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I thought Jews were white? Are Jews not white? I mean it’s all just bigotry one way or another but I still feel like I missed something here
The concept of whiteness is purely American. It has no basis on anything and can therefore be molded to include anyone and everyone.
The nazis concept of "Aryan" is equally as scientific.
"White" is a meaningless label that is used to classify the ethnic groups racists like and don't like. For example, Irish immigrants weren't considered white by a lot of people in the early 20th century, but you'd be a moron to look at them and not see that their skin is actually 'white'.
Caucasian is the closest to "white", and even that is fairly arbitrary.
In practice, it's in group Vs out group behaviour. If you're different, someone will take offence to that. The line of difference varies, but the effect is often the same.
Interestingly, "the left" could well be described as an in-group of out-groups. Those who are pushed out, in 1 way or another, gathered together for mutual support. Plus those who empathize with that position.
Whiteness is a social construct so it can be defined in any arbitrary way. Some consider Jews to be white today, though historically they were not considered so, and many white-supremacists today do not consider them white.
In terms of skin tone it would depend on the geographic origin of a person’s ancestors, as with virtually all humans. Jews from Northern Europe tend to have similar skin tone as other people of European ancestry, while those from the Middle East or North Africa are similar to other people from those regions.
But remember that skin tone isn’t really what people mean when they say white. In my social circles there are black people with paler skin than some white people, yet no one questions who belongs with which “race”.
See also irish/Scottish not being considered white in the past as well.
Wrong kind of white obviously.
Two days later and all these replies, you’re the only one picking up what I was putting down
The root of the concept of race was in religious affiliation, so Jews have been a separate entity since before race even was about what we think of as race.
Also, not all jews are of European descent even taking that into consideration, in fact prior to the establishment of Israel many of the largest centers of Jewish culture were in the middle east. Specifically in Babylon/Baghdad, and apparently also significantly in the Maghreb. There's also the Ethiopian jewish community which is a whole other subject historically speaking.
Generally there are two ways to contextualize it. It is either a race of people stemming from the Middle East to populate Europe during the Middle Ages, and those decendants today (not white), or it's a religious group with ethnic roots in that region, but no specific racial requirement. For context, Hitler spoke of the first kind.
Light skin isn’t the only criteria
If Jews are white, so are Arabs, as they're all Semitic.
Unless you're only referring to their religion, in which case they could be of any ethnicity.
The Caucasian race was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, depending on which of the historical race classifications was being used, usually included ancient and modern populations from all or parts of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.
Many would be, yes. But this is all basically pseudoscience.