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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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Well, I think the Israeli case is somewhat complicated, because Israel understands itself as the state of 'the Jewish people', and that category is somewhat woolly. 'Jews' as a category includes lots of people who are usually considered white, and also lots of people who are clearly not white.

I wouldn't say Mizrahi Jews are "clearly not white". As with other MENA populations, the 19th century scientific racists, the US census bureau, and model HBD-aware biologists would all consider them a white subgroup.

Ashkenazi-on-Mizrahi racism is a live political issue in Israel, but western anti-racists, even ones looking for an excuse to bash Israel, don't see it as the local Israeli form of white-on-non-white racism. And I'm not seeing western pro-white voices who make the distinction - either they see all Jews as white and love Israel, or they see all Jews as <insert anti-Semitic stereotype> and think Israel is ripping us off. So I think Mizrahi Jews count as "politically white" outside Israel.

In fact, the only people I see claiming Mizrahi Jews as non-white are people trying to disprove the claim that Israel is an ethnostate of a white ethnicity.

The US census considers MENA people white, but I think that if you asked the average competent user of English, "Are Arabs white?", "Are Turks white?", or "Are Iranians white?", they would answer "no", and if so, then I think Mizrahim cannot count as white either.

In general I think the central example of 'white people' is northern and western Europeans. Nowadays I think most people consider Slavs white and consider Italians white, but it starts to get a bit hazy when you ask if, say, Greeks are white. And then Turks or Arabs are definitely not white.

You're free to say that you count them all as white, but I would argue that is a non-standard usage. Mizrahim are, I would say, definitely in the same category as Arabs, Iranians, Turks, and so on, and most people do not consider them white. At the very least, they are not in the same category as northwestern Europeans.

The US census considers MENA people white

This actually hasn't been true for two years now.

OMB accepts the recommendation to create a new minimum reporting category for MENA separate and distinct from the White category, and to revise the White category definition accordingly.

MENA groups and members of the public generally have long voiced the need for a separate MENA minimum category. The 1997 revision to SPD 15 also identified MENA as a topic for further research because there was a lack of public consensus on how to define the category (e. g., shared language, geography) at the time. Since then, Federal agencies have conducted research and stakeholder outreach showing broad public support for the use of the term “Middle Eastern or North African”, and that MENA respondents understand the use of the category and select it when available.

Described further in Part 3 below and consistent with the existing minimum categories, the detailed checkboxes and definition examples for the MENA category were selected to represent the largest population groups in the United States as reported by the 2020 Census. Although several commenters expressed interest in explicitly including Armenian, Somali, or Sudanese, the 2015 NCT found that most respondents who identify as Armenian, Somali, and Sudanese did not select MENA when it was offered. Additional research is needed on these groups to monitor their preferred identification.

The US census considers MENA people white, but I think that if you asked the average competent user of English, "Are Arabs white?", "Are Turks white?", or "Are Iranians white?", they would answer "no", and if so, then I think Mizrahim cannot count as white either.

If you asked them to arrange the groups according to how closely related they are to each other, how far from Europeans do you think an average English speaker would put them, relative to other non-European groups?

I think most people would say that Middle Easterners are closer to Europeans than South or East Asians, Africans, and so on, yes. Arabs are not white, but Arabs are closer to white than Indians or Chinese people.

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