Because we keep running into this Are Ashkenazi Jews White? thing all the time - the answer is “Here’s why you reasonably think they are, and here’s why Ashkenazi Jews should be able to identify as conditionally white and/or white passing” (though personally I stay away from calling Ashkis “POC” because that tends to imply a racial struggle that our generation has dealt with much less). I’ve had some wine so this might be a little meandering. Bear with me. Ashki Jews in the USA experience two kinds of privilege, at the whims of their surrounding whites, which is why they are often seen as just white. 1 - white passing privilege - Ashkenazi Jews have semitic features and european features, and some look more european. Sometimes that’s from intermarriage, but probably it’s from having a family exposed to generations of pogrom rape, and in both cases it is not their ashkenazi genes that makes them look like your average mayonnaise goy 2 - model minority privilege - for the less social justice literate, this is the process of white people allowing you to participate in systems that perpetuate white dominance in exchange for using you as a rhetorical tool to divide people of minorities in this country. for example “white supremacy doesn’t have to do with why you’re having a hard time, indian americans have the highest mean income in the country! do we have indian supremacy???” - yes, but indian americans, jews, east asian americans, and other groups used as model minorities still experience a lot of racial oppression that doesn’t cleanly fit into racially biased systems that were created in America (for the most part) to hamstring the upward mobility of black people. This is also called the “model minority MYTH” for this reason - it doesn’t immunize this group from racial oppression, it simply means white people are using their accidental success to oppress other people of color. Because Ashki Jews are, to my knowledge, the only ethnic minority group that is BOTH white passing AND a “model minority”, there is understandably a persistent conceit that this is all it takes to have “Whiteness.” Moreover getting arguably the “best deal” of all oppressed groups (which is something we should be aware of and make space for those less privileged) doesn’t make us less of an oppressed group, nor is oppression olympics productive anyway. Here are some things that make the case for the unique Jewish nonwhiteness: - Ashkis experience a *massively* disproportionate amount of hate crime, even in the USA. Go to a place that *doesn’t* have HALF the world’s Jewish population? That number goes up, not down. In France, Ashkis are NOT white - they experience hate crimes higher than //any group,// including any group commonly accepted in the USA as POC. One of the reasons Jews do not have whiteness is that our whiteness does not travel - the USA may have a lot of Jews but in places with fewer Jews, our features stop blending in with “average white looks” particularly well, or even at *all.* - Examine the difference between white passing and goy passing. Maybe you’ve not been - as are many jews - mistaken for latinx or middle eastern… but are you identifiable to strangers as a jew? If you are, sorry, but you’re not “blending into whiteness.” - Look at antisemitism; is it about what religion we practice, or about an accusation of genetic guilt and filth? It’s racial, nobody is asking you if you’re religious before calling you a kike or throwing spare change at you. - Look at the way we treat ashkenazi jewish features; I’m sure many of us have heard the line, “Are you Jewish? No offense.” The depiction of “Jewish features” (read: ashkenazi features) as ugly and sexually unappealing is ubiquitous. - Look at history. Our oppression in the is NOT comparable to that of the Irish or Italians, as it is sometimes compared. The Irish/Italians do not experience the kind of discrimination we do - even today. It was commonly accepted that many apartment buildings, country clubs, suburban communities - all places where there can be effective gatekeepers to whiteness - could and would reject Jews by virtue of being Jewish, even as recently as the 1990s. Moreover the Irish and Italians did not experience a systematic industrialized genocide (and RECENTLY) - though the British did try to starve the Irish out of Ireland, they sure didn’t try to collect all of them in the same place and wipe them off the Earth. - Also, we vote differently from the white voter demographic. This is important, that we do not as a group cosign and vote for the political oppression that white people vote for (though of course some individuals do) - Another element of whiteness that doesn’t apply to ashkis (addressed this a little bit earlier); being white is a privilege that travels. An Irish American person will look white in New York City and will look white in Fargo. If I can travel and stop being identified by strangers as a white person - and thus lose what white passing privilege I would otherwise have - I am not white, I simply have conditional access to whiteness in places where there are a lot of secular Jews. - The final element of whiteness that doesn’t apply to ashkis; being white is hereditary. If it’s not hereditary, you’re /passing/ for white. But if two Ashki people have a kid and their kid looks extra semitic, they’re not going to experience the same white passing life, nor will they experience whiteness. And, last thought, as an ethnic minority that experiences significant racism, has been the victim of millennia of ethnic cleansing from white europeans, Ashkenazi Jews should NOT be expected to identify as their single greatest historical abuser. Ashkenazi Jews only exist because Europeans scattered them from Israel in the first place, and raped and abused them for centuries, kicking them out of dozens of countries and more than once trying to murder them all. Thrusting whiteness upon Ashkenazi Jews who suffer more at the hands of whiteness than from anything else is a hideous thing to do. Ashkenazi Jews have tremendous privilege *for an oppressed ethnic minority* but are still *an oppressed ethnic minority* and ought to have the freedom to self-identify proudly as people who are marginalized to seek empowerment in the face of those who would marginalize them. Or, if they want, identify as white. But they deserve that consideration. /end of wordvomit
