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i’m gonna type up a quick rant on ‘white Jews’ here.

this is a picture of me. most of you have seen me before. the majority of you also know that i’m a Mizrahi-Maghrebi Jew, meaning i find my roots* both in the Jews of the Mashriq and the Jews of the Maghreb. more specifically, i’m ethnically from both Iraq and Morocco. so if i’m Middle Eastern and North African, why is my skin so light?

the short, angry answer is that Jews aren’t white and white people don’t have lighter features patented. maybe you guys haven’t been clued in, but white as a concept does not mean light skin.

have any of you ever seen Laila Mourad? she was a Mizrahi (Iraqi) Jew who was probably even lighter than i am.

i guess Laila is white too, huh?

do you know where my coloring comes from? if you say Europe or white people, then you’re wrong. my coloring comes from Morocco—specifically my Amazigh ancestry. Amazigh is usually called ‘Berber’ in English (i don’t like that word in the least) and it’s basically indigenous people of North Africa. here are some pictures of Imazighen: 

we are diverse in facial features and coloring—but at the end of the day, we aren’t white. we aren’t even TREATED white by any of you—so why should we force ourselves to identify as white?

you don’t own my light skin. you don’t own my blue eyes. you don’t own my brown hair. you sure as hell don’t want to own my clearly Jewish nose or my Jewish facial structure—so what makes you think you can own the coloring passed down to me via the Imazighen who’ve lived in Africa forever? 

you don’t get to colonize our identities and features too.

*all Jews find their ultimate roots in the Middle East, ‘even’ Ashkenazi Jews. 

also this is a really poorly written post, i’m just annoyed at goyim ugh

“all ethnic jewish find their roots in the middle east, even ashkenazi jews”

and we are all jews, no matter what colour we are, no matter whether that colour is light or dark

The Jewish people are like skittles. Feel the rainbow. Taste the rainbow. 

As a Syrian-Iranian Jew (with a white catholic mother) I just…thank you. I’m actually crying right now because thank you because tumblr has shown me so so so much and given me such a gift of saying ‘your identity is valid and you are real and…just thank you’ *weeps*

I’ve always struggled with whiteness versus Judaism. Always.

My family background is from Poland, Russia and Romania. Mostly from the first, going in order of greatest to least. However, I am a second generation American on my father’s side and a third on my mother’s. Everyone in my family is Jewish; no one has ever converted. (Obviously, some of us younger ones are married to non-Jews.)

However, I identify as white. I “look white” and I am white. I was born in So Cal and have known nothing else, living wise. When people look at me, they see a white girl. As well as they should IMO. Actually, tons of people think I’m Latina or half-Latina for some reason. Idk why; because I have dark curly hair?? It’s usually white people that think this…go figure. Though others have said I “look Jewish” and am “definitely a Jew”.

It’s weird, because I don’t like to “throw around” my Judaism when it comes to race. People argue whether Judaism is a culture, a religion or a race. I believe it’s really the first two, but that’s just me. I say this because I am not a PoC. I do not have the struggles of a PoC. And I never will. I do have the struggles of being a Jew, but those are somewhat different.

It always makes me wonder where I should step into on arguments regarding this, and where I have any right to say anything. I don’t know; do I have any right to say anything? I do benefit from white privilege. But I’m not Christian. I’m a Jew.

i thought it was this post but i don’t see it here so it must be another one. but someone recently pointed out that race in the united states & race is other parts of the world (like europe) are viewed very differently. in the u.s. it’s almost exclusively about skin color, but jews are far more racialized in other parts of the world. not to say that jews in the u.s. don’t face discrimination for “looking jewish,” or for being jewish, but i think it’s harder to be read as a jew here because, as op mentions, anybody with light skin is assumed to be white/christian.

my situation is similar but not the same, because i am mostly from a white background but partially from a jewish background. that would make me mixed race, if we call jewishness a race. but my experience has never been anything but white. i do not feel entitled to call my experience anything but white, & i would be very hesitant to align myself with other jews on that axis because there are black jews and brown jews who have a very different experience of the world & of their jewishness & antisemitism than i do.

this argument on whether jewishness is a race is new to me, but i’m beginning to understand it more & more. i have always viewed jewishness as an ethnicity rather than a race. ethnicity is how you choose to identify & align with others of your background; race is how others identify you. it has always been my choice whether to align myself with jewishness or not & my choice to identify as jewish. however, as has been pointed out, being a jew is a “racialized” identity, in that non-jews have come up with ways to identify us & single us out as jews. this can be by skin color for darker-skinned jews, or by hair texture or facial structure, or by religious attire, or by the food we ate or the places we visit or whatever. regardless, there are many jews who are visibly jewish. but then there are jews like me, who really don’t face much in the way of antisemitism until i tell people i’m a jew.

so in the sense that others can single us out as jews, & in the sense that all jews, regardless of skin color, genetically descend from people of the same geographical region, yes, jewishness is a race. but i am still not sure where i fit in & what i have the right to call myself. for now, i go with white AND jewish, rather than white jew. i’m still sorting it all out.

(sorry to derail from the person i’m reblogging from, but hopefully my point of view is somewhat relatable to them & to other jews who “pass” as white)

“ethnicity is how you choose to identify & align with others of your background; race is how others identify you.”

This is really, really important.

I think a lot of people (understandably) misunderstand what race is. It a categorical, objective label that is placed UPON you. And it differs from society to society and even from group to group within a given society. It’s not dependent upon how you personally identify, it’s completely dependent upon how society identifies you. 

In the US, it is a categorical label that is based upon color primarily, and physical features secondarily. Elsewhere, there are different bases to categorize people as different races. Race is a social construct, it is constructed BY HOW SOCIETY VIEWS AN INDIVIDUAL. That doesn’t make it not real or any nonsense like that, but we have to be cognisant of what race really is when we talk about it. This also doesn’t mean antisemitism, or Islamophobia, is always a non-racially based form of discrimination.

There is more to what is the normative view within specific cultures and specific groups (for example, anyone who deviates from the Protestant-Christian-heterosexual-cisgender-able bodied (etc) norm in the U.S. is seen by society at large as an “other,” but that doesn’t necessarily make them non-white. For example, a white/white-skinned Jew who begins to dress tzinuit marks them as a non-Christian other in the U.S., but it does not make them suddenly not white, but it still makes them more obviously a non-Christian, non-U.S. normative other. (This is obviously ignoring that white supremacists will never view a white/white-skinned Jew as a white person, but that’s what I meant above by race differing from society to society and even from group to group within a given society.) 

The other thing that makes me uncomfortable sometimes with these discussions is that it otherizes non-white/white-skinned Jews within (and outside of) the Jewish community. It’s implying that white/white-skinned Jews are the norm and default and that JoC are therefore not. Otherwise, why does there need to label and differentiate JoC, but us white/white-skinned Jews are just Jews. Admittedly, I may just be more sensitive to this because of my status as an adoptee.

As an aside, ethnicity does not necessarily mean genetically related. An ethnic group can also be described as a group of people who identify with each other based on shared ancestry, culture, heritage, or history, etc. It’s not necessarily just a shared genetic history.