I once met a girl here in Israel whose father was black and whose mother was Jewish. That is, her father was descended primarily from African slaves, dark-skinned, Christian and culturally a member of the black community in America, and her mother was light-skinned, descended from Ashkenazi Jews in eastern Europe and not culturally Jewish in any identifiable way. We got to talking about a television program we both enjoyed, Prison Break. It turned out that we liked it for different reasons. Hers was one of the leading actors, a man named Wentworth Miller, whom she appreciated even more because he was black. Take a look at these pictures of him and decide for yourself: is he black?
I’d watched every episode of the show up to that point and this guy seemed as white as they come. I asked this girl by what standard she considered him black. She replied that blackness is not just about how dark one’s skin color is. In the case of Wentworth Miller, he had some African ancestry and considered himself partially black, so therefore he was black, QED.
For kicks, I later steered the conversation toward “whiteness” and how I do not consider myself to be white. She was astounded. My skin is light! I look, well, like a white person! In response, I reminded her of what she’d said before about blackness. Whiteness, I retorted, is not just about how light one’s skin color is. In my case, I have only Jewish ancestry to my knowledge, and all my relatives who are older than I am experienced discrimination for not being white; plus I have never considered myself to be white, choosing to identify rather as a Jew who lives among Jews in my own country. Therefore I am not white. QED.
My poor interlocutor couldn’t wrap her head around what I was trying to tell her, and for all intents and purposes, our conversation was over (I think she was afraid that there were racist undertones in my explanation, but there weren’t, I swear). She had grown up in a suburb of New York and had been told her entire life that Jews are white. Her family experience was of having a white mother and a black father, not a Jewish mother and a black father. To some extent this is her mother’s fault and her maternal grandparents’, but society is also to blame. When she went out into the world, she was led to believe that there is some distinct black culture but no such white equivalent. In the absence of white culture, whiteness could not have any cultural component and was left entirely to determination by skin color.
I didn’t care much for this girl and consequently I put the whole experience out of my memory until I recently read Half Sigma’s discussion about some interesting issues: Why are white nationalists anti-Israel? and Jews are white. I’m attracted to these posts for several reasons. First, they are rich sources for Jewish identity construction, from which we can learn a lot about Jewishness and what it means to be a Jew. Second, they seek to address some truly confounding issues about Zionism and Israel.
Thus white nationalists seem to be actively working against their goals by being pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.
My theory about why they do so is that Zionism has failed.
The point of Israel was to accept certain points that anti-semites made about the inaccessibility to Jews of true assimilation into European society. In a sense, Zionism took anti-semitism and turned it on its head. If enlightenment and emancipation wouldn’t make the Jews normal, the Jews could be normalized by redefining themselves as a national group and taking for themselves what other national groups had. What this meant, fundamentally, was that the Jewish exile needed to end. Israel couldn’t be created as a national home for the Jewish people while the United States, Birobidzhan and other places were simultaneously being hailed as national homes for the Jewish people.
I have communicated with a few “white nationalists” online with the idea of explaining Israel and Zionism to them and getting their informed reactions. What they’ve most commonly expressed to me is that people should live among their “race brothers,” and that Israel is as good a home for the Jews as any other country; they would endorse Zionism and Israel if all the Jews would move there and consider it their home. This hasn’t happened, notwithstanding my argument that a majority of the Jews already live in Israel and have lived here for some time; consequently, there’s nothing about Israel that should attract their support. Instead, being inclined to believe everything bad they hear about Jews, they lazily hate Israel.
Why don’t they just intermarry with their Arab neighbors. Seems like it’s a great idea for everyone except else, don’t know why they should be exempt.
Posted by: Kimberlite | June 12, 2009 at 01:59 PM
It probably is an acceptable solution for some majority/minority problems somewhere for the minority just to intermarry with the majority and disappear, but in this case, it wouldn’t work. The main reasons are that not all of us would agree to do it, so there would still be some of us here, still a distinct and unique Jewish identity and society; plus, the Jewish problem would still exist abroad and Israel would still be an attractive destination for Jews to come and establish their own country.
Judaism is a religion and not a race.
I’m not aware of any reason to believe that this statement is stronger than its opposite. One could make equally spurious arguments that Jewishness is racial/ethnic, religious, cultural or national, to the exclusion of all others, but that would get one nowhere. At the end of all the suspicious evidence, one would still be left with the understanding that the Jews are sui generis - not quite exactly a race, ethnicity, religion, culture or nation like any other group. The only thing it proves when someone says, “Judaism is a religion and not a race,” is what he wants Judaism to be.
