#white passing ≠ white

[squidgirlautism]

tbh pre Oct.7 I would have responded to the “are there white Jews” question with “its complicated” but now my answer is just simply “no”

[klanced]

can we start placing bets about the live action voltron movie. everyone download draftkings right now

[thirdtimed]

still figuring out how to draw them

[hercarisntyours]

[cryptidmickle]

hough save me gay yaoi

[rainedropsart]

Cassie Sandsmark they could never make me hate you. Even if they’re trying. Really hard

Also idk if Greta and Cassie were technically roommates at Saint Elias’s but who else would it be. They’re buddies. Bonds forged in Yj are unbreakable unfortunately

[maidservant-hecubus]

My father is an Ashkenazi Jew. His parents were first generation Americans. Their parents escaped the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and came to find their American dream. They fought in wars and opened businesses and assimilated and my generation barely has a few words of Yiddish between us. My mother is as much of a WASP as it gets. American Revolutionaries and Signers and some household name civil war feature players. Not old money, but old America and undoubtedly white. I'm patrilineal. Not a Jew to a lot of Jews. Not a Jew to a lot of my Jewish family. Even though i was raised Jewish. Even though I look like my father. Even though i got enough of something in my DNA to get asked "What are you?" more often than not. More often than I'm just accepted at face value as "white". When i was little we lived in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. Like the 5-10 kids in every family sort of Irish catholic neighborhood. The kids calling me a christ killer and refusing to play with me because they heard it from their parents sort of irish catholic neighborhood. For some reason my parents tried to send me to the catholic school down the street. I lasted less than a week because i didn't understand their rituals and their language and they found out my father was a Jew and they couldn't have a christ killer in their midst. I was just sad i didn't get to wear the cute plaid skirt anymore. So i went to the public school and my well meaning shiksa mother who never converted but learned the Chanukah prayers and helped cook Seder dinners came to the school to teach the class about Chanukah. She taught them songs and all the kids got dreidels and had so much fun spinning the top for chocolate coins. It was nice to feel normal. A few weeks later a boy in a higher grade attacked me on the way to the bus and smashed my art project (we had made pig noses from solo cups to celebrate reading charlotte's web) into my face and called me a filthy jew. I didn't understand, i was more upset to lose the project i was so proud of. Other things happened. Things I wont talk about because putting them in context would doxx me. But a million reminders that i wasn't one of them. I wasn't welcome because i was Jewish. My parents divorced. My mother left. Far away so I'd only see her a handful of times growing up. And I went to live with my Dad in a city that seemed like it was overflowing with Jews. Everyone knew my holidays! In public school the teachers looked like my family and had familiar sounding names. We had the high holy days off just like christmas or easter. We sang Chanukah songs in the winter recital and nobody's mom had to come teach them to the class. Finally I belonged! My friends and cousins started planning for their b mitzvah celebrations and i asked for my own. I asked to go to hebrew school so i could be more like the people i belonged with and celebrate the things i loved about myself and them. "But you're not jewish." My father would say. This was news to me. The christ killer. The filthy jew. But a 10 year old has little power over their lives. So i didn't go. I didn't have a bat mitzva while my cousins had theirs. It was okay because i still belonged more than i ever had. But i was still jewish enough to keep the holidays and pray and fast and get sent with a box of matzo to my WASP grandmothers for easter, and have matzo packed in my lunch to eat in AP algebra in 7th grade and get asked if I'm a "Yid" by the teacher. And still to this day not know if it was endearment or insult but by then I knew even in this magical city being a Jew wasn't always safe. in highschool I tried to take hebrew lessons with a friend in a similar situation as me. She was also hungry to reconnect. I don't remember why the classes or the friendship fell through, but they did. My next "friend", a goy raised catholic from another neighborhood, liked to accuse me of being money driven when i picked up a penny on the sidewalk or tried to ask who was going to pay for the zine's she wanted to publish.

