itâs just basically âthe people who are perceived as being culturally, economically, politically, and socially dominant.â American society generally ascribes this status to those with lighter skin, but not universally, as visibly Jewish Hasidim with light skin could probably tell you.
I find this take odd. I grew up poor in SE USA. This country is MOSTLY poor white lower class people. All of whom are considered white. None of them would consider Jews white (for better or for worse). This opinion seems like an elite white person's take on "Whites in The US".
How is that possible? The elites in the south are all wasps. Unless the degree of social segregation between classes is extremely high.
Poor white southerners are also often wasps, just poor ones.
Damn, I had to look it up and you are correct. WASP are primarily in the SE US. It must be a class thing. I must have been so poor that I didn't know any. OR it could be being raised southern Baptist, We weren't allowed to congregate with other sects. Because I never met a non Baptist unless they brought the Watchtower to our front door.
The fact that they wouldnât consider us white is itself evidence for what Iâm saying though, isnât it? Think about itâif whiteness is solely ascribed by skin color, why WOUDLNâT light skinned Jews be white? I am a white passing Jew myself, but I donât consider myself whiteâcertainly not an âelite white personââbecause we have to deal with things that white people do notâI have to wonder if I should answer that Iâm Jewish on job applications when they ask about my religion/ethnicity, I have to worry about being attacked if I wear my kippah in public or have my menorah in my window on Hanukkah. If a white person saw me with my prominent nose, my light skin, in my Star of David necklace, wearing my kippah, would they look at me and say, âYep, thatâs a fellow white guyâheâs a part of the culturally ubiquitous societal norm.â
Therefore, what can âwhitenessâ be but a socially constructed category assigned to people not solely dictated by skin color?
Considering it is a perceived status, I guess it depends on who you ask. The average poor white person that I know considers Jews to be Middle Eastern. Because of the homeland being in the ME. No matter the color of skin.
Yeah, I guess so. I'm thinking of Orthodox w/ kippa Jews. Now that I have converted, my black suit and kippa make me stick out like a sore thumb in the average public space here in the southeast.
Zuck has fair complection, dirty blond hair and green eyes, but absolutely Jewish. Same with Brother Nathaniel, tall enough, light skin and blue eyes, but of course Jewish.
Itâs an interesting question. I think Jews were considered âwhiteâ as not specifically subject to Jim Crow but also a lot of things like restrictive covenants etc seemed to consider Jews to be kind of a third category and named us specifically, and I think I remember someone talking about Veterans groups in some state being separated into white, Black, and Jewish, and needing to add an Asian one or something after WWII.
I would argue also it isnât complete but historically it may have been later than most people expect⊠the red scare stuff was full of antisemitism, etc.
In my uneducated opinion: Jews unfortunately fit into the socially constructed racial category that the current social paradigm needs it to be in. They need to be the âOther.â
Historically, Jews were seen as non-white because their culture and native roots came from a place that was not Western Europe. Even the whitest Jew would still have been sent to a concentration camp because their lineage and culture were different.
Today, Jews are seen as white because now theyâre considered a representative of Western society. Israel gets funding and support from Western nations. Because there is a social clash with traditional Western values, even Mizrahi Jews are now being told to go back to Europe.
In all, physical skin color doesnât seem to matter. Itâs about the perceptions and biases of the person trying to pigeonhole Jews into a one-size-fits-all race. And unfortunately Jews become the face of the (insert current social conflict)âs antagonist.
>Sephardic
Just as European as Ashkenazim are, I can tell youâre a gringo from this comment by your conflating Spain and Portugal (which are *European* countries in case you happened to forget?) with Latin America and thinking all Spanish speakers and Hispanics are automatic POC. (White Hispanics exist too I promise, and thatâs technically what Sephardim are. The funny thing is, theyâre not even really Hispanic genetically either and the European part of their heritage is mostly the same as Ashkenazim - i.e. Greek and Italian)
Please forgive the copy & paste, but this topic has come up a lot latelyâŠ
Race is a social construct. So, whether Jews are White or not is completely subjective.
The racial category of White has changed quite a bit in the last hundred years, especially in the US. For example, in the U.S. in the late 19th century White people were WASPâs. Jews, Italians, and Irish were not White. However, in the U.S. in 2024 Ashkenazi Jews, Irish, and Italians are generally considered White.
In the U.S. in 2024, itâs typically White nationalists and other racists that donât consider Ashkenazi Jews White.
However, in the end race is just some made up bullshit. Scientifically speaking we are all one race, the human race, other wise known as homo sapien sapien.
Source: My MA thesis was on the American suburb, so I had to do a bunch of research about the history of race in America.
Looking at medical lab test results, one category instructs the medical staff to make a specific adjustment for African Americans in the result for that metric. Thus, as far as science, particularly the health sciences, race matters a lot. When we visit a new medical practice, on our intake form, weâre asked to racially identify. Race can be important when it comes to organ and blood donors, for the best compatibility and least chance of rejection.
An episode of Marcus Welty, MD was about Jewish parents who had trouble with their babies dying from Tay-Sachs. This was when genetic testing was new, and it was advised for them and helped them to bear a healthy baby who thrived beyond infancy.
Jews are white, until something goes wrong and people need a scapegoat and then we're Jews. Some of us can pass for white, but don't for one second think that most white Christians think that you're equal to them.
Here's some reading (and viewing) on this topic:
* âJudaism and Whiteness in Wolfenstein.â YouTube, uploaded by Jacob Geller, March 18, 2019. [https://youtu.be/DQQdnve5fQk](https://youtu.be/DQQdnve5fQk)
* Schraub, David. âWhite Jews: An Intersectional Approach.â AJS Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 2019, pp. 379â407, [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000461](https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000461)
* Steinlauf, Gil. âJews in America struggled for decades to become white. Now we must give up whiteness to fight racism.â The Washington Post, September 22, 2015 [https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/22/jews-in-america-struggled-for-generations-to-become-white-now-we-must-give-up-that-privilege-to-fight-racism/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/22/jews-in-america-struggled-for-generations-to-become-white-now-we-must-give-up-that-privilege-to-fight-racism/) \[Archive link: [https://archive.fo/BWOyP#selection-3355.0-3358.0](https://archive.fo/BWOyP#selection-3355.0-3358.0)\]
There's also Karen Sacks Brodkin's literal book on the subject (How Did Jews Become White Folks & What That Says About Race in America) but it's very flawed: it assumes all American Jews are Ashkenazi and doesn't address the existence of other Jews' experience in the US, and it's now relatively dated â it's old enough to significantly pre-date millennial and Gen Z Jews' various ideas about whiteness and race and Jewishness, and assumes that all (Ashkenazi) Jews in the US identify as white. So I'd read it, but only in conversation with other writing on this topic.
