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As a Jewish person I feel weird seeing "whites" being broken into Jewish and non-Jewish. What about other religions? Why include religion at all? In particul

by habosa 7y ago

As a Jewish person I feel weird seeing "whites" being broken into Jewish and non-Jewish. What about other religions? Why include religion at all? In particular with respect to Harvard and Boston I'd think Catholicism might deserve a mention if we're going to bring religion into this. In the end I think religious diversity is important but it doesn't belong in the same conversation. You can choose your religion and also turn it on/off at different phases of your life. You also can't see religion from the outside (with some exceptions for example a Sikh turban). That's not true for race.

charliesharding 7y ago
I think it's because Jews are also an ethnic group
- deogeo 7y ago
  That is correct, at least in regards to how the statistics were gathered: "To ensure that we did not overlook religiously unengaged Jews, we asked students for their religion and whether they considered themselves Jewish aside from religion; then, we asked about their parents’ religious identities. Students who considered themselves Jewish in any way were counted in our estimates." -- https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduates/ https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduat... "Jewishness in the United States is considered an ethnic identity as well as a religious one." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#Religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#Religion
Kenji 7y ago
Judaism is a religion as well as a race. Many Jews have characteristic traits like facial features that clearly show a shared ancestry. This is not the case with e.g. Christianity, where Christian races are all over the place. This is why Judaism is special in those regards.
strikelaserclaw 7y ago
Aren't Jews a race and a religion? Plenty of non religious Jews out there.
- conradfr 7y ago
  What is a race exactly for humans?
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    A race is a "folk science" version of an ethnicity (it's defined culturally instead of scientifically). An ethnicity is a genetically similar group of people that often come from the same geographic origin.
    - azernik 7y ago
      Ethnicity has nothing to do with genetics. Dictionary definition says "a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition"; Wikipedia has this starting paragraph: "An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry or on similarities such as common language or dialect, history, society, culture or nation. Ethnicity is often used synonymously with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is separate from but related to the concept of races."
      - whatshisface 7y ago
        >usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy From Wikipedia. You're right that I didn't list every factor.
        azernik 7y ago
        "Presumed" is the key point. e.g. Ethiopian Jews have no genetic relationship with other Israeli Jewish subgroups, people in Eastern Germany have just as much in common genetically with Poles as with Western Germans, etc. And when these things are brought up, many ethnic nationalists will shrug their shoulders and say "so what".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cheeseomlit 7y ago
'White' is commonly thought of as a euphemism for European, they are surely referring to the Jewish race and not Judaism as a religion.
StevePerkins 7y ago
Oh come now. Judaism as an identity class has a lot more to it than mere religious affiliation. I have to suspect that if the representation were 0.5x, rather than 5x, then its consideration would strike you as more natural.
- notyourday 7y ago
  I mean grouping Jews together based on a religious affiliation is just weird -- Reform would look at you really funny if you start talking to them about how Hasids and Orthodox view the world. It is as if Christianity was compressed into Amish, Anabaptists and Catholics and someone said "they are the same people"
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dannypgh 7y ago
    It is ultimately a response to the fact that Jews were treated as the same people by policies designed to exclude them. There were no such policies for various Christian groups. Practically for much of this history in this part of the world, "Jewish" has been used interchangeably with Ashkenazi. Jewish is not an ethnicity, but Ashkenazi is, and most of the Jewish people at a place like Harvard (or applied-but-denied) have been Ashkenazi. Note this paragraph is descriptive, not normative: this conflating of Jewish and Ashkenazi is a way by which other Jews (many of which face even more racial discrimination) get erased from discourse.
    - azernik 7y ago
      > Jewish is not an ethnicity, but Ashkenazi is This is, to put it mildly, an opinion rather than an established fact. Ethnicity is a social construct, and many Jewish societies do construct an ethnicity that crosses the intra-Jewish Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Persian/etc. lines. The biggest example of this is of course Israel, but you also see this in other mixed-background Jewish communities like e.g. Los Angeles or France, where a single umbrella Jewish ethnic identity is overlaid on top of those more specific ones.
cobweb1 7y ago
I was under the impression that Jews commonly don't think of themselves as being white whereas the rest of the 'white' groups did. Maybe I'm wrong? Jewishness is a more closely knit identity which Jews are lucky enough to have, whereas even whiteness is an ever expanding identity leaving many white people with nothing but 'American'.
- Edmond 7y ago
  It is the price that "white" identity demands. It is a subtractive identity, ie it abhors identity complication. You basically have to strip every complicating element of your true identity safe for the absolutely benign forms (ie "Kiss me, I am Irish" tea shirts). If you pay attention at least in American you can observe intriguing examples of this tension with white identity playing out. For instance being LGBTQ and white presents a problem for many. In fact there are examples now of white gay men who claim to hate "identity politics", what they really hate is that LGBTQ identity jeopardizes their "white" identity and they recognize this, so it is easy to pretend there are no other "blemishes" to their "white" identity....It is a fascinating phenomenon if you pay close attention :)
  - gwright 7y ago
    > In fact there are examples now of white gay men who claim to hate "identity politics", what they really hate is that LGBTQ identity jeopardizes their "white" identity and they recognize this Speaking for myself, mmm.....no.
    - Edmond 7y ago
      Good for you:) Unfortunately not so for these guys: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/magazine/gay-conservative-trump-era.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/magazine/gay-conservative...