 "What are you?" I'd get asked a lot on the street by curious strangers, "Where are you from?" "Are you Italian?" Always Italian. I never really understood that, but its become code in my head for "You look like you're white but something about you is very not white and I just can't place it, so Italian seems safe and polite." I'm not here to unpack the Italian part of all that. I don't even know what I'm unpacking for myself by writing this except I've been sick for days and I'm so tired and this is all that my foggy brain can wrap itself around. Later I'm an adult and on my own and getting bloodwork done. The Nurse is a black woman and so sweet to me. She can tell I'm nervous about the needles because I've already stumbled through my apologies for my herd to find veins. So she distracts me with small talk. Where do i live? I tell her. She looks worried for me. Tells me that it used to be a nice neighborhood before white people took it over and she warns me like she's my own mother to be careful because they aren't safe. I doublecheck the skin she's putting a needle into. Whatever she sees isn't white. I love her for it. For a moment I belong there with her. She doesn't ask what I am or where i'm from, but she knows what i'm not. I'm the only one keeping the holidays with my family. We celebrate Passover because I go home to my fathers and cook the dinner and print out the Haggadah and lead the Seder to the tune of my drunk catholic stepmother eating my food and telling me i'll never be a jew. She's more of a jew than I'll ever be because she grew up in a jewish neighborhood and her friends were all jews and she married a jew and i was just playing pretend. I stopped going home for holidays and they stopped observing anything except Christmas. I marry a goy. "Is he a jew?" is the first thing my father asks and he's disappointed when i say no. He's abusive, i run. I end up living in the attic of this older old money WASP couple who need a live in house sitter. They're pillars of their church and they know someone from the WASP side of my family very well and its a funny coincidence and they think i belong there. I know from their divest from Israel bumper stickers that i don't. Then they find out I consider myself Jewish and i see the light in their eyes die and its replaced by something hard and disappointed. Now, while writing this, i can laugh about being the jew in someone's attic. But then, it was only a few months after that they started coming up with excuses for why I needed to move out. I did, their excuses never manifested into reality. I got married again. A jew this time! a Jewish medical professional liek grandma always wanted. She's a convert and her ex was a rabbinical student. I think maybe i'm home finally. She has to understand. I'm not Jewish enough for her. We don't keep holidays at home because i'm not a jew. I cry every year when pesach comes and goes and i haven't recited the plagues or eaten matzo piled high with horseradish. She insists on putting up a christmas tree. She turns abusive. I run.

I'm alone now and no longer in that magic jewish city. I'm far away and surrounded by mega churches and cows and the bagels suck and people quote the bible at me like some call and response that i don't have the cheat code for and I don't belong here at all but i'm finally finally free to light my menorah and recite the plagues and study torah with the group i found here on tumblr who love and accept me even though i'm patrilineal. Oct. 7th happened a few weeks after I moved here. I worry about my family back home and i think no one will look for Jews here among the cows and mega churches, so I can be a safe place for them to run if things get bad again. But i still don't fit in here. I don't look right. The last name I have now is common here and too white for whatever people see when they look in my face. I get interrogated about it a lot. But i learned quickly how to smile and say "have a blessed day". I hide my menorah when maintenance comes to work on my apartment. I flew home last month. Just for a visit. I've never been away from home this far or this long. And I'm the type that covers nerves and anxiety with chattiness, so at the airport i made a for-now-friend while we both waited for the plane to board. She's Puerto Rican. We talk about our lives. Our families. Her twin sister and i go by the same nickname and so we're family now. We talk about food. So much food and how much we love cooking and how important food was at home. "Are you Italian?" she asks as we're stepping through the hatch into the plane. Why always Italian? I wonder for the millionth time in my life. And I freeze up for a moment between fighting my carry-on over the gap and terror that I'm about to see the light go out behind her eyes and i'll lose this for-now friend. "No," i laugh but its not a real laugh and i see the concern in her face as we squeeze through the aisle because she can hear the apprehension in my voice, "I'm Jewish." And something strange happened because her face lit up and she smiled and said "No way?! You guys have GREAT food!"

[matan4il]

Every single time I hear someone referring to a Jewish person as ‘white’ another little piece of my soul dies.

As a non-American Jew, the first time I ever heard Jews being referred to as white was when I was a full grown adult watching an American reality show. I FOR REAL thought they were making that shit up in order to generate buzz and get people talking about the controversy! That’s how foreign the notion was to me. Imagine my shock and horror to discover that THIS IS A COMMON MISCONCEPTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

It’s the way that referring to Jews as ‘white’ ERASES white people’s antisemitism, it erases our persecution at the hands of white people, it erases our suffering, it erases the OTHERING that Jews had suffered for CENTURIES from actual white people.