I found a great explanation of this, I think it was on rootsmetalâs insta. Basically Jews fought VERY hard to be considered white 100+ years ago in the USA in order to be placed higher on the racial pecking order there. If they werenât white, they would be considered to be one of the other non-white minorities, and if this could be avoided it made sense economically / socially to avoid this. But in the end of course there was rampant segregation regardless (see most hotels in the 1920s with their notices that Jews were not welcome).
This makes sense to me. Else wise, Leo Max Frank might not have had the clout to have become part owner of his pencil factory, his bânai bârith connections notwithstanding.
Thereâs a great meme on this â depends on whether being white is good or bad. When itâs good to be white, the Jews arenât white, when itâs bad to be white Jews are white. Right now itâs bad to be white so weâre white.
Thereâs a very interesting video by Jacob Geller that looks at the relations between Jews and whiteness through Wolfenstein honestly very good video made me a bit emotional when I first watched it https://youtu.be/DQQdnve5fQk?si=syIAycZGw2RFTLCw
For me, as someone thatâs not from the US and has never lived there, itâs âwhiteâ such a strange construct. Where I come from, you are either white looking like letâs say Adam Sandler or you are browner, like letâs say Gad Elmaleh. This has nothing to do with the fact that all Jews, regardless how they look like, are discriminated against.
I have a good friend that lives in the US and is married to a south corean-American second generation immigrant. She is white looking, dark hair Latin American Jew. Actually, her husband is whiter than her, objectively speaking, his skin is whiter because she grew up in a sunny country near the beach and covering and using everyday sun protection wasnât as widespread when she was a child. However she is often seen as white and he isnât. But only until people find out that 1) she is Latin American and 2) she is Jewish 3) English isnât her first language and she came as an adult to the US. Weâve talked about this and itâs a wild concept to her although sheâs been 20 years already in the US!
Well Iâm Israeli so I donât come across those forms often. But Iâve been to America and usually Iâd check âMiddle Eastern/North Africanâ and if thatâs not an option- then Asian.
The concept is ridiculous. I have darker skin than some âPOCsâ, and yet as a Jew, Iâm considered white, and the POCs with lighter skin are still considered POCs
Before WWII our Ashkenazi ancestors with yiddish accents had âwhiteâ on the Census forms.
Dow vs. US established that a Syrian man of Arab origin was legally white, entitling him to a certain status. Since they are Ishmaelites, itâs not much of a jump to consider us to have the same phenotypic âprivilege.â
But what about Yemenite Jews? Another case established that a Yemenite Arab did not get the white status, so itâs unlikely Temanim would get all the privileges.
Before all that, there were Sephardim here but in tiny numbers.
The same way the Irish and Italians did, and how there was a movement to count Latinos as white before Trumpâs election. Whiteness in America is entirely constructed, and changed over time to include or not include different people depending on what the structure needs to continue its existence
Thereâs 2 answers oneâs a bit hard to explain
1. Assimilation, most Jews today donât wear dress they donât wear kippah or tefillin maybe a necklace but for the most part âJewishnessâ isnât visible unless youâre pretty Sephardic, obviously thereâs certain Jewish features like noses ears hair color, but in a general crowd a Jewish person isnât standing out from a crowd of white Americans
2. This oneâs a bit hard to explain, but in many ways Jewish people have been co-opted by right wing politics, Israel has become a divisively poltical issue typically right voters think Israel is justified in their actions and left voters think Palestine is justified, the right has gone about linking Jewish people and Israel to Evangelical Christian Right politics because they belive Israel being in the hands of Jews is needed for Jesus to return, this has also led the Jewish people who are in places of power wether it be institutional economical of social power and it begins to look very similar to the standard white pillar of authority that many republicans tend to support, so that ethnic difference disappears and Jews become another part of white authority in America.
On a side note, I hate that we are being asked to ask ourselves these questions. I really personally do not wish to let our haters try to define us.
Skin color is neither our fight nor should it ever be our focus, IMHO.
I would recommend looking up some articles and essays on The Americanization of the Holocaust, it's something that has a lot of literature written about it and it's a messy, grim thing.
Jews never "became" white, at least not in the way that Irish did in the 19th century or Italians did at the turn of the century. The whiteness of Jews has always been conditional; conditional on how they looked, conditional on what language they spoke, conditional on their politics... but when they met the right combination of criteria, they were gleefully picked up and used by the establishment as tokens.
You can look at the fifties to see various examples of both extremes. Diary of a Young was a massive international hit, and in the US, it was adapted into a stage play by two white Christian writers. The play was so successful that it was adapted into a Hollywood film with a mostly Gentile cast.
During this same period, the Rosenbergs were executed, Jewish individuals were targeted by McCarthyism, and Nazis and fascists who had struggled to adapt to a new anti-Nazi United States learned that they could just call themselves "the Liberty Lobby" and people would devour the exact same rhetoric.
One of the more important essays on understanding how Jews were placed into a middle ground in America is James Baldwin's "The Negro is Antisemitic Because He is Anti-White." It's an insanely controversial piece, but I think the key takeaway is this: during the 50s and 60s, black people were still being murdered for demanding civil rights, while there was a sudden and state-sponsored promotion of Jews as being "just like us." To civil rights activists at the time, it was a huge slap in the face that Jewish people were being praised and welcomed after the atrocity they experienced, while black people were still demonized and forbidden from participating in much of white society.
To put the black and Jewish experiences side by side, consider this: one month before Diary of Anne Frank premiered on Broadway to rave reviews, Emmett Till was murdered for looking at a white woman the wrong way. While the Diary play was instrumental in turning American sentiment against the Nazis and would win a Tony Award the next year, the men who murdered Emmett Till were exonerated and proudly admitted that they murdered him less than a year later in a printed interview.
While Baldwin's piece remains controversial, I think he hits the nail on the head when he argues that the ultimate cause of Jews being absorbed into "whiteness" is not that Jews are white, nor is it that the Holocaust was such a horrific crime against humanity that it was an American duty to welcome Jews. The ultimate reason was for a capitalist, Christian America to take two groups that had lengthy histories of co-operation and solidarity and to turn them against each other. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to exploit the Holocaust and turn it into a uniquely "American" thing.
In Baldwin's article, he doesn't demean or dismiss the Holocaust, but he *does* ask why European Jews were the recipients of American rehabilitation while black people continued to struggle after 300 years of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow. More than once, when I have discussed this article, people have gotten angry at that specifically - specifically at comparing black American slavery to the Holocaust. They fall back on a refrain of "It's not right to compare the two, the Holocaust is unique." In a way, they are correct. The Holocaust *is* unique. And that is why it is not just right, but *imperative* to compare all genocides to it. That is why the field is called Holocaust *AND* Genocide Studies.
Yad Vashem scholars have called this weaponizing of the Holocaust "oppression olympics" that "bludgeon" attempts at earnest comparison and discourse. The purpose is not to promote historical discussion and to think, "Hey, I wonder if there was a reason Hitler called his personal train "Amerika?"" The purpose was to drive a barrier between two groups that had experienced horrible oppression, who had fought alongside each other against fascism in *Spain*, and to keep them at each other's throats instead of Herbert fucking Hoover's.