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  > I was under the impression that Jews commonly don't think of themselves as being white whereas the rest of the 'white' groups did. In the Anglosphere, Jews have pretty much always been considered "white". For example, both the Confederacy and Apartheid South Africa, two regimes obsessed with racial classification, never even considered that Jews might not be white. The conception of Jews as a separate race, has historically been an Eastern European idea. Even in 1930s Germany, the Nazi party's base of popularity was always firmly rooted in the most Eastern federal regions.
throwaway_law 7y ago
>What about other religions? Why include religion at all? The Supreme Court has ruled that in fact Jewish people are a race...at least for purposes of Civil Rights/anti-discrimination laws.
ctroein89 7y ago
The distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish whites has been contextually important when discussing the history of discrimination in college admissions. The original move towards subjective ranking of applicants was in part a way to limit the number of Jewish applicants: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-discriminating-against-jews-2014-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-d...
- narrator 7y ago
  There's lots of sneaky ways they tried to limit Jewish access to higher eduction in Russia. Jewish Problems, for example: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
notyourday 7y ago
That's because Americans fixate on Ashkenazi.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Steven_Vellon 7y ago
  The US Jewish population is 90-95% Ashkenazim. It's unfortunate that Americans sometimes forget about the minority of Sephardim and Mizrahim, but for the most part the assumption that Jewish American == Ashkenazi holds true.
avip 7y ago
How about Christians, Jews, or... miscellaneous
slg 7y ago
A lot of the responses here are talking about ethnicity or Jewish identity, but I think when it comes down to it, Jews are considered white mainly when other white people want to consider them as such. I would bet that your average Ashkenazi Jew (it is worth noting there are multiple different Jewish ethnic groups) has more genetic commonality with an average person of Ukrainian descent than that Ukrainian person has with someone of Irish descent. So why are the Ukrainian and Irish person both white while the Jewish person isn't? And also let's point out that there is no distinction for any other group of Middle Eastern people. They instead have to choose between being Asian, African, or European.
- xenihn 7y ago
  Arabs, Armenians, North Africans, and Persians are all considered white in the US.
  - slg 7y ago
    According to who? If you're referring to the census designations, Jews are considered white too which just goes to further underlines my point.
    - xenihn 7y ago
      The government and thus US law.
      - slg 7y ago
        Again, this further underlines how strange it is the Jews are separated out above when they are considered white according to things like the census. The numbers from the top comment would look a lot less scary to the average white person if Jews were lumped into that group.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    Not according to many people on the Left. Congresswoman Tlaib, for example, identifies herself as a "Woman of Color" (https://thehill.com/homenews/house/429550-tlaib-people-hear-you-differently-when-youre-a-woman-of-color-and-a-first-in https://thehill.com/homenews/house/429550-tlaib-people-hear-...). My maternal grandparents were born in Gaza City, and Syria respectively. Grandmother was expelled Gaza in 1929, and the Syrian grandfather was expelled from Syria in 1927. Both families had been there for many generations, if not since Temple times. When I'm in the United States, even though I am very dark, I am never considered a "Person of Color" solely because of my religion. Other people from the same places _are_ "Persons of Color" if their religion differs. I'm darker than Ms. Tlaib if you want to get your colorimiters out. It's 12:54 AM in Tel Aviv now, where I am. (I spend about half my time here and half in Silicon Valley). However in the United States it's still Rosh Hashanah. I think it's a little unfair to have a discussion about Jews and affirmative action in the United States at a time when observant Jews will not be on-line. Shanah Tovah.
romwell 7y ago
As an atheist Jewish person, I don't agree with your definition of "Jewish". Neither did the Nazis, btw.
- shard972 7y ago
  Oh wow, a blatant character assassination for no reason whatsoever.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
chongli 7y ago
As others have said, it’s not about religion it’s about ethnicity. If you really wanted to skew things, look at Ashkenazi Jews versus everyone else. You’ll find the former group extremely over-represented among Nobel laureates, Fields medalists, Turing award winners, and world chess champions. In light of all these achievements, I think it makes sense to distinguish Jews from non-Jewish whites at Harvard, where the achievements are paralleled there as well.
tomp 7y ago
Depending on context, Jewish can be either ethnicity or religion (or both). I believe in this context, ethnicity is more important (and it’s also a proxy for higher IQ of Askenazi Jews).
gimmeThaBeet 7y ago
I apologize if this sounds blunt, it's not imprudent to see more sinister reasons given history, but my thought would be you're seeing them break out Jewish because from the religion as cultural group perspective, the cultural import of education is anomalous. I genuinely am not trying to break out the praeteritio, and say I'm not calling it a 'positive' stereotype, but at a certain level you can't have such a cultural focus on education, and then be gobsmacked when it has statistical significance in things like school admissions. Like, if I told you that Utah had the lowest per capita alcohol consumption in the US, it's not liable to blow anyone's mind. Heck, one of the reasons Harvard came up with its holistic admissions process in the first place was targeted at Jewish kids applying. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/19/admissions-lawsuit-discrimination/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/19/admissions-laws... Also just a lazy google, I'd hazard to guess you're right about catholic representation being higher than expected. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09/09/there-are-more-atheists-and-agnostics-entering-harvard-than-protestants-and-catholics/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09...
novalis78 7y ago
Because when it comes to academics they (in particular Ashkenazi) have an advantage. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence) - so it does not have directly to do with religion, it's just that their persecution in the middle ages (because of their religion) seems to have lead to a slightly higher capability with regard to abstract thinking (the drawback here being a higher vulnerability to hereditary diseases).
habosa 7y ago
Well this is the most replies I have ever gotten on HN. I strongly regret discussion my feelings on my own religion on here. If people don't think that breaking "whites" down into Jewish/Non-Jewish and nothing else is strange then I don't think we can discuss this topic rationally.