Jews can be of any race, even black
It’s strange to see this argument from a guy who’s trying to convince us that Jews are white, but sure, of course they can. The blackest of black Africans can convert to Judaism and be as Jewish as the next guy. But when he’s done that, he’ll have left his old identity behind and become a Jew in every sense (except genetic). He will no longer be Congolese or Sudanese, he’ll be Jewish. Actualizing his Israeli citizenship will be only a matter of bureaucracy. He will be one of us. But this addresses one individual’s case and doesn’t really explain anything about the group. When you look at populations and communities, it appears time and again that Jews share something more in common than beliefs. What is that thing?
[An] overwhelming majority of Jews in the United States are Ashkenazi Jews, which just means Jews from Europe (excluding Spain), and they are white just like other Europeans. If you think that Spaniards are white, then you would also conclude that Sephardic Jews from Spain are white.
It does not follow at all that Jews whose ancestors lived in Spain a thousand years ago are white because Spanish people are white. The community of Jews who lived in Spain then was not descended genetically from the Visigoths, from the Romans or from any other group of people that controlled the Iberian peninsula. There is good evidence to suggest that their intermarriage with these other groups was minimal (but those who stayed after the expulsion did intermarry extensively and their descendants consequently are not Jews of any kind). To say that Spaniards are white is simply a matter of extending one’s concept of whiteness southward from northern Europe toward the Mediterranean. But to say that the descendants of Spanish Jews are white is to define whiteness so broadly that it loses all meaning.
Only white nationalists and Stormfront types insist that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t white, and that’s because they hate Jews but love whites, so they need some sort of rationalization for the inconsistency.
Add me to the white nationalists and Stormfront types who don’t think Ashkenazim are white. And go ahead and add both of my grandfathers. Both of them wanted to study architecture in college, but were not allowed to do so because architecture was considered a profession for white people, and they were Jewish (with light skin, of course), not white. They went on to some success in their typically Jewish professions, accounting and pharmacy.
A year ago, Steve Sailer posted a 3-D chart showing how Ashkenazi Jews cluster genetically when compared to other ethnicities, and it’s clear from the chart that Jews are similar to Russians and Western Europeans, and quite dissimilar from Middle Eastern ethnicities such as Druze, Samaritans, and Yemenites.
With all respect to Steve Sailer and his graph, I don’t understand the science and can’t argue with it, but I can cite other studies that tend to disagree. One is the study that observes a certain “Cohen” modal haplotype that shows male populations of Jewish cohanim are more genetically close to each other than to their host populations, no matter what countries they may be from.
Actually, with respect to the graph above, I do think I have a bone to pick with it. The middle eastern populations it gives are Yemenites, Druze and Samaritans. Both Druze and Samaritans are widely believed to have originated elsewhere and not to be representative genetically of the areas in which they live now. Yemenites, of course, are southern Arabians and can not be expected to be genetically similar to Jews because the Jewish people originated in the Levant, which is separated from southern Arabia by a vast and impenetrable desert. In short, this graph is ridiculous. How about a graph comparing, say, Jews from Russia and Jews from Morocco to Russians from Russia and to Moroccans from Morocco? My hunch is that the graph will show three clusters: Jews from Russia and Morocco in one cluster, Russians in another cluster, and Moroccans in a third cluster. Of course, as I said, I’m no geneticist, so what do I really know?
You shouldn’t even need the chart to figure out that Jews are white, because common sense should inform you that you can’t tell the difference between Jews and other Europeans. It’s true that some Jews have a Jewish look about them, but Italians have an Italian look about them, Irish have an Irish look about them, and Poles have a Polish look about them, but those European ethnicities are rarely accused of not being white.
Ok, let’s say that Jews have a Jewish look, Italians have an Italian look, Nigerians have a Nigerian look, Koreans have a Korean look and Sri Lankans have a Sri Lankan look. “Common sense” tells us that we can tell the difference between an Italian, a Nigerian, a Korean and a Sri Lankan, so why not also a Jew? Mind you, I’m not pretending that I can tell a light-skinned Jew from a light-skinned Italian or Polack. But I bet almost any Italian can tell the difference between an Italian and an Italian Jew, almost any Polack can tell the difference between a Polack and a Polish Jew, and so on. Actually, this phenomenon has been described over and over again, not only by Jews but also by gentiles who have tried to address the issue in depth. Matti Golan is one person who mentions it, and Jean-Paul Sartre is another. Both explain that there are as many Jewish “types” as there are places where Jews live, and that one person’s idea of a Jewish type may not have any resemblance to another person’s idea of the same, but that they are both Jewish types, and both will be able to identify with ease Jews from their own communities. People who have lived their entire lives in America might not realize this, because American Jews have made such a tremendous effort not only to assimilate into American society, but also to assimilate each other.