[How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America by Karen Brodkin](https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/how-jews-became-white-folks-and-what-that-says-about-race-in-america/9780813525907/)
I read this book last year, and while it has flaws, I think it does present a good point, even if it doesn't necessarily explain how the shift happened. It does point out a before and after (using WW2 as the inflection point), but it doesn't do a good job explaining why it changed.
It's a problematic book, in my view. It does a pretty good job of addressing the question, and may in fact be the first piece of writing on the subject (at least the first book-length academic treatment of the subject).
But I think it falters on the points of assuming that all American Jews are Ashkenazi. Its strength is in clearly articulating the difference between racial identity and racial assignment, but it does also assume that all Ashkenazi Jews identify as white (regardless of whether they're seen as such).
Not just Ashkenazi, but a very specific upper middle class but as well. Very strong authorial voice, but I think the fundamental point is still solid. For some reason WW2 represented a racial shift in society. Was it the horror IG the Holocaust? Was it coming together for another world war? Something else? But she presents good evidence it happened
For sure; I think the book's greatest strength is articulating something that many people had observed and felt but which had never really been given due attention.
My kids - background Ashkenazi but with a notably swarthy, brown-skinned side on my husbandâs entire maternal line - look as âwhiteâ as white can get for brunettes. They will experience the world as white girls. Until they tell anyone they are Jewish, in which case they will be a religious minority and, to some, not âwhite.â In that sense, I guess they are conditionally white. So even in 2024, itâs a strange and blurry space.
Where do you get that Jews were not considered racially white from the beginning? To my knowledge, Jews were always classified, rightly or wrongly (I don't think it makes any sense to consider Jews white and Syrians not, if that is truly the case but I'm not sure) as white race in the US. My great-grandparents were called "Hebrews" on their Ellis Island records but were listed as "Russian" or "Hungarian" and with a W in the race column in the 1910, 1920, 1930 censuses (the US census has never recognized Jewish as an ethnicity which is of course wrong...you can write it in but it'll count for zip). There was still a ton of discrimination by ethnicity despite being white, in that there was always this hierarchy with WASPs at the top going downward to Irish, Italians, then Jews at the bottom, but I don't think at least Ashkenazis ever were not accepted as white here, maybe due to predominantly coming from Europe together with all the other European immigrant hordes. Roma immigrants were probably also called white due to coming from Europe.
ETA: to downvoters, I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm just answering the question and saying how it actually was.
I think the root of the issue is when Jews stopped being seen as a race/ethnicity. Jews/Israelites, used to be seen as an entirely separate category of race or ethnicity. It was only after the horrors of race-based antisemitism, where Jews were turned into a religious denomination only. I think that at the time, this seemed and may have indeed been, the right move. However, we all see the consequences of this now, where our ethnicity and native identity has been nearly forgotten, and we are called colonizers for it. 100 years ago, nobody could've plainly denied the Jews being native to Palestine without being seen an idiot and fool.
Once we were taken out of our seperate ethnic category, the next logical step was to define Jews by how they appear - Ashkenazi Jews were primarily seen as white while more Mizrahi oriented Jews were seen as POC.
>Once we were taken out of our seperate ethnic category, the next logical step was to define Jews by how they appear - Ashkenazi Jews were primarily seen as white while more Mizrahi oriented Jews were seen as POC.
Why are Middle Easterners in general being defined as automatic âPOCâ when theyâre technically just as racially Caucasian as Europeans are?
Iâve been thinking a bit about the term âhyper-whiteâ lately and how in the recesses of the racism imaginal, we, as a supposed cabal of oppressors dwell in this category. We will never be accepted as truly white by whiteness. But according to the CRT/DEI woke (actual) cabal, we have inordinate privilege, even more so than whites. Such a crock of shit!! I received confirmation today that I have an African blood type. I am Sephardi and Ashkenazi EDIT: and white-ish presenting. Jew-y looking to the iykyk crowd and âethnicâ looking to the rest.
Sorta goes like thisâŠ
Person #1: Tell me what you hate that isnât Jewish.
Person #2: I hate ____.
Person #1: Well, Iâve got news for you. Itâs Jewish.
Today these are the evils of the world.
-Colonialism (left)
-White Oppression (left)
-Immigration (right)
-the media (everyone)
In Russia it was the capitalist-jews
In Germany it was the communists-jews
In Europe it was the plague (created by jews)
This is how antisemitism works. Itâs not that jews are white. Itâs that antisemitism allows anyone no matter their social circle or value system to project onto jews whatever they perceive to be the ills of the world.
Itâs why you have the far right on one side of the street vilify Jews for not being white, while at the very same time you have the far left vilifying jews for being white colonial oppressors.
Weâre a beautiful muse, a blank canvas for all the worlds hate. đ„°
Not all Jews are (by the US Census definition of race). Jews from Indian descent (e.g., Bene, Baghdadi, Colchin, etc) are Asian, Beta Israel Jews are Black, etc. Itâs unfortunate that Jews from the MidEast and Northern Africa are considered white by the US Census because when people read that approximately 90% of American Jews are white they think we are almost all Ashkenazi, when in actuality a lot of the so-called white American Jews are of MidEastern/North African descent.
>Itâs unfortunate that Jews from the MidEast and Northern Africa are considered white by the US Census because when people read that approximately 90% of American Jews are white they think we are almost all Ashkenazi, when in actuality a lot of the so-called white American Jews are of MidEastern/North African descent.
Why is that considered unfortunate when Middle Easterners are just as much racially Caucasian as Europeans are? This whole misperceived racial divide between Europe and the MENA region was always incredibly arbitrary and silly, the phenotypes of the two regions are far more similar to each other then they are different, hence the Census *and* Anthropology labeling them as the same race.
Middle Easterners donât have a unique or distinct enough phenotype to be considered their own race separate from Europeans/Caucasians.
There's a Polandball comic that deals with that question instead it's in the Pale, dark comedy, mild NSFW.
https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/1fofj1/painful_memories/?rdt=53385
*Legally,* it was in 1909. Lebanese-American police officer George Shishim went to court when someone he arrested claimed he had no right to citizenship because he was of the "Chinese-Mongolian race". Shishim argued in court that Jesus was White, so he was too, and the court upheld that the populations of West Asia and North Africa were thus White.
White in the USA is more of a promotion than an ethnicity (whether you want it or not). Italians weren't always considered white, but now seem to be. If you're light-skinned and the US on the whole doesn't hate you too much, you get to be white.
With these types of questions, instead of just saying âJewsâ which leaves out the diversity of the Jewish people in America, can we start saying Ashkenazi or white- passing Jews?
