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by hourislate 1905 days ago
From what I understand and there is good chance I misunderstood, Jews don't consider themselves to be "White".
4 comments

Jewish guy here adding his 0.07 shekels.

There's no real consensus about it, though in the US it's fair to say that most Jews can be included under the "white" category.

I think it's evident that there is a genetic makeup that can be considered "Jewish", in that it ties back to the genetic make up of residents of Judea and Israel in 500bc, but 2500 years of exodus brings about a strong difference between the genetically Jewish, and the culturally/religiously Jewish. While we Jews were relatively good at keeping it in-the-tribe for those millenniums, a significant portion (maybe most) are mixed in with the genetics of their host nations. Even if they were always religiously and/or culturally Jewish, they might still appropriately identify as racially white, black, or other depending on their exodential* heritage.

*If there's already a word for this, please share with me.

In the little box you check off to select your ethnicity, Jews are in fact expected to check off white.

edit - You can write in "Jewish" but there's no "Jewish" box. This is why I turned against affirmative action (or taking account of ethnicity in any way). Jews are disproportionately rich and successful but they are "white" for the purposes of admissions. Meanwhile Asians, also disproportionately rich and successful, are "Asian". Why? Who makes these rules? Should anyone be making rules like that?

You could improve the situation by only providing ethnicity options that help the application (i.e. remove "Asian" and "white" and just stick to "black," "latino," "pacific islander," etc). This is definitely better but it's still bad in my opinion.

Unless they are Hispanic. Jews, like all members of religions, are expected to check off the ethnicity and race that they identify with.
You know there are non-white Jews, right?
Yes. But the vast majority of American Jews are "white".

There's no consensus over whether Jewishness is an ethnicity or a religion either.

These are all reasons to stop asking these kinds of questions of people.

Latinos are white, why would you separate them ?
In my perfect world we wouldn't separate anyone.

My point was that it would be an improvement to only include ethnicity options that help the application, so Hispanic/Latino would be included.

Ethnicity options should NOT help applications (unless you are supposed to work in a very traditional community I guess?)
What is the proportion of white Jews vs semite Jews in the USA ?