by habosa 7y ago

charliesharding 7y ago

I think it's because Jews are also an ethnic group

deogeo 7y ago
That is correct, at least in regards to how the statistics were gathered: "To ensure that we did not overlook religiously unengaged Jews, we asked students for their religion and whether they considered themselves Jewish aside from religion; then, we asked about their parents’ religious identities. Students who considered themselves Jewish in any way were counted in our estimates." -- https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduates/ https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduat... "Jewishness in the United States is considered an ethnic identity as well as a religious one." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#Religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#Religion

Kenji 7y ago

Judaism is a religion as well as a race. Many Jews have characteristic traits like facial features that clearly show a shared ancestry. This is not the case with e.g. Christianity, where Christian races are all over the place. This is why Judaism is special in those regards.

strikelaserclaw 7y ago

Aren't Jews a race and a religion? Plenty of non religious Jews out there.

conradfr 7y ago
What is a race exactly for humans?
- whatshisface 7y ago
  A race is a "folk science" version of an ethnicity (it's defined culturally instead of scientifically). An ethnicity is a genetically similar group of people that often come from the same geographic origin.
  - azernik 7y ago
    Ethnicity has nothing to do with genetics. Dictionary definition says "a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition"; Wikipedia has this starting paragraph: "An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry or on similarities such as common language or dialect, history, society, culture or nation. Ethnicity is often used synonymously with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is separate from but related to the concept of races."
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      >usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy From Wikipedia. You're right that I didn't list every factor.
      - azernik 7y ago
        "Presumed" is the key point. e.g. Ethiopian Jews have no genetic relationship with other Israeli Jewish subgroups, people in Eastern Germany have just as much in common genetically with Poles as with Western Germans, etc. And when these things are brought up, many ethnic nationalists will shrug their shoulders and say "so what".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cheeseomlit 7y ago

'White' is commonly thought of as a euphemism for European, they are surely referring to the Jewish race and not Judaism as a religion.