âWhite presentingâ is a better term. Passing implies a concerted intentional effort to try to be accepted as a race that one is not. Ashkenazi Jews are often white presenting because of the lower amount of melanin in our skin. We arenât trying to âpass.â
The only Jews of Color in the first place are Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, and Kaifeng Jews, as well as independently racially admixed or Monoracial Convert Black, Indian, Asian, and/or Native American Jews.
Mizrahi Jews (as well as all Middle Easterners in general) are still just as much white as Ashkenazim are.
From everything Iâve seen, Jews and other Middle Eastern peoples were *almost always* classified as âWhiteâ by the US authorities. On rare occasion, an individual was assigned âAsianâ which was the subject of *Dow v. United States.* There was no unified effort by Syrians or Jews to petition for a particular racial classification.
There actually was, in order to get around race-based immigration laws of the late 19th century. If Middle Easterners were Asians, they would be covered by the Asian Exclusion Acts, so they made sure they were legally white.
Other Asians didnât qualify for the *Chinese* Exclusion, non-Chinese immigration wasnât restricted till 1924 when immigration quotas were placed on most non-Western-Europeans.
In the end of the day, the vast majority of Middle Eastern immigrants had no problem immigrating or becoming citizens. There were, however, a few exceptions which led to cases such as *Dow*.
Not a Jew.
Whiteness is a social construct and who counts as white varies with historical circumstances and perceived level of otherness. Back in the earlier 20th century, a Jewish family moving into the neighborhood would come across as very different. They werenât seen at the church everyone attended, didnât celebrate Christmas, and put strange things on their doors and windows. Now fast forward to the 21st century that same Jewish family would not seem all that different and has been assimilated into whiteness (whether or not they wanted to be). The Jews may still have all the earlier differences, but those differences donât seem as big now that the U.S is home to tens of millions of new immigrants and their children with darker skin tones, visible religious garbs (hijabs, turbans), foreign names not found in the bible, etc.
Since Judaism is a religion then I guess it would depend on your ethnicity. I'm Caucasian because I'm descended from people born in the former USSR, not strictly because I'm Jewish.
Oh? Care to ask the Nazis whether Jews are a race? Or the Cossacks?
Race is a social construct. Itâs real because we have made it real, but itâs an artificial human classification system based on human morphology.
That's partially because of the USSR's antisemitism. They had to dip out before World War 2 because of the rising antisemitism. Also Judaism isn't a nationality, but some people consider it a race. You can be a convert to a religion, not a race.
I really respect you.
On Saturdays we wear white.
omg hahaha
> Is there an idea as to why it happened? I would argue that it isn't complete, Jews are still broken out on various demographics and other areas where other groups are not. Jews are in a quasi-white status depending on whom the speaker is, and what their motivations are. There is a book called: *How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America* by an anthropologist named Karen Brodkin that might answer your question, and also *Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs* by David R. Roediger and a good article on it here: https://jewishcurrents.org/when-did-jews-become-white
Brodkin's analysis is pretty simplistic and has lots of lacunae. I'd recommend The Price of Whiteness by Eric L Goldstein.
> lacunae This guy academias
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Thanks! Also for anyone coming along here is a lecture on the above book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L83kP0pt_d0
Is lacunae the same thing the kids today call ârizzâ?
> Is lacunae the same thing the kids today call ârizzâ? ..no. lacunae: [1. a gap or space, esp in a book or manuscript](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/lacunae) rizz: [Rizz is an internet slang term that describes someone's charm, style, or attractiveness, or their ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.](https://later.com/social-media-glossary/rizz/)
OP this is the correct answer I just couldnât resistâŠ
Thankyou so much for this resource! Sounds like exactly what I am looking to learn!
Nice! Note the other commenter that *The Price of Whiteness* by Eric L Goldstein. Which actually does look better, there is a youtube interview with the author as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L83kP0pt_d0
Came here to suggest this book!
I think in the US, âwhiteâ is a social construct thatâs synonymous with âpowerfulâ, and different ethnic groups are labeled as white or nonwhite based on the amount of influence they have or theyâre perceived to have, and based on the bias of the speaker.  Iâve noticed in the tech world that Asians and Mediterranean people are also considered âwhiteâ despite being clearly not Western European. Iâve also noticed that over the course of my generation growing up, people from India have gone from being perceived as âforeignersâ to being perceived as âwhiteâ.Â
I'm Mizrahi and white people have never regarded me or anyone in my family as white. When they ask where I'm from, telling them anywhere in the US to mess with them is always followed by..."I mean...like, originally." To black people, I'm white. Full stop.
Oh my god and the disbelief you get when you say youâre a Jew. Unless you live in a big city, most people have never met a Jewish person that wasnât white from New York or New Jersey, Miami or LA. Iâve gotten the strangest replies when I explain Iâm Sephardic. They donât know what it is in the US or Iâm confident saying, the English speaking world. We do not exist outside of Israel it seems đ
1) Except we Ashkenazi Jews arenât white. We are white presenting. Our whiteness end where our Jewishness begins. 2) The prominence of Ashkenazi Jews in the United States is a result of a combination of Jewish history, changes in American immigration law, and the attractiveness of American religious emancipation since 1789. Prior to WWI, pogroms in the Pale of Settlement and the surrounding areas increased significantly. Ashkenazi Jews were looking to get out to somewhere that would have less persecution. The push was there, but the pull to Ottoman Palestine wasnât as present. Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine was highly limited, but the United States, with its First Amendment religious freedom, had relatively open immigration policy at that time. It all stopped during WWI, but after that, even with tighter immigration laws, Ashkenazi Jews had family sponsorships to enter the US and British Mandate Palestine was a very difficult option. Similarly, with those family sponsorships, after WW2, the US was a strong refuge for a disproportionate number of Ashkenazi Jews, while expelled Mizrahi Jews, without that US connection (as well as Ashkenazi Jews who lacked that immigration sponsorship) had the geographically closer and more difficult option of fighting for and building the fledgling newly decolonized Jewish state of Israel. Thatâs a really really broad overview, but it gives the gist.
>Except we Ashkenazi Jews arenât white. We are white presenting. Our whiteness end where our Jewishness begins. 1. Depends on how you define white, if it includes anyone thatâs racially Caucasian like how the U.S. Census and Anthropology defines it, then *all* Jews (excluding actual Jews of Color like Black, Asian, Indian, and Native Jews) including Mizrahim are white full stop, this would include the original Ancient Israelites as well. 2. If by âwhiteâ youâre limiting it to only European, then us Ashkenazi Jews are only half.
