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Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris, posted a photo on Twitter celebrating the Jewish American Heritage Month.
I counted, give or take, 155 Jewish Staff Members. There are 474 White House Staff Members in total, meaning that Jews comprise 32% of all staff members. This is a radical over-representation of 1400%, or 14x what should be expected given the population of 2.2%. As everyone pictured is White, presumably this really is a photo with all the Jewish staff members who wanted to participate in the event (otherwise: why no black staffers present?). There may be some not pictured for various work-related or personal reasons, and perhaps some with Jewish spouses pictured. I had difficulty finding the figures on other demographics. According to an authoritative source, 14% of the staff are Black (this just happens to be the same number and is not a typo). I could find nothing on Asian members, but perusing the total list of White House Staff names I calculated give or take 50 with exclusively Asian names; this should be construed as a minimum because of high exogamy rates and names not always being obviously Asian. That puts Asians at 10.5%. Given that Black people sit at 14%, I would go out on a limb and say that the Latino constituents also comprise roughly their makeup in America; let’s peg it at a slightly lower 15% (if someone wants to check from the list of staffers’ names be my guest).
All of this puts the non-Jewish White percent at 28.5%, counting the Turkish and Arab names as White (and ignoring the probably ~2% Native American that Joe slipped in there). And so, among White House staffers, Whites are quite under-represented and Jews are enormously over-represented. This is problematic IMO, because the domestic founding population of a nation shouldn’t be so under-represented, and a single ethnic cluster with a strong activism network and their own influential nation state probably shouldn’t be 14x over-represented among White House staffers without anyone in established media criticizing or noticing. Alas, such topics have been posted frequently, but in previous cases the over-representation was among Cabinet Members and Supreme Court Justices and so on. This shows that even in a large sample size such as 474, the over-representation remains. If I could put my position into as few words as possible, I would steal from a random tweet on the subject: “Half of the White House staff is Jewish, but we get told that ‘White Supremacists’ run America lol.” What pains me is that while the default white Americans are so under-represented, they are the ones who face the most ruthless black propaganda against their demographic. It’s important to educate others on the problem of representation, I suppose.
I dislike the whole premise of this post. The phrase “default white Americans” is a categorization I’d wholeheartedly reject, as a supposedly positive variation of the Chinese robber fallacy hinted to be synonymous with “volk”. I assume most of the Jewish staffers are “default Jewish Americans” and the Black staffers are “default Black Americans,” absent any further info. “Americans who chose to be American by legal immigration” is a much more meaningful category.
“Jewish” and “white” also need some breakdown. Alexander Vindman, central to one impeachment of Trump, was a Soviet citizen at birth, to a Jewish family in Kiev (at the time). Without any of that knowledge, I’d think him one of your “default white Americans”.
I’m an American by birth and default choice in a land which accepts all comers. I care less about underrepresentation by bodies like mine and more about hearts and minds like mine. I want Allen West as President, David Mamet as White House speechwriter, Thomas Sowell as head of the Fed, and so-called Ultra-Orthodox Jews on the Supreme Court bench.
Nobody born outside of the country can ever be a default white American, they can only be a foreigner immigrant. I'd you want to be a default white American, you need both parents born in the country, and ideally at least three grandparents.
I'd apply the same qualifier to the default black American: both parents born in the country, and at least 3/4 grandparents.
But let's be real. You know what the phrase means, you just don't like the group it describes.
I am the group it describes. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, in the New England Puritan wave, in the Pennsylvania Dutch wave, and whenever the Scottish (not Scots-Irish) came over. I drink cow milk and eat wheat and cheese with zero side effects.
What I don’t like is that “white” carries more weight than “American” for my political rivals, and hate that it’s carrying that weight for the enemies of my enemies.
No. And this is an important point. You phrased it this way to sound witty, but for most people on this Earth it is a statement much more meaningful than you can imagine.
Being «the group» is a real feeling. You are not the group, you're just some descendant. You are incapable of comprehending the sense of being «the group». Your idea of being part of an ethnic group is atrophied to the point you believe it's about some historical record and food compatibility; not white-hot rage and bestial frothing at the mouth when it's criticized by an alien, not exhilaration at the sight of «your» men fucking «their» women (and this soft of sentiment is absolutely what the in-group preference of the majority of humankind entails). You are a team sports creature: the whole evolutionary gimmick of your «group» is being demonstrably lukewarm toward one's kin and creating moral communities bound by abstract verbal premises; and you personally are extreme in this regard.
This is a solid tactic so long as the group's morals endorse genocide, subjugation and discrimination against neighboring peoples. Not so much when you become civilized and welcome people smarter, more tribal and more loquacious than you into your polity, to have them warp your childishly simple good-faith agreements and underdefined premises into whatever they need at the moment.
Just the other day I was watching that congressional session with Altman and looked up Sen. Blumenthal. On the whole, I liked him more than I expected, both in the hearing and in terms of his policies. But, of course, he's a man of the Tribe:
I don't care about Palestinians or Israelis. But why can't Americans encourage boycotts against an illegal occupation in the Middle East? And why do people with such priorities get to decide whether Americans can have guns or GPUs?
Largely because he is a group and you lot are not. You are merely a dispersed biological population.
You do not belong to a tribe. You are born to signal being your own man, because this was rewarded in the ancestral environment. But it's not rewarded any more. Your moral community firmware is obsolete and executing it will be increasingly denied to you.
Then again, this is just evolution at work. If your elite sees any point to preservation efforts, maybe some of you will exist in a hundred years in a way that would matter.
Oof. As much as I enjoy your razor-sharp insight, it cuts deep because it is true. I have eschewed grouping myself with my biogroup because of the ugliness of those who do. In doing so I have consciously denied a power to be grasped.
For separate reasons, I still strive for something more excellent, the coming of the kingdom of God, which brings all the lost children of Noah into one great family. I could be paranoid about the originators of my faith being Jewish, but I think that blackpill is poison.
Christianity is interesting on ethnic groups.
The Jewish people were obviously their own ethnic group, but one thread found in Acts and several of the epistles is the broadening of that to all nations. See Ephesians, for example:
Ethnic tribalism is antithetical to Christianity, at least at this point in redemptive history.
It is the household of God, as the quote I put ends, that we should identify with instead.
Touching on your comment, @DuplexFields, I suppose I don't see why Christ's Judaism is a problem.
One of my dad’s favorite jokes goes something like this: