Jewish on Sidechat | Is it wrong to refer to myself as white passing/presenting instead of white? I fully acknowledge the privilege I get from my appearance, but I’m never being referred to as white when if my hair is out and curly and Im tanned??

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Jewish 1w

Is it wrong to refer to myself as white passing/presenting instead of white? I fully acknowledge the privilege I get from my appearance, but I’m never being referred to as white when if my hair is out and curly and Im tanned??

Anonymous 1w

Race is a social construct; e.g. Jews and Irish people only became white in the 50s

Anonymous 1w

If you’re white you’re white, no matter how much you don’t look it, want to be, or are accepted as such

Anonymous 1w

If you are racialized as white sometimes but not other times than I’d say white passing is probably a more accurate descriptor than white is

Anonymous 1w

If you are in the United States then you would be classed as white, assuming that is what your background is

-1

Anonymous

#1 1w

I feel like I should clarify I’m Mizrahi/sephardi? I’m not denying I pass for white a lot of the time, but my name and appearance over the summer makes it less cut and dry/gen

Anonymous

OP 1w

If we’re gonna talk specifics of race, Middle Eastern is still technically white. But in today’s society people like to group ethnicity with race, so no one would blink twice if you just said you were “middle eastern”

Anonymous

#1 1w

👍 thank you!

Anonymous

#1 1w

If we’re gonna talk specifics of race, it’s a subjective category not an objective one, and they are always applied inconsistently. In our current sociopolitical context under most racial perceptions, most MENA people are not white, and in the US specifically in terms of the census racial categories white no longer includes MENA people

Anonymous

#2 1w

Especially if learning your name or background makes people no longer racialize you as white

Anonymous

#3 1w

Well Irish people were legally white at the national level which is why they were allowed to immigrate during the time where US law was that only white and black people were allowed to, but actually on the ground they were not racialized as white, in a similar manner to Italians who would at times get legally designated “colored” despite having immigrated to the US as being legally white

Anonymous

#4 1w

Speaking as a Sephardic Jew growing up in the United States, I was not racialized as white growing up and we are not legally classed as white either, at least if we’re from MENA

Anonymous

#2 1w

I think some Sephardic Jews get racialized as white and some don’t; it also depends a lot on where in the country you grew up. I have some places I’ve lived where people usually racialized me as white and some where people usually did not, which just goes to show how inconsistent and malleable “race” really is. They’re constructs used created to justify systems of oppression, and they’re malleable based on the biases and political interests of the person using them