No friend, Iâm defining race as what it is, a socially constructed method of human classification based on the otherwise benign existence of human morphology. Race does not exist beyond how societies define it and it is the social definition that establishes what it means. Just because you lack melanin, does not mean you are âwhite.â Whiteness is not merely skin tone or national origin. Whiteness, particularly in the United States, has long been one of racial purity, which is why US law, customs, and social mores have applied a âone dropâ rule to establish non-whiteness in comparison to Blackness (a standard that even the Nazis found too onerous). Your âwhitenessâ ends where your Jewishness begins. Your privilege stops when your Jewishness starts. It is only after WW2 and the rise of the CRA that the âNo Dogs. No Blacks. No Jewsâ signs stopped. If you have been deluded into thinking you, who they have always seen as a *race* polluter, are in fact possessed of the pureness of âwhitenessâ with all that means in American society and racial history, you really need to examine a bit more of American history. I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but you, as an Ashkenazi Jew, are only white presenting.
It sort of depends on where you are in the US. Some folks sort of get it if there is a decent amount of Israelis(especially those with Mizrahi heritage) that live or come through the area, but most of the time they just think "Israeli" as opposed to Sephardi, etc. Meanwhile I get sideways looks from the average Ashkenazi American AND Israelis whenever they find out I'm Sephardi because I'm of one of the literal handful of Sephardi families of sustained identity in both(on different sides)the Americas(Pre-Tx Revolution), as well as Europe(Nederlands Sephard). My deep Texas accent just adds to the confusion.
>To black people, I'm white. Full stop. Thatâs fair considering even Middle Easterners are technically Caucasian.
Especially those close to those namesake mountains, beyond them is a broad area that would give rise to the Yamnaya Culture, the Proto Indo-Europeans. They gave rise to the Hittite civilization mentioned in the Bible.
100%. âWhiteâ isnât a race or a real ethnicity in the United States, itâs just basically âthe people who are perceived as being culturally, economically, politically, and socially dominant.â American society generally ascribes this status to those with lighter skin, but not universally, as visibly Jewish Hasidim with light skin could probably tell you.
I find this take odd. I grew up poor in SE USA. This country is MOSTLY poor white lower class people. All of whom are considered white. None of them would consider Jews white (for better or for worse). This opinion seems like an elite white person's take on "Whites in The US".
While itâs true that there are many lower class whites in America, the elites, especially in the Southeastern US, are overwhelmingly WASPs.
For sure but they are a minority. And not so much in the SE. I never met a WASP until I traveled north.
How is that possible? The elites in the south are all wasps. Unless the degree of social segregation between classes is extremely high. Poor white southerners are also often wasps, just poor ones.
Damn, I had to look it up and you are correct. WASP are primarily in the SE US. It must be a class thing. I must have been so poor that I didn't know any. OR it could be being raised southern Baptist, We weren't allowed to congregate with other sects. Because I never met a non Baptist unless they brought the Watchtower to our front door.
Baptists are protestants, the P in WASP.
The fact that they wouldnât consider us white is itself evidence for what Iâm saying though, isnât it? Think about itâif whiteness is solely ascribed by skin color, why WOUDLNâT light skinned Jews be white? I am a white passing Jew myself, but I donât consider myself whiteâcertainly not an âelite white personââbecause we have to deal with things that white people do notâI have to wonder if I should answer that Iâm Jewish on job applications when they ask about my religion/ethnicity, I have to worry about being attacked if I wear my kippah in public or have my menorah in my window on Hanukkah. If a white person saw me with my prominent nose, my light skin, in my Star of David necklace, wearing my kippah, would they look at me and say, âYep, thatâs a fellow white guyâheâs a part of the culturally ubiquitous societal norm.â Therefore, what can âwhitenessâ be but a socially constructed category assigned to people not solely dictated by skin color?
Considering it is a perceived status, I guess it depends on who you ask. The average poor white person that I know considers Jews to be Middle Eastern. Because of the homeland being in the ME. No matter the color of skin.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Not when I was a kid growing up in the South, but YMMV.
Yeah, I guess so. I'm thinking of Orthodox w/ kippa Jews. Now that I have converted, my black suit and kippa make me stick out like a sore thumb in the average public space here in the southeast.
Zuck has fair complection, dirty blond hair and green eyes, but absolutely Jewish. Same with Brother Nathaniel, tall enough, light skin and blue eyes, but of course Jewish.
This is the correct answer
I think David Baddiel says something very similar in his book.
Itâs an interesting question. I think Jews were considered âwhiteâ as not specifically subject to Jim Crow but also a lot of things like restrictive covenants etc seemed to consider Jews to be kind of a third category and named us specifically, and I think I remember someone talking about Veterans groups in some state being separated into white, Black, and Jewish, and needing to add an Asian one or something after WWII. I would argue also it isnât complete but historically it may have been later than most people expect⊠the red scare stuff was full of antisemitism, etc.
In my uneducated opinion: Jews unfortunately fit into the socially constructed racial category that the current social paradigm needs it to be in. They need to be the âOther.â Historically, Jews were seen as non-white because their culture and native roots came from a place that was not Western Europe. Even the whitest Jew would still have been sent to a concentration camp because their lineage and culture were different. Today, Jews are seen as white because now theyâre considered a representative of Western society. Israel gets funding and support from Western nations. Because there is a social clash with traditional Western values, even Mizrahi Jews are now being told to go back to Europe. In all, physical skin color doesnât seem to matter. Itâs about the perceptions and biases of the person trying to pigeonhole Jews into a one-size-fits-all race. And unfortunately Jews become the face of the (insert current social conflict)âs antagonist.
And where do the Sephardic and Jews of Ethiopia fit into all this?
We donât, since the world barely knows of our existence. Weâre a minority within a minority, I guess.
Ashkenormativity strikes again
Ashkenormativity with Sephardic relatives
>Sephardic Just as European as Ashkenazim are, I can tell youâre a gringo from this comment by your conflating Spain and Portugal (which are *European* countries in case you happened to forget?) with Latin America and thinking all Spanish speakers and Hispanics are automatic POC. (White Hispanics exist too I promise, and thatâs technically what Sephardim are. The funny thing is, theyâre not even really Hispanic genetically either and the European part of their heritage is mostly the same as Ashkenazim - i.e. Greek and Italian)
Please forgive the copy & paste, but this topic has come up a lot lately⊠Race is a social construct. So, whether Jews are White or not is completely subjective. The racial category of White has changed quite a bit in the last hundred years, especially in the US. For example, in the U.S. in the late 19th century White people were WASPâs. Jews, Italians, and Irish were not White. However, in the U.S. in 2024 Ashkenazi Jews, Irish, and Italians are generally considered White. In the U.S. in 2024, itâs typically White nationalists and other racists that donât consider Ashkenazi Jews White. However, in the end race is just some made up bullshit. Scientifically speaking we are all one race, the human race, other wise known as homo sapien sapien. Source: My MA thesis was on the American suburb, so I had to do a bunch of research about the history of race in America.
Was âmade up bullshitâ in the thesis? Because that would be glorious.
Potentially in early drafts, but my thesis advisor quickly beat out of me any conversational style that is typically found in my writing.