StevePerkins 7y ago

Oh come now. Judaism as an identity class has a lot more to it than mere religious affiliation. I have to suspect that if the representation were 0.5x, rather than 5x, then its consideration would strike you as more natural.

notyourday 7y ago
I mean grouping Jews together based on a religious affiliation is just weird -- Reform would look at you really funny if you start talking to them about how Hasids and Orthodox view the world. It is as if Christianity was compressed into Amish, Anabaptists and Catholics and someone said "they are the same people"
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dannypgh 7y ago
  It is ultimately a response to the fact that Jews were treated as the same people by policies designed to exclude them. There were no such policies for various Christian groups. Practically for much of this history in this part of the world, "Jewish" has been used interchangeably with Ashkenazi. Jewish is not an ethnicity, but Ashkenazi is, and most of the Jewish people at a place like Harvard (or applied-but-denied) have been Ashkenazi. Note this paragraph is descriptive, not normative: this conflating of Jewish and Ashkenazi is a way by which other Jews (many of which face even more racial discrimination) get erased from discourse.
  - azernik 7y ago
    > Jewish is not an ethnicity, but Ashkenazi is This is, to put it mildly, an opinion rather than an established fact. Ethnicity is a social construct, and many Jewish societies do construct an ethnicity that crosses the intra-Jewish Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Persian/etc. lines. The biggest example of this is of course Israel, but you also see this in other mixed-background Jewish communities like e.g. Los Angeles or France, where a single umbrella Jewish ethnic identity is overlaid on top of those more specific ones.

cobweb1 7y ago

I was under the impression that Jews commonly don't think of themselves as being white whereas the rest of the 'white' groups did. Maybe I'm wrong? Jewishness is a more closely knit identity which Jews are lucky enough to have, whereas even whiteness is an ever expanding identity leaving many white people with nothing but 'American'.

Edmond 7y ago
It is the price that "white" identity demands. It is a subtractive identity, ie it abhors identity complication. You basically have to strip every complicating element of your true identity safe for the absolutely benign forms (ie "Kiss me, I am Irish" tea shirts). If you pay attention at least in American you can observe intriguing examples of this tension with white identity playing out. For instance being LGBTQ and white presents a problem for many. In fact there are examples now of white gay men who claim to hate "identity politics", what they really hate is that LGBTQ identity jeopardizes their "white" identity and they recognize this, so it is easy to pretend there are no other "blemishes" to their "white" identity....It is a fascinating phenomenon if you pay close attention :)
- gwright 7y ago
  > In fact there are examples now of white gay men who claim to hate "identity politics", what they really hate is that LGBTQ identity jeopardizes their "white" identity and they recognize this Speaking for myself, mmm.....no.
  - Edmond 7y ago
    Good for you:) Unfortunately not so for these guys: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/magazine/gay-conservative-trump-era.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/magazine/gay-conservative...
dcolkitt 7y ago
> I was under the impression that Jews commonly don't think of themselves as being white whereas the rest of the 'white' groups did. In the Anglosphere, Jews have pretty much always been considered "white". For example, both the Confederacy and Apartheid South Africa, two regimes obsessed with racial classification, never even considered that Jews might not be white. The conception of Jews as a separate race, has historically been an Eastern European idea. Even in 1930s Germany, the Nazi party's base of popularity was always firmly rooted in the most Eastern federal regions.

throwaway_law 7y ago

>What about other religions? Why include religion at all? The Supreme Court has ruled that in fact Jewish people are a race...at least for purposes of Civil Rights/anti-discrimination laws.

ctroein89 7y ago

The distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish whites has been contextually important when discussing the history of discrimination in college admissions. The original move towards subjective ranking of applicants was in part a way to limit the number of Jewish applicants: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-discriminating-against-jews-2014-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-d...

narrator 7y ago
There's lots of sneaky ways they tried to limit Jewish access to higher eduction in Russia. Jewish Problems, for example: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

notyourday 7y ago

That's because Americans fixate on Ashkenazi.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Steven_Vellon 7y ago
The US Jewish population is 90-95% Ashkenazim. It's unfortunate that Americans sometimes forget about the minority of Sephardim and Mizrahim, but for the most part the assumption that Jewish American == Ashkenazi holds true.

