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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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I think the problem you're having with the terminology here is due to trying to describe a coalition with varied heritages, interests, and purposes as a single group with solidarity.

The most commonly reported ancestries of non-Hispanic White Americans include German (13%), Irish (12%), English (9%), Italian (6%), French (4%), Polish (3%), Scottish (3%), Scots-Irish [Borderers] (2%), and Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and Russian, each (1%) respectively. (Wikipedia)

Add in the Spain-ish whites, German-Mexicans (but not the German-Mexican Jews), Greeks, non-Jewish eastern Europeans, and the Roma, and now you have the entire pale rainbow.

Except the Ashkenazi.

I’d like to see people make noise about how underrepresented the Roma are in the Biden White House, for a change. Or perhaps overrepresented, but we don’t know because those aren’t the stats you wanted to retrieve and publicize.

But I don't know that that's entirely wrong—while various groups did start out more different, over time they assimilated. People complained when the Germans came. People complained when the Irish came. People complained when the Italians came. But there's been plenty of assimilation, and now they're viewed much less distinctly, and became much less distinct.

I'd the Mexicans today got treated like the Germans of the 20th century, they'd be default white within two generations.

That requires brutal suppression of their heritage and language, though.

I’m not 100% sure what point you’re making. European nationalities have had a shared culture for over a thousand years (nota bene: this is not mutually exclusive to unique culture). This is thanks first to Christendom, then to the proliferation of philosophy and music and art and literature. This is obvious when studying history. They are also genetically similar, due to prehistory but also due to genetic proliferation of Celts and Germanics. While Europeans did not define themselves like the Ashkenazi in premodernity as based on bloodline, it is quite silly to allege that European Americans have no shared genetics or culture. So, why would we single our Jewish Americans? Four reasons. (1) They are the group over-represented, and I would be as perturbed if the Irish were as over represented. (2) Absolutely every group but whites put themselves into larger groups, which includes Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. (3) They have their own unique religion, historical culture, (important in their minds) bloodlines, and intensive advocacy networks. (4) When people talk about white privilege, they may mean Jews if going by data, so a cultural correction is in order.

Let me know what you think. I see no argument for why it isn’t justifiable to mention Jewish over-representation when they are obviously their own unique cultural group within a large cultural tent, which any Rabbi would tell you.

The groups you refer to split in a natural way into: Irish, Italian, French, Polish (Catholic) and German, English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish (Protestant). Russians confuse me. There might be some Catholic Germans, but if there are, they know who they are.

A split by ethnic religion would capture the main division, which is between those groups that arrived before the Civil War, and those that arrived after. The latter were poorer and might still be. Hispanic people would join the newcomers if they still are nominally Catholic.