• SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Most (European-descended) Jewish people are white IMO, it’s not exactly difficult to see it (both in regards to appearance, but moreso in regards to privilege).

    It’s a contextual whiteness (an arbitrary construct) as always, but we may as well be arguing if Irish, Russians, or Italians are “white” at that point as well, or even if the white Latin Americans or Boers (who were also brutally abused by the British), etc. are “white.” Go back far enough, and you’ll find Ben Franklin going on about how even the Germans and Nordics are “tawny” and only the English and Saxons are white…

    To argue further on it we’d need to define the limitations of what kind of whiteness we’re talking about IMO. “Phenotypical” whiteness (usually with an ethno-religious bent particularly to root out Muslims and indigenous culture) like what is predominantly, culturally ingrained across the settler-Anglosphere? “Whiteness” by political alignment and acceptment into the upper echelons of the imperialist in-group? (Even then that becomes messy as all hell, for instance we all know Klanmala, Barry, and Rishi aren’t white, even if Barry is half-white or half-European descent).

    There won’t be any satisfying answers ultimately. But I don’t think anyone can look at Blinken, Yellen, Nuland, Netanyahu, or the many other prominent European-descended Jewish people in the framework of empire today and say that they are not white in the here-and-now; as white as imaginable. Not to say whiteness is associated with guilt- because if it were then as with the other definitions it becomes messy as all hell- but the whiteness, and adjacency or acceptance into it (into empire and the system of white supremacy, perhaps?) certainly is a thing today.

    Probably the most satisfying/fitting thing IMO (other than the phenotypical definition, or geographic one) would be “adjacency to empire” but even that naturally falls apart real fast.

    • Jelamzer@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      I agree i never liked the talking point that other non anglo Europeans werent “white” which is a cursed horseshoe theory that have seen shared by leftists and actual White supremecists.