avip 7y ago

How about Christians, Jews, or... miscellaneous

slg 7y ago

A lot of the responses here are talking about ethnicity or Jewish identity, but I think when it comes down to it, Jews are considered white mainly when other white people want to consider them as such. I would bet that your average Ashkenazi Jew (it is worth noting there are multiple different Jewish ethnic groups) has more genetic commonality with an average person of Ukrainian descent than that Ukrainian person has with someone of Irish descent. So why are the Ukrainian and Irish person both white while the Jewish person isn't? And also let's point out that there is no distinction for any other group of Middle Eastern people. They instead have to choose between being Asian, African, or European.

xenihn 7y ago
Arabs, Armenians, North Africans, and Persians are all considered white in the US.
- slg 7y ago
  According to who? If you're referring to the census designations, Jews are considered white too which just goes to further underlines my point.
  - xenihn 7y ago
    The government and thus US law.
    - slg 7y ago
      Again, this further underlines how strange it is the Jews are separated out above when they are considered white according to things like the census. The numbers from the top comment would look a lot less scary to the average white person if Jews were lumped into that group.
- fortran77 7y ago
  Not according to many people on the Left. Congresswoman Tlaib, for example, identifies herself as a "Woman of Color" (https://thehill.com/homenews/house/429550-tlaib-people-hear-you-differently-when-youre-a-woman-of-color-and-a-first-in https://thehill.com/homenews/house/429550-tlaib-people-hear-...). My maternal grandparents were born in Gaza City, and Syria respectively. Grandmother was expelled Gaza in 1929, and the Syrian grandfather was expelled from Syria in 1927. Both families had been there for many generations, if not since Temple times. When I'm in the United States, even though I am very dark, I am never considered a "Person of Color" solely because of my religion. Other people from the same places _are_ "Persons of Color" if their religion differs. I'm darker than Ms. Tlaib if you want to get your colorimiters out. It's 12:54 AM in Tel Aviv now, where I am. (I spend about half my time here and half in Silicon Valley). However in the United States it's still Rosh Hashanah. I think it's a little unfair to have a discussion about Jews and affirmative action in the United States at a time when observant Jews will not be on-line. Shanah Tovah.

romwell 7y ago

As an atheist Jewish person, I don't agree with your definition of "Jewish". Neither did the Nazis, btw.

shard972 7y ago
Oh wow, a blatant character assassination for no reason whatsoever.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

chongli 7y ago

As others have said, it’s not about religion it’s about ethnicity. If you really wanted to skew things, look at Ashkenazi Jews versus everyone else. You’ll find the former group extremely over-represented among Nobel laureates, Fields medalists, Turing award winners, and world chess champions. In light of all these achievements, I think it makes sense to distinguish Jews from non-Jewish whites at Harvard, where the achievements are paralleled there as well.

tomp 7y ago

Depending on context, Jewish can be either ethnicity or religion (or both). I believe in this context, ethnicity is more important (and it’s also a proxy for higher IQ of Askenazi Jews).

gimmeThaBeet 7y ago

I apologize if this sounds blunt, it's not imprudent to see more sinister reasons given history, but my thought would be you're seeing them break out Jewish because from the religion as cultural group perspective, the cultural import of education is anomalous. I genuinely am not trying to break out the praeteritio, and say I'm not calling it a 'positive' stereotype, but at a certain level you can't have such a cultural focus on education, and then be gobsmacked when it has statistical significance in things like school admissions. Like, if I told you that Utah had the lowest per capita alcohol consumption in the US, it's not liable to blow anyone's mind. Heck, one of the reasons Harvard came up with its holistic admissions process in the first place was targeted at Jewish kids applying. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/19/admissions-lawsuit-discrimination/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/19/admissions-laws... Also just a lazy google, I'd hazard to guess you're right about catholic representation being higher than expected. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09/09/there-are-more-atheists-and-agnostics-entering-harvard-than-protestants-and-catholics/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09...

novalis78 7y ago

Because when it comes to academics they (in particular Ashkenazi) have an advantage. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence) - so it does not have directly to do with religion, it's just that their persecution in the middle ages (because of their religion) seems to have lead to a slightly higher capability with regard to abstract thinking (the drawback here being a higher vulnerability to hereditary diseases).

habosa 7y ago

Well this is the most replies I have ever gotten on HN. I strongly regret discussion my feelings on my own religion on here. If people don't think that breaking "whites" down into Jewish/Non-Jewish and nothing else is strange then I don't think we can discuss this topic rationally.