No one is better at identifying other Jews than Jews themselves, and Jews usually can’t tell whether or not someone looks Jewish.
Obviously this is a matter of opinion and personal experience, but in my opinion and personal experience, most Jews have an idea in their heads of what a Jew looks like, and they assume that people who look like that are Jewish. At the same time, most Jews have also known enough Jews who didn’t fit that appearance to realize on some conscious level that their assumptions aren’t good enough to pick a Jew out of a crowd. But again, dealing with an individual isn’t the issue and doesn’t address it. I bet if you were to take a random group of 100 American Jews and another random group of 100 American gentiles, it would be so easy to tell them apart that success would approach 100%. Once again, the issue with genetics and with personal appearance isn’t so useful when applied to an individual, and it only becomes useful when dealing with large groups.
I remember an organization in the Phoenix area which threw parties for Jewish singles, and they would always ask at the door, “are you Jewish?” The reason they had to ask the question is because they can’t tell by looking. It’s hard to imagine a black organization asking at the door, “are you black?”
This proves a couple things:
- First, and least germane, Chabad is less concerned about tact than they are about mekareving people to believe in their false messiah. If a black organization was throwing parties for black people, and a light-skinned person showed up to boogie down, the black people would just go talk to that white-looking person. They’d ask him about his friends, what kind of music he likes, what neighborhood he grew up in - anything like that. If the guy then proceeded to talk about growing up in Harlem and enjoying fried chicken every Sunday after attending his local AME church, they’d realize that he is “black,” but just happens to have had enough mixed ancestry to confuse other people. This works because most black people have manners. Chabad doesn’t feel like they have time for manners, so they don’t go about this circuitous route.
- Second, Jewishness is not like blackness for some reason or group of reasons. How is that? We already know it - blackness is based on genes, culture and skin tone (I separate genes and skin tone to account for albinos of African ancestry who are black in every way except their white skin). Jewishness is based in part on genes, culture, nationhood, religion, etc, etc, but not skin tone. You can’t convert from black to Jewish; the two aren’t analogous except in the warped American experience of minority group politics - the very same politics that makes Jews white when it suits white people.
- Third, physical stereotypes or archetypes can not be usefully applied to individuals. I’m sure the Chabad guys who stood at the door of that party in Arizona and the ones in Washington Square and everywhere else all had a good idea of what a Jew looked like. But I’m also sure they’d have hated to miss a Jew whose parents were converts or who just happened to come out looking particularly Nordic. That’s because their mission is to reach all Jews. They are willing also to reach some gentiles, maybe even a lot of gentiles, in order to reach Jews. Hence the parties.
I don’t know of any Ashkenazi Jews who consider themselves anything other than white.
That’s not surprising, since whiteness is known to confer certain advantages in American society. But all it reflects is that, a generation or two ago, the barriers to whiteness were lowered considerably and Jews, who’d wanted for so long to be white, finally found it convenient to identify themselves that way. If you once suffered discrimination for not being white, and suddenly realized that the rules had changed and you could be considered white without having to “pass” or misrepresent yourself, wouldn’t you just go along and call yourself white?
There are many Jews who, when asked their ethnicity, say that they’re Jewish, but I don’t say that. I tell people I’m half Russian and half Polish. I would encourage more Jews to identify themselves that way.
It’s fine to say that, but I think it’s deceptive and that authentic Russians and Polacks would disagree. They might even find it offensive. Certainly most Russians do not consider the Jews among them to be Russian. Otherwise, they could have been “Russian” on their Soviet identity cards.
[I]f you have one or more great-grandparents born in Poland, then you have a legitimate claim to Polish ancestry.
Not true at all. Polishness is something that exists independently of physical presence in Poland. Not totally independently, but somewhat. If a Chinese man and woman move to Poland and have a child, who then moves to China, that child’s great-grandchildren are totally Chinese and not Polish at all. Of course, citizenship is a different issue altogether - the Polish state can offer citizenship to anyone it wants and is assumed to do so for its own reasons, but that doesn’t change what a person is or isn’t. If Germans live in an area that is considered Germany one year and Poland the next, but they continue speaking German and going to a Lutheran church, being German in every way except that “Poland” has encroached upon them, can we not consider them far more German in every meaningful way than Polish?
Ok, I’m done writing about this and have plenty of other things to complain about, but I’d be interested to know what other people think.
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