Jews are objectively white

The argument

Ashkenazi Jews, those who have descended from Eurocentric roots, represent the dominant culture in Jewish communities in America, Europe, and Israel. Although Jews come from a vast number of heritages including Arabic, Spanish, African, and South-Asian lineages, Jews with European descents hold the most representational power. Because of their Eurocentric lineages, jews are objectively light-skinned and considered white. Maurice Fishberg conducted a study to examine the phenotypes that Jews exhibit. His 1903 study recorded the colors of skin, hair, and eyes of over 2,000 Jews over the age of 20 in New York City. Fishberg recorded an overwhelming majority of 77.36 percent of Jews exhibiting light skin. As this study dates over a hundred years ago, the findings that the majority of Jews are light-skinned has developed into the perspective that Jews simply are white. Even United States law considered Jews as objectively white. According to the Naturalization Act of 1790, Jews had the right to citizenship as they were among the “free white persons.” As time progressed, Jews were deemed as “Caucasian” due to their distinctive light skin. Evident in both a research study and American history, Jews have been known to be objectively white, therefore making the argument that Jews are white.

Context

Jewish racial identity has always been a multifaceted issue. The intersectionality of race and religion of the Jewish demographic poses a challenging means of racial designation. Regardless, most Jews are objectively light-skinned, an observation that motivates the argument that Jews are white.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Light-skinned Jews, due to their white privilege, have held the power of defining Jewish culture. They have set the precedent that Jews are objectively white, when in reality Jews of color represent the majority in the world. As the majority of the world's Jewish population is not objectively white, Jews should not be considered white.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Representational dominance is a fact about who has been visible and who has held institutional position, not about what a population is. The premise's own reasoning exposes the gap, moving from which Jews are most represented to a claim about Jews in general — and passing over Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ethiopian, Indian and Latin American Jewish communities, which together account for a substantial share of the world's Jewish population and, taking Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews together, a majority within Israel. [Rejecting P2] A 1903 survey of some 2,000 adults in a single city cannot support a claim about a global population, least of all one framed as objective. New York's Jewish population at that date consisted overwhelmingly of recent arrivals from Central and Eastern Europe, so the sample was selected on the very characteristic being measured. Skin tone is also a poor proxy for a racial category, as the race science of that same period demonstrated by classifying the same people differently at different times. [Rejecting P3] Legal classification records what a state decided, not what is objectively so, and the American record is not consistent in the way the premise suggests. Naturalisation was available while the immigration restrictions of the 1920s were built around the view that these were distinct and undesirable European stocks, and universities, clubs and neighbourhoods operated quotas and restrictive covenants against them. That a legal category was granted while a social one was withheld is itself evidence that the question concerns social classification rather than an objective fact.