- Question
- Are Jews white?
- Position1 of 3›
- No, Jews are not white
White people do not consider Jews to be "one of them". From anti-Semitic depictions of the "beady eyed" Jew to the European pogroms that plagued much of the twentieth century, Jews have been violently othered throughout white history.
The argument
Modern definitions of racism focus on the oppression of one racial or ethnic group by another, on the belief that one is superior. The argument takes that definition seriously and applies it consistently: if racial categories are defined by how groups are treated rather than by how they look, then the question of whether Jews are white has to be answered by looking at treatment. On that test Jews would not be considered white, even where they visually appear to be, and appearance is simply the wrong evidence to be consulting. The historical record is what the test draws on. There is a long history of anti-Semitic and oppressive racist actions against the Jewish community around the world — a pattern of the very kind of group-directed oppression the definition identifies as racial, sustained over centuries and across many different societies. The people who take it upon themselves to police the boundary confirm the point. Those who define themselves as the ultimate deciders of whiteness — white supremacists — often exclude Jews from that category on the grounds of both religious and ethnic identity. Their judgement is not authoritative about anything except what the category is actually used to do, and they use it to exclude. More broadly, white non-Jews do not consider Jews to be white, and Jews are not afforded all of the advantages that white privilege affords white people in Western society. The conclusion is stated in terms of degree rather than absolutes. Jews may be positioned closer to whiteness than other racial and ethnic minorities, and that proximity is real, but proximity is not membership: they remain excluded by those who hold the category, which is what the definition of racism says is decisive.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Racism is considered a social construct that is based on visual representation. While being Jewish is an ethnoreligious identity, it is not the same as saying one is Chinese or Sri Lankan. There is no distinguishing skin color or other visual factors that distinguish Jewishness or Jewish identity, and by nature of this, there are many light-skinned Jewish people that would be considered white by virtue of their skin color alone.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The long history of persecution is not in dispute and does not settle the question, which concerns a social classification rather than whether hostility exists — a group can be racialised as other in one period or country and treated as white in another. The premise also assumes that suffering racism and being white are mutually exclusive, which is exactly what the sibling positions contest. [Rejecting P2] Taking white supremacists as the arbiters of the category concedes the definition to the people the argument opposes, and it yields an unstable result, since such movements have drawn the line differently at different times and about different groups. The counter presses the other half: in ordinary social life, in how people are perceived and treated day to day, many Jewish people are read as white — which is what the category usually tracks.