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> Another way of looking at it, perhaps, is that Chinese, Japanese, and Indians have become "white", at least within Silicon Valley, even though the latter actu
by 40acres 8y ago
> Another way of looking at it, perhaps, is that Chinese, Japanese, and Indians have become "white", at least within Silicon Valley, even though the latter actually have brown skin. But doesn't that dilute the meaning of "white" so much that it basically becomes meaningless, and that we should just call it classism rather than racism?
This is actually really interesting because in America the boundaries of who is "white" and who is not has constantly shifted from a social standpoint.
There was time that Italians, Jews and Irish were not considered white (as in Anglo-Saxon or Nordic white) but this obviously isn't the case today.
South East Asians will probably never be considered "white" socially because of skin tone and cultural differences, but I'd argue it might be more important to be considered "not-black" or "not-Hispanic" than anything in America.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> There was time that Italians, Jews and Irish were not considered white (as in Anglo-Saxon or Nordic white) but this obviously isn't the case today. No, people who care about whiteness still exclude Jews.
- gbear605 8y agoHow about the US Census? Jewish people generally answer “white” on it.
- smsm42 8y agoWell, it's either this or "Other". It's not like a lot of Jews identify as Black, American Indian, Hispanic or Pacific Islander. Technically, Israel is in Asia so they could choose Asian, but I think they understand that's not what is meant here.
- jessaustin 8y agoVery few American Jews could trace their lineage back to Israel. 70 CE was a long time ago.
- smsm42 8y agoBelieve me, I know. This was not a serious proposition, it was a joke. Unfortunately, I made a critical error by not writing a disclaimer before it "JOKE IS TO FOLLOW" and not adding a footer "THE TEXT ABOVE WAS A JOKE" after it. Oy vey.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoI'm not sure that peoples' answer to the race question on the census is 100% correlated with whether they will receive racism.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> How about the US Census? Jewish people generally answer “white” on it. So do most Hispanics, who are clearly outside of the sense of whiteness applicable in most common conversation contexts. To be fair, the census has a separate question to distinguish Hispanics, which allows their data to be used, on that point, in a way which accords with the common usage, where race and ethnicity are more of a blend cover than two orthogonal ones. And it didn't do that with Jewish identity. But these days it's not hard to find people who care intensely about white identity and see that they don't consider Jews part of the tribe.
- int_19h 8y agoPeople who explicitly care about whiteness (KKK, neo-Nazis etc) do. The "I'm not racist, but ..." majority - which is the real driver of systemic racism - doesn't. In fact, so much so that "Judeo-Christian values" became the standard way to describe the culture of that crowd, and it's a formulation that is specifically intended to include Jews.
- polyphonic01 8y agoThe idea that Hispanic people face massive discrimination in America is more a product of Leftist hysteria and identity politics radicals trying to find another victim group to champion than a clear understanding of reality.
- barry-cotter 8y ago> This is actually really interesting because in America the boundaries of who is "white" and who is not has constantly shifted from a social standpoint. This is very, very misleading. You know it’s very misleading, as shown by your next paragraph but plenty of people actually believe there was a time when Italians, Irish were not considered white. There wasn’t. There was a great deal of prejudice against non-Anglos, Nordics emphatically included but there was never legal discrimination against them authorised by legislation in any state or at a federal level. That’s not true for Black people or Asians, both East and South Asians. The entire shifting boundaries of whiteness literature is based on trying to muddy the difference between whether people were central or liminal members of a group with the question of whether they were members of the group at all.