Based on what the skin tone of some Jews in a few places might afford them SO LONG AS NO ONE KNOWS THEY’RE JEWISH.

If you have to hide your real identity in order to enjoy the privileges of being perceived as white, YOU’RE NOT WHITE (this is true for Jews just like it is true for other white-passing People of Color).

White passing is not the same as white.

WHITE PASSING IS NOT THE SAME AS WHITE.

Jews are NOT white. Not a single one of us. Not even the ones who can pass as white, let alone all of the Jews who can’t.

[brown-spider]

Lightskin Gwen edits by Mudp4wzz on twitter

"South African" Gwanda real 💯

[squidgirlautism]

okay I don’t mean to be rude but I saw your post about Jewish people being white and I’m confused both by what you said and the fact that the question is being asked. Like surely whether jewish people are white depends on the Jewish person in question, some of whom surely are and some of whom aren’t? Like just going through life I’ve met jewish people who were polish blondes and jewish people who were visibly middle eastern. Who is possibly asking you if white Jewish people exist? And why on earth would the answer be no?

there’s a lot to unpack here but I’m going to start with your last questions. the world and the interweb are vast places and people from all corners of the political spectrum itch to place Jews into boxes and use the (american-centric tbh) framework of race to categorize. since the Jewish people existed before the concept of race, we simply do not fit. we are a West Asian diaspora population that has historically *never* been treated as white, and we are only sometimes white because we are a “model minority” and generally only called white by the left, where white=oppressor. it is also a (poor) attempt to “atone” for the holocaust and all the violence Jews have faced.

with that out of the way, why cant Jews be white? there are pale skinned and blonde Jews after all. while there are Jews who pass as white and many who pass as something entirely different (ie East Asian, Black), the moment they are recognized as a Jew, that is all they are. It does not matter what you look like when you are recognized as Jewish, and all privileges you may have had by not being recognized as one is gone. on top of that, “passing” Jews are often under more scrutiny because they “tricked” others into believing that they were not a Jew. being white passing will not save you from being a Jew and the baggage it comes with.

whiteness is part of assimilation as well, as Irish and Italians and Catholics in America were not white. In Europe, it was/is a similar concept. Once they assimilated into it they could be (ie Kennedy) but Judaism, at its core, does not assimilate. as an ethnic religion (meaning, only the ethnic group can practice the religion (yes converts become ethnic Jews)) originating in the Middle East, with all of our traditions related to the levant specifically, unless you insist that the white appearing Arabs and other SWANA groups are white, calling Jews white is a double standard.

race is more than skin color and it is a social construct that is based on privilege—and Jews are not privileged. Jews have not ever been white until the left needed us to be so we fit their narrative that only whites are oppressors, and the right never has and never will see Jews as white. people like the Syrian Nazi’s use it to deny that Jews are a people that come from the levant, because obviously “white” people can’t be from the Middle East and are liars (if this sounds like a dogwhistle, it’s because it is; replacement theory and Jews being liars)

tldr white Jews can’t exist because the moment they are a Jew, all whiteness they may have had is lost.

[sasudou]

the real reason fyodor wanted to go to prison with dazai is because he wanted a japanese tutor

[aesdi]

the tragedy of James and Mary Sunderland is one of the most heartbreaking and (most importantly) human stories I’ve ever had the joy in witnessing

[macksartblock]

I drew this on break bc I couldn’t get it out of my head

[lovelylunas-world]

THIS WHITE MAN TELLING SOUTH AFRICA ABOUT APARTHEID TRYING TO SHAME SOUTH AFRICA ALMOST LIKE THE PEOPLE DIDNT LIVE THROUGH IT.

MIND YOU A WHITE BRITISH MAN!

[curiousxdesires]

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[uncanny-tranny]

Quick tip: If a trans passing guide is focused on thinness, whiteness, or getting rid of anything about yourself that is "too clockable" (regardless of if that thing about yourself makes you happy), maybe it isn't worth fretting about, since it is clearly coming from a homogenized idea of what passing looks like