{"id":50454,"date":"2016-12-07T01:36:07","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T01:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50454"},"modified":"2016-12-07T01:36:07","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T01:36:07","slug":"for-sephardic-and-mizrahi-jews-whiteness-was-a-fragile-identity-long-before-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50454","title":{"rendered":"For Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, Whiteness Was a Fragile Identity Long Before Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, Whiteness Was a Fragile Identity Long Before Trump<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Forward<\/a>
\n2016-12-06<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/strong><\/a>, Opinion Editor<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nNikki Casey<\/small><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

I have lived for 26 years under the illusion that I am unconditionally white\u2026. Recently I have started looking at my face and going, \u2018Oh man, do I look too Jewish?\u2019\u201d Sydney Brownstone<\/a>, the reporter who voiced this question<\/a> in a recent Blabbermouth<\/em> podcast<\/a>, is not alone in wondering this. Many Ashkenazi Jews<\/a> who have always assumed that they\u2019re white are noticing that they\u2019re not white enough for Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> white supremacists. Suddenly, they\u2019re asking themselves: Wait, how white am I, exactly?<\/p>\n

To tackle this question, try a little visualization. Picture all American Jews arranged along a spectrum. On one end are the Ashkenazi Jews who identify as white and get coded as white by society. On the other end are the Jews of color who can never pass as white<\/a>: black Jews, Chinese Jews and others who get read as non-white on the street. In the middle of the spectrum are Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, who sometimes pass as white and sometimes don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

As a Mizrahi Jew<\/a> \u2014 my ancestors come from India<\/a>, Iraq<\/a> and Morocco<\/a> \u2014 I inhabit that ambiguous middle space. For a long time, it\u2019s been a lonely place to be, since Ashkenazi is Judaism\u2019s default setting in America. It\u2019s also been massively confusing, since I often reap the privileges of being white-passing, even as I get selected for \u201crandom additional screenings\u201d by the TSA<\/a> or for \u201cWhere are you really from?\u201d queries from strangers on the street…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, Whiteness Was a Fragile Identity Long Before Trump Forward 2016-12-06 Sigal Samuel, Opinion Editor Nikki Casey I have lived for 26 years under the illusion that I am unconditionally white\u2026. Recently I have started looking at my face and going, \u2018Oh man, do I look too Jewish?\u2019\u201d Sydney Brownstone, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3601,8,6462,820,20],"tags":[20566,20712],"class_list":["post-50454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-religion","category-usa","tag-forward","tag-sigal-samuel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50455,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50454\/revisions\/50455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}