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I am not trying to regurgitate anything...just trying to shed light on historical facts. I could care less who is white or not, but the truth is groups that are white now were never white and magically became white. Jews are not white to the rest of the country..although I don't doubt in your inner circle and neighborhood you are as white as anyone else. I am "white" also to all I interact with....but I am Hispanic and the rest of the country does not consider me white...but in NYC I don't look black, stereotypically hispanic, or asian..thus I am "white." Same applies to most metro areas.
There is a reason why anti-semitism exists in this country..and it isn't because whites consider Jews equal or white. Jews can be as white as Germans, or as dark as Africans..so how can this population be "white." It cannot be...although I don't doubt some can pass for white and are accepted a such. Is that the same thing? In the metro areas, the answer is yes..outside of the metro areas, the answer is maybe, but usually no. And the reason I know this is because I get out of NYC often.
Brooklynborndad...I agree that in the major metropolitan areas, Jews are considered white for the most part. Unfortunately, that is not representative of the US. That is the exception, not the rule. However, that does not make them white, it just means they have magically become white in certain places, as Irish, Italians, Greeks, etc have magically become white over the years. There is no doubt that Italians and Jews magically became white by WW2, but that was mostly because other non-white groups were flooding in, namely the blacks and PRs.
It basically goes like this:
Actual Whites dominate prior to 1860s (Brits,Germs,Dutch, etc).
Irish flood in, first ghettos created. Irish were not white.
Italians flooded in expanding the ghettos further. Italians were not white. Irish were at that point mobilizing and gaining white status...subjugating blacks/Italians helped them move into the white class. "At least your not Italian."
Jews flooded in....they are not white. Repeating the same process, except nobody wanted anything to do with Jews and they migrated (forced into) ghettos, further expanding them. By this time the real white population was decimated as the "ethnics" were consuming large swaths of the city, ghettoizing them.
Blacks/PRs came in the 40s/50s/60s. They are not white. At this point everyone who is not black or hispanic quickly elevates to white status to maintain white dominance/numbers.
It is a social construct and the bar keeps getting set lower and lower as more of these "white" groups flee the city. Now we have hispanics calling themselves white. Gotta love this game! If you remove Jews from the white category...it would be clear that maybe 15% of the population is "white" (and that's being generous as it includes Irish, Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Arabs).
Besides nationality, subsets of religion could determine non-"whiteness." Back in the old days (c. 1850), people who practiced Catholicism, while being a subset of the accepted Christianity, were not accepted as
"white." The WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) looked down on them and called them mackerel snappers. Even the Ku Klux Klan would not accept a Catholic member (who knows, maybe they still don't).
There is a reason why anti-semitism exists in this country..and it isn't because whites consider Jews equal or white.
some whites dont consider jews equal and are antisemitic. Most whites are not antisemitic, and I would suggest that in this day and age even many who ARE antisemitic still consider Jews white (religious antisemitism antedated racial antisemitism and in a country as religious as the USA it may be more widespread - not to mention that many american Jew haters are nonwhites, muslims, etc)
And I was well aware of things going on beyond my "circle".
It seems to me that you will not admit that Jews are now considered "white" in places like Vermont (which has a Jewish senator) or Minnesota (which recently had TWO Jewish senators) because that would conflict with the narrative that the jews becoming white was due not to their assimilation, but to the influx of blacks and puerto ricans. Similarly I think your timing wrt to NYC is incorrect. Fiorello LaGuardia was elected mayor in 1934 - and he had a Jewish mother and an italian father. But that was before the influx of Puerto ricans, and when the black population of NYC though significant, was lower than post war.
Besides nationality, subsets of religion could determine non-"whiteness." Back in the old days (c. 1850), people who practiced Catholicism, while being a subset of the accepted Christianity, were not accepted as
"white." The WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) looked down on them and called them mackerel snappers. Even the Ku Klux Klan would not accept a Catholic member (who knows, maybe they still don't).
in the early 19th century there was a wave of conversion to RC, and that was on reason the protestant churchs abandoned their calvinist simplicity and adopted more music (well the lutherans already had that, but puritan descended churches not so much) and more ornate architecture - to compete. German Catholics and long settled catholics like the Carrols of maryland were certainly white - the reaction against new catholic immigrants was a reaction against "alien" cultures - southern and eastern euros (and the despised celtic irish) more than it was about theology.
Brooklynborndad...I agree that in the major metropolitan areas, Jews are considered white for the most part. Unfortunately, that is not representative of the US. That is the exception, not the rule. However, that does not make them white, it just means they have magically become white in certain places, as Irish, Italians, Greeks, etc have magically become white over the years. There is no doubt that Italians and Jews magically became white by WW2, but that was mostly because other non-white groups were flooding in, namely the blacks and PRs.
It basically goes like this:
Actual Whites dominate prior to 1860s (Brits,Germs,Dutch, etc).
Irish flood in, first ghettos created. Irish were not white.
Italians flooded in expanding the ghettos further. Italians were not white. Irish were at that point mobilizing and gaining white status...subjugating blacks/Italians helped them move into the white class. "At least your not Italian."
Jews flooded in....they are not white. Repeating the same process, except nobody wanted anything to do with Jews and they migrated (forced into) ghettos, further expanding them. By this time the real white population was decimated as the "ethnics" were consuming large swaths of the city, ghettoizing them.
Blacks/PRs came in the 40s/50s/60s. They are not white. At this point everyone who is not black or hispanic quickly elevates to white status to maintain white dominance/numbers.
It is a social construct and the bar keeps getting set lower and lower as more of these "white" groups flee the city. Now we have hispanics calling themselves white. Gotta love this game! If you remove Jews from the white category...it would be clear that maybe 15% of the population is "white" (and that's being generous as it includes Irish, Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Arabs).
SobroGuy is getting into the social construct of race- because it's just that, a concept created by society where the definition of who is white can and does change over time. Just goes to show you how silly it all is!
I was on vacation in South Africa with a friend (we're both, by the US definition, black) and we were on a wine tour with our guide who was white (by South African definition). At one point, we asked him "are we considered "black"' and he answered "no, you're American". The point being that in HIS framework, blacks are specific to those native ethnic groups of S. Africa and since we were clearly American tourists (with American money, of course) we somehow weren't "really" black or at least not "black" like the S. Africans. That's why it's a social construct and the definitions are fluid and quite frankly, don't make much sense.
With the increasing numbers of mixed raced individuals- especially at the high levels we seem to have in NYC, I'm curious to see how the concept of who is white evolves over time.
and if jews are semitic, then italians, spanish and greeks are too,
right? besides their religion and diets, what's the difference?
they're all somewhat mixed, right?
They used to hang signs at the hiring halls for longshoremen on the west side saying WHITE MEN ONLY....which meant "no italians".
This Irish guy at my job use to have a sign in his office (it was a clipping form a newspaper from the turn of the century) that said something like "Job openings. Irish need not apply".
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