{"id":57171,"date":"2018-12-27T05:08:01","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T05:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57171"},"modified":"2018-12-27T05:08:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-27T05:08:01","slug":"the-illusion-and-elusiveness-of-whiteness-between-politics-and-polemics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57171","title":{"rendered":"The Illusion and Elusiveness of Whiteness: Between Politics and Polemics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Illusion and Elusiveness of Whiteness: Between Politics and Polemics<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

ISGAP: Flashpoint<\/a>
\nInstitute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy<\/a>
\n2018-12-04, Flashpoint 52<\/p>\n

Katya Gibel Mevorach<\/strong><\/a>, Professor in the Anthropology Department; Chair of the American Studies Concentration
\nGrinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nKatya Gibel Mevorach<\/a> is a Professor in the Anthropology Department and the Chair of the American Studies Concentration at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa<\/a>. She earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. Prof. Gibel Mevorach received her BA and MA in African Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The tenor of \u201cidentity politics and polemics\u201d has lost listeners even as the tone of debates has intensified: there is a dialectic of tuning in and out of conversations about whether Jews who look<\/em> white are, in fact, White? The argument, which gained media traction over the last twenty years \u2013 a relatively short period of time for some, but a lifetime for millennials<\/a> \u2013 latched on to the phrase \u201cwhite Jews\u201d set in juxtaposition to \u201cJews of color\u201d and \u201cBlack Jews.\u201d These expressions may have insinuated themselves into the Jewish forum, but they foolishly ignore Jewish and general history. Too many Jews overlook the significance of scientific racism<\/em><\/a> in Nazi ideology<\/a> and among white supremacists as well as the simple fact that in all racist societies, ancestry always<\/em> trumps appearance. This is a central lesson from places where domestic genocide (e.g., Belfast, Kigali and Sarajevo) confounds \u201coutsiders\u201d who do not \u201csee\u201d physical distinctions that locals presume to be obvious.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhiteness\u201d in America is not and has never been self-evident \u2013 and that<\/em><\/u> is the point of passing<\/a>: of not revealing information that would reposition someone from \u201cbeing white\u201d to \u201cnot quite white\u201d or \u201cnot white\u201d at all.[1]<\/sup> This difference between looking<\/em> white (appearance) and being white (an existential registry of racial purity) inspired the subtitle of my book<\/a> \u201c\u2026not the color of your skin but the race of your kin<\/a><\/em>.\u201d[2]<\/sup> It is this difference that was forcefully communicated by white supremacists in Charlottesville<\/a> and reiterated in Pittsburgh<\/a> to the consternation of some Jews who feel entitled to whiteness and cry mea culpa<\/em><\/a> while enjoying its privilege.<\/p>\n

The desire to identify<\/em> as white remains astounding to a few people, like me, who were born in the United States<\/a> only because one of their Jewish parents was among the lucky few to escape Nazi Europe<\/a> on a passport listing \u201cJew\u201d as his or her Race. Once upon a time, not long ago, there was a simple question: are you a Jew or are you white? And the answer might have been: I am a Jew and I am perceived as a white person to the extent that I am not too visibly Jewish [i.e. assimilated]<\/em>…<\/p>\n

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

\u201cWhiteness\u201d in America is not and has never been self-evident \u2013 and that is the point of passing: of not revealing information that would reposition someone from \u201cbeing white\u201d to \u201cnot quite white\u201d or \u201cnot white\u201d at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,459,3601,8,6462,26,820,20],"tags":[29179,29181,29180,29182,3600,26725],"class_list":["post-57171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-history","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-politics","category-religion","category-usa","tag-institute-for-the-study-of-global-antisemitism-and-policy","tag-isgap","tag-isgap-flashpoint","tag-k-gibel-mevorach","tag-katya-gibel-mevorach","tag-the-forward"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57171","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=57171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57172,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57171\/revisions\/57172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}