What Does it Take to be White?

[sheshe2]

by BooMan
Tue Dec 6th, 2016 at 02:26:50 PM EST


In a new piece in the Atlantic, Emma Green explores whether or not American Jews can be considered “white.” Apparently, the election of Donald Trump has given this question new urgency since white supremacists supported his campaign and one, Stephen Bannon, has become Trump’s chief adviser. Bannon’s ex-wife alleged in court that Bannon would not let their children attend one school because it had too many Jewish students (who he referred to as “whiny brats”), wondered why another had so many Hanukkah books in the library, and opposed a third because it used to be housed in a Jewish Temple. Bannon did not contest the allegations at the time (“it would serve no useful purpose to refute each of the critical comments Petitioner has directed at me.”) and some of them have been independently corroborated by reporters who tracked down the school administrators who interacted with Bannon at the time.

It’s pretty hard to define whiteness, but it’s probably good to put things in perspective by asking why the Irish were not originally considered fully white and how they became so. In some ways, both Jews and the Irish have always been white, as least as far as immigration and citizenship laws are concerned. But they both experienced discrimination in housing and employment, as well as social estrangement and politicized racism.


The controversial Noel Ignatiev explored the Irish’s journey in a 1995 book called “How the Irish Became White.” Maybe you won’t fully embrace his thesis, but however it came about no one, including Irish-Americans, questions their “whiteness” today.

American Jews overwhelmingly self-identify as white when forced to choose, and secular Jews seem to blend in and certainly don’t experience police harassment or suffer from other disabilities suffered from darker-skinned minorities like being treated as presumptive shoplifters. I haven’t forgotten that former Chief Justice William Rehnquist had restrictive covenants in the deeds of two of his homes that barred their sale to Hebrews or nonwhites, but I think housing discrimination against Jews is mostly a thing of the past (correct me if I’m wrong).

In a lot of ways, then, Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans have become white over time. I was doing some research recently on the Ku Klux Klan’s presence in Indiana during the 1920’s, and it was quite clear that the organization at that time in that state was much more anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish in its outlook and priorities than anti-black. I don’t think that legacy has simply disappeared on the far right (or Alt Right), but it does seem like anti-black racism has more power at the moment.


Read More:http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/12/6/142650/836

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[Warpy]

1. When I went to my first segregated school in the south, boasted to be "all white,"

I found Asian kids, Native American kids, Mexican kids, and every other flavor of kid except those with African ancestry. Oh, I got the point, I just don't think it was the point the KKK wanted me to get.

So apparently it doesn't take much to be "white."

[guillaumeb]

2. Given that "white", like "race", is a social construct and not a biological term,

what and who is defined as white depends on the society.

I was informed by one right winger during a debate that French, Italian, and Spanish people are not really white because Mediterranean countries are mixed countries.

So white, and who is white, can vary.

As to Jews and the Irish, does religion also play a role here?

[sheshe2]

5. Well I guess we have Bannon now, to tell us how we will be classified.

Yea...I have some Mohawk in me...can I officially say I am not pure white? Well, you wouldn't know that from looking at me, blonde with pale blue eyes. Yet my dad and grandfather, pitch black hair, dark eyes, darker complexions.

The article says religion may be in play as well.

[Maru Kitteh]

3. Sanders calls himself white and says he's humiliated the Dems don't try harder to suck up to whites

The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Clinton Ignored the Working Class
To many white Trump voters, the problem wasn’t her economic stance, but the larger vision—a multi-ethnic social democracy—that it was a part of.

In the days after her shocking loss, Democrats complained that Clinton had no jobs agenda. A widely shared essay in The Nation blamed Clinton's "neoliberalism" for abandoning the voters who swung the election. “I come from the white working class,” Bernie Sanders said on CBS This Morning, “and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to where I came from.”

But here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost.


<snip>

What’s more, the evidence that Clinton lost because of the nation’s economic disenchantment is extremely mixed. Some economists found that Trump won in counties affected by trade with China. But among the 52 percent of voters who said economics was the most important issue in the election, Clinton beat Trump by double digits.

<snip>

The more frightening possibility for liberals is that Clinton didn’t lose because the white working class failed to hear her message, but precisely because they did hear it.

Trump’s white voters do support the mommy state, but only so long as it’s mothering them. Most of them don’t seem eager to change Medicare or Social Security, but they’re fine with repealing Obamacare and its more diverse pool of 20 million insured people. They’re happy for the government to pick winners and losers, so long as beleaguered coal and manufacturing companies are in the winner’s circle. Massive deficit-financed spending on infrastructure? Under Obama, that was dangerous government overreach, but under Trump, it’s a jobs plan by a guy they know won’t let Muslims and Mexicans cut in line to get work renovating highways and airports.

more at the link
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/hillary-clinton-working-class/509477/


Oh yeah, and for the record IMO, fuck the idea of wooing white racist's votes. Not interested. Racist whites are not the future of this party or this country - they are the past and they can die there. Women, minorities, POC and progressive whites (the real kind who are not "humiliated" by us, would not tell us to sit down, be quiet, or sell us out for racists) are our future.

So What does it take to be white? In the sense of the concept outlined in the article you posted and the one I reference, it would seem that "being white" means the rejection of women and minorities and people of color and other vulnerable persons as beings whose needs, desires, and thoughts are less than your own. For those fooling themselves into believing they are progressive while espousing such nonsense - we see your "white man's burden" and we reject it. Mr. Maru is a white man, but he firmly, thoroughly, vocally rejects this resurgence of white populist nationalism, and regards it as treachery against humanity. Hopefully, the numbers of men like him will continue to grow.

[samir.g]

4. Almost all american jews are white