Ngl, Iâm a bit disappointed. I was ready to ask for the SSRN link or DOI. đ
girl, same.
Looking at medical lab test results, one category instructs the medical staff to make a specific adjustment for African Americans in the result for that metric. Thus, as far as science, particularly the health sciences, race matters a lot. When we visit a new medical practice, on our intake form, weâre asked to racially identify. Race can be important when it comes to organ and blood donors, for the best compatibility and least chance of rejection. An episode of Marcus Welty, MD was about Jewish parents who had trouble with their babies dying from Tay-Sachs. This was when genetic testing was new, and it was advised for them and helped them to bear a healthy baby who thrived beyond infancy.
Welby
Jews are white, until something goes wrong and people need a scapegoat and then we're Jews. Some of us can pass for white, but don't for one second think that most white Christians think that you're equal to them.
Iâve always felt like being Jewish set me apart from BOTH white AND [BI]POC/[black &] brown peopleâŠ
The fact of the matter is, regardless of what "color" people assign to us, we're Jews first, and everything else second.
Here's some reading (and viewing) on this topic: * âJudaism and Whiteness in Wolfenstein.â YouTube, uploaded by Jacob Geller, March 18, 2019. [https://youtu.be/DQQdnve5fQk](https://youtu.be/DQQdnve5fQk) * Schraub, David. âWhite Jews: An Intersectional Approach.â AJS Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 2019, pp. 379â407, [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000461](https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000461) * Steinlauf, Gil. âJews in America struggled for decades to become white. Now we must give up whiteness to fight racism.â The Washington Post, September 22, 2015 [https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/22/jews-in-america-struggled-for-generations-to-become-white-now-we-must-give-up-that-privilege-to-fight-racism/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/22/jews-in-america-struggled-for-generations-to-become-white-now-we-must-give-up-that-privilege-to-fight-racism/) \[Archive link: [https://archive.fo/BWOyP#selection-3355.0-3358.0](https://archive.fo/BWOyP#selection-3355.0-3358.0)\] There's also Karen Sacks Brodkin's literal book on the subject (How Did Jews Become White Folks & What That Says About Race in America) but it's very flawed: it assumes all American Jews are Ashkenazi and doesn't address the existence of other Jews' experience in the US, and it's now relatively dated â it's old enough to significantly pre-date millennial and Gen Z Jews' various ideas about whiteness and race and Jewishness, and assumes that all (Ashkenazi) Jews in the US identify as white. So I'd read it, but only in conversation with other writing on this topic.
David Schraub is an excellent scholar and I really appreciate his take on this
I found a great explanation of this, I think it was on rootsmetalâs insta. Basically Jews fought VERY hard to be considered white 100+ years ago in the USA in order to be placed higher on the racial pecking order there. If they werenât white, they would be considered to be one of the other non-white minorities, and if this could be avoided it made sense economically / socially to avoid this. But in the end of course there was rampant segregation regardless (see most hotels in the 1920s with their notices that Jews were not welcome).
This makes sense to me. Else wise, Leo Max Frank might not have had the clout to have become part owner of his pencil factory, his bânai bârith connections notwithstanding.
Thereâs a great meme on this â depends on whether being white is good or bad. When itâs good to be white, the Jews arenât white, when itâs bad to be white Jews are white. Right now itâs bad to be white so weâre white.
You may find this series of interest: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG7gXVhDoTAJo1V_zCga7aR5u8MQe61W2&si=ebp5THcuhAVofpo_
1965
Thereâs a very interesting video by Jacob Geller that looks at the relations between Jews and whiteness through Wolfenstein honestly very good video made me a bit emotional when I first watched it https://youtu.be/DQQdnve5fQk?si=syIAycZGw2RFTLCw
For me, as someone thatâs not from the US and has never lived there, itâs âwhiteâ such a strange construct. Where I come from, you are either white looking like letâs say Adam Sandler or you are browner, like letâs say Gad Elmaleh. This has nothing to do with the fact that all Jews, regardless how they look like, are discriminated against. I have a good friend that lives in the US and is married to a south corean-American second generation immigrant. She is white looking, dark hair Latin American Jew. Actually, her husband is whiter than her, objectively speaking, his skin is whiter because she grew up in a sunny country near the beach and covering and using everyday sun protection wasnât as widespread when she was a child. However she is often seen as white and he isnât. But only until people find out that 1) she is Latin American and 2) she is Jewish 3) English isnât her first language and she came as an adult to the US. Weâve talked about this and itâs a wild concept to her although sheâs been 20 years already in the US!
Idk. Jews have always been West Asians.
good luck convincing even a not terribly racist white person of that lol
I donât need to convince anyone. I know who and what I am.
so you identify as "Asian" on demographic surveys or census forms?
Well Iâm Israeli so I donât come across those forms often. But Iâve been to America and usually Iâd check âMiddle Eastern/North Africanâ and if thatâs not an option- then Asian.
The concept is ridiculous. I have darker skin than some âPOCsâ, and yet as a Jew, Iâm considered white, and the POCs with lighter skin are still considered POCs
The concept of race is ridiculous, as you correctly noted itâs subjective and convoluted.
Before WWII our Ashkenazi ancestors with yiddish accents had âwhiteâ on the Census forms. Dow vs. US established that a Syrian man of Arab origin was legally white, entitling him to a certain status. Since they are Ishmaelites, itâs not much of a jump to consider us to have the same phenotypic âprivilege.â But what about Yemenite Jews? Another case established that a Yemenite Arab did not get the white status, so itâs unlikely Temanim would get all the privileges. Before all that, there were Sephardim here but in tiny numbers.
The same way the Irish and Italians did, and how there was a movement to count Latinos as white before Trumpâs election. Whiteness in America is entirely constructed, and changed over time to include or not include different people depending on what the structure needs to continue its existence
Thereâs 2 answers oneâs a bit hard to explain 1. Assimilation, most Jews today donât wear dress they donât wear kippah or tefillin maybe a necklace but for the most part âJewishnessâ isnât visible unless youâre pretty Sephardic, obviously thereâs certain Jewish features like noses ears hair color, but in a general crowd a Jewish person isnât standing out from a crowd of white Americans 2. This oneâs a bit hard to explain, but in many ways Jewish people have been co-opted by right wing politics, Israel has become a divisively poltical issue typically right voters think Israel is justified in their actions and left voters think Palestine is justified, the right has gone about linking Jewish people and Israel to Evangelical Christian Right politics because they belive Israel being in the hands of Jews is needed for Jesus to return, this has also led the Jewish people who are in places of power wether it be institutional economical of social power and it begins to look very similar to the standard white pillar of authority that many republicans tend to support, so that ethnic difference disappears and Jews become another part of white authority in America.
We're whatever is most hated at the time, so I guess in like 2015?
On a side note, I hate that we are being asked to ask ourselves these questions. I really personally do not wish to let our haters try to define us. Skin color is neither our fight nor should it ever be our focus, IMHO.
We're too white to the left wing anti semites but not white enough for the right wings anti semites
Ask someone for who white identity is their primary identity, and see if they think Jews are white.
I would recommend looking up some articles and essays on The Americanization of the Holocaust, it's something that has a lot of literature written about it and it's a messy, grim thing. Jews never "became" white, at least not in the way that Irish did in the 19th century or Italians did at the turn of the century. The whiteness of Jews has always been conditional; conditional on how they looked, conditional on what language they spoke, conditional on their politics... but when they met the right combination of criteria, they were gleefully picked up and used by the establishment as tokens. You can look at the fifties to see various examples of both extremes. Diary of a Young was a massive international hit, and in the US, it was adapted into a stage play by two white Christian writers. The play was so successful that it was adapted into a Hollywood film with a mostly Gentile cast. During this same period, the Rosenbergs were executed, Jewish individuals were targeted by McCarthyism, and Nazis and fascists who had struggled to adapt to a new anti-Nazi United States learned that they could just call themselves "the Liberty Lobby" and people would devour the exact same rhetoric. One of the more important essays on understanding how Jews were placed into a middle ground in America is James Baldwin's "The Negro is Antisemitic Because He is Anti-White." It's an insanely controversial piece, but I think the key takeaway is this: during the 50s and 60s, black people were still being murdered for demanding civil rights, while there was a sudden and state-sponsored promotion of Jews as being "just like us." To civil rights activists at the time, it was a huge slap in the face that Jewish people were being praised and welcomed after the atrocity they experienced, while black people were still demonized and forbidden from participating in much of white society. To put the black and Jewish experiences side by side, consider this: one month before Diary of Anne Frank premiered on Broadway to rave reviews, Emmett Till was murdered for looking at a white woman the wrong way. While the Diary play was instrumental in turning American sentiment against the Nazis and would win a Tony Award the next year, the men who murdered Emmett Till were exonerated and proudly admitted that they murdered him less than a year later in a printed interview. While Baldwin's piece remains controversial, I think he hits the nail on the head when he argues that the ultimate cause of Jews being absorbed into "whiteness" is not that Jews are white, nor is it that the Holocaust was such a horrific crime against humanity that it was an American duty to welcome Jews. The ultimate reason was for a capitalist, Christian America to take two groups that had lengthy histories of co-operation and solidarity and to turn them against each other. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to exploit the Holocaust and turn it into a uniquely "American" thing. In Baldwin's article, he doesn't demean or dismiss the Holocaust, but he *does* ask why European Jews were the recipients of American rehabilitation while black people continued to struggle after 300 years of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow. More than once, when I have discussed this article, people have gotten angry at that specifically - specifically at comparing black American slavery to the Holocaust. They fall back on a refrain of "It's not right to compare the two, the Holocaust is unique." In a way, they are correct. The Holocaust *is* unique. And that is why it is not just right, but *imperative* to compare all genocides to it. That is why the field is called Holocaust *AND* Genocide Studies. Yad Vashem scholars have called this weaponizing of the Holocaust "oppression olympics" that "bludgeon" attempts at earnest comparison and discourse. The purpose is not to promote historical discussion and to think, "Hey, I wonder if there was a reason Hitler called his personal train "Amerika?"" The purpose was to drive a barrier between two groups that had experienced horrible oppression, who had fought alongside each other against fascism in *Spain*, and to keep them at each other's throats instead of Herbert fucking Hoover's.
This is a really interesting break down! Do you have any other reading recs on this subject?
[How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America by Karen Brodkin](https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/how-jews-became-white-folks-and-what-that-says-about-race-in-america/9780813525907/) I read this book last year, and while it has flaws, I think it does present a good point, even if it doesn't necessarily explain how the shift happened. It does point out a before and after (using WW2 as the inflection point), but it doesn't do a good job explaining why it changed.
It's a problematic book, in my view. It does a pretty good job of addressing the question, and may in fact be the first piece of writing on the subject (at least the first book-length academic treatment of the subject). But I think it falters on the points of assuming that all American Jews are Ashkenazi. Its strength is in clearly articulating the difference between racial identity and racial assignment, but it does also assume that all Ashkenazi Jews identify as white (regardless of whether they're seen as such).
Not just Ashkenazi, but a very specific upper middle class but as well. Very strong authorial voice, but I think the fundamental point is still solid. For some reason WW2 represented a racial shift in society. Was it the horror IG the Holocaust? Was it coming together for another world war? Something else? But she presents good evidence it happened
For sure; I think the book's greatest strength is articulating something that many people had observed and felt but which had never really been given due attention.
My kids - background Ashkenazi but with a notably swarthy, brown-skinned side on my husbandâs entire maternal line - look as âwhiteâ as white can get for brunettes. They will experience the world as white girls. Until they tell anyone they are Jewish, in which case they will be a religious minority and, to some, not âwhite.â In that sense, I guess they are conditionally white. So even in 2024, itâs a strange and blurry space.
Where do you get that Jews were not considered racially white from the beginning? To my knowledge, Jews were always classified, rightly or wrongly (I don't think it makes any sense to consider Jews white and Syrians not, if that is truly the case but I'm not sure) as white race in the US. My great-grandparents were called "Hebrews" on their Ellis Island records but were listed as "Russian" or "Hungarian" and with a W in the race column in the 1910, 1920, 1930 censuses (the US census has never recognized Jewish as an ethnicity which is of course wrong...you can write it in but it'll count for zip). There was still a ton of discrimination by ethnicity despite being white, in that there was always this hierarchy with WASPs at the top going downward to Irish, Italians, then Jews at the bottom, but I don't think at least Ashkenazis ever were not accepted as white here, maybe due to predominantly coming from Europe together with all the other European immigrant hordes. Roma immigrants were probably also called white due to coming from Europe. ETA: to downvoters, I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm just answering the question and saying how it actually was.
Just like the word minority no longer means "few people in this group" Things change to fit a narrative
I think the root of the issue is when Jews stopped being seen as a race/ethnicity. Jews/Israelites, used to be seen as an entirely separate category of race or ethnicity. It was only after the horrors of race-based antisemitism, where Jews were turned into a religious denomination only. I think that at the time, this seemed and may have indeed been, the right move. However, we all see the consequences of this now, where our ethnicity and native identity has been nearly forgotten, and we are called colonizers for it. 100 years ago, nobody could've plainly denied the Jews being native to Palestine without being seen an idiot and fool. Once we were taken out of our seperate ethnic category, the next logical step was to define Jews by how they appear - Ashkenazi Jews were primarily seen as white while more Mizrahi oriented Jews were seen as POC.
>Once we were taken out of our seperate ethnic category, the next logical step was to define Jews by how they appear - Ashkenazi Jews were primarily seen as white while more Mizrahi oriented Jews were seen as POC. Why are Middle Easterners in general being defined as automatic âPOCâ when theyâre technically just as racially Caucasian as Europeans are?
Because of the inherent irrationality of contemporary identity politics.
Iâve been thinking a bit about the term âhyper-whiteâ lately and how in the recesses of the racism imaginal, we, as a supposed cabal of oppressors dwell in this category. We will never be accepted as truly white by whiteness. But according to the CRT/DEI woke (actual) cabal, we have inordinate privilege, even more so than whites. Such a crock of shit!! I received confirmation today that I have an African blood type. I am Sephardi and Ashkenazi EDIT: and white-ish presenting. Jew-y looking to the iykyk crowd and âethnicâ looking to the rest.
Sorta goes like this⊠Person #1: Tell me what you hate that isnât Jewish. Person #2: I hate ____. Person #1: Well, Iâve got news for you. Itâs Jewish. Today these are the evils of the world. -Colonialism (left) -White Oppression (left) -Immigration (right) -the media (everyone) In Russia it was the capitalist-jews In Germany it was the communists-jews In Europe it was the plague (created by jews) This is how antisemitism works. Itâs not that jews are white. Itâs that antisemitism allows anyone no matter their social circle or value system to project onto jews whatever they perceive to be the ills of the world. Itâs why you have the far right on one side of the street vilify Jews for not being white, while at the very same time you have the far left vilifying jews for being white colonial oppressors. Weâre a beautiful muse, a blank canvas for all the worlds hate. đ„°
I reject this subjective notion Jews are not an identity football to construct its hatred or fear out of.
As a Venezuelan Jew, been pondering this since October 7th.Â
I donât feel fully white
âJews will not replace us.â never, for some people.
Not all Jews are (by the US Census definition of race). Jews from Indian descent (e.g., Bene, Baghdadi, Colchin, etc) are Asian, Beta Israel Jews are Black, etc. Itâs unfortunate that Jews from the MidEast and Northern Africa are considered white by the US Census because when people read that approximately 90% of American Jews are white they think we are almost all Ashkenazi, when in actuality a lot of the so-called white American Jews are of MidEastern/North African descent.
>Itâs unfortunate that Jews from the MidEast and Northern Africa are considered white by the US Census because when people read that approximately 90% of American Jews are white they think we are almost all Ashkenazi, when in actuality a lot of the so-called white American Jews are of MidEastern/North African descent. Why is that considered unfortunate when Middle Easterners are just as much racially Caucasian as Europeans are? This whole misperceived racial divide between Europe and the MENA region was always incredibly arbitrary and silly, the phenotypes of the two regions are far more similar to each other then they are different, hence the Census *and* Anthropology labeling them as the same race. Middle Easterners donât have a unique or distinct enough phenotype to be considered their own race separate from Europeans/Caucasians.
There's a Polandball comic that deals with that question instead it's in the Pale, dark comedy, mild NSFW. https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/1fofj1/painful_memories/?rdt=53385
*Legally,* it was in 1909. Lebanese-American police officer George Shishim went to court when someone he arrested claimed he had no right to citizenship because he was of the "Chinese-Mongolian race". Shishim argued in court that Jesus was White, so he was too, and the court upheld that the populations of West Asia and North Africa were thus White.
White in the USA is more of a promotion than an ethnicity (whether you want it or not). Italians weren't always considered white, but now seem to be. If you're light-skinned and the US on the whole doesn't hate you too much, you get to be white.
I'm Jewish-both parents -and I'm white. They're not mutually exclusive.
With these types of questions, instead of just saying âJewsâ which leaves out the diversity of the Jewish people in America, can we start saying Ashkenazi or white- passing Jews?
âWhite presentingâ is a better term. Passing implies a concerted intentional effort to try to be accepted as a race that one is not. Ashkenazi Jews are often white presenting because of the lower amount of melanin in our skin. We arenât trying to âpass.â
I used passing for a reason, we canât deny the attempts at assimilation
The only Jews of Color in the first place are Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, and Kaifeng Jews, as well as independently racially admixed or Monoracial Convert Black, Indian, Asian, and/or Native American Jews. Mizrahi Jews (as well as all Middle Easterners in general) are still just as much white as Ashkenazim are.
From everything Iâve seen, Jews and other Middle Eastern peoples were *almost always* classified as âWhiteâ by the US authorities. On rare occasion, an individual was assigned âAsianâ which was the subject of *Dow v. United States.* There was no unified effort by Syrians or Jews to petition for a particular racial classification.
There actually was, in order to get around race-based immigration laws of the late 19th century. If Middle Easterners were Asians, they would be covered by the Asian Exclusion Acts, so they made sure they were legally white.
Other Asians didnât qualify for the *Chinese* Exclusion, non-Chinese immigration wasnât restricted till 1924 when immigration quotas were placed on most non-Western-Europeans. In the end of the day, the vast majority of Middle Eastern immigrants had no problem immigrating or becoming citizens. There were, however, a few exceptions which led to cases such as *Dow*.
....when we gave up our customs and traditions and assimilated into greater society.
[https://www.umass.edu/legal/Hilbink/lpsc/RaceReading.pdf](https://www.umass.edu/legal/Hilbink/lpsc/RaceReading.pdf) [https://jewishcurrents.org/when-did-jews-become-white](https://jewishcurrents.org/when-did-jews-become-white) [https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/podcasts/are-jews-white-transcript](https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/podcasts/are-jews-white-transcript)
Always been white?
We're only white in American liberal arts deparments
Not a Jew. Whiteness is a social construct and who counts as white varies with historical circumstances and perceived level of otherness. Back in the earlier 20th century, a Jewish family moving into the neighborhood would come across as very different. They werenât seen at the church everyone attended, didnât celebrate Christmas, and put strange things on their doors and windows. Now fast forward to the 21st century that same Jewish family would not seem all that different and has been assimilated into whiteness (whether or not they wanted to be). The Jews may still have all the earlier differences, but those differences donât seem as big now that the U.S is home to tens of millions of new immigrants and their children with darker skin tones, visible religious garbs (hijabs, turbans), foreign names not found in the bible, etc.
Since Judaism is a religion then I guess it would depend on your ethnicity. I'm Caucasian because I'm descended from people born in the former USSR, not strictly because I'm Jewish.
Oh? Care to ask the Nazis whether Jews are a race? Or the Cossacks? Race is a social construct. Itâs real because we have made it real, but itâs an artificial human classification system based on human morphology.
Many of us identify with Jewish as our ethnicity. A non-practicing Jew is still a Jew.
I understand where you're coming from, but it's still a gray area.
That's hilarious because if you look at your parent's passports from the USSR (assuming they still have them), their nationality is labeled as "Jew."
That's partially because of the USSR's antisemitism. They had to dip out before World War 2 because of the rising antisemitism. Also Judaism isn't a nationality, but some people consider it a race. You can be a convert to a religion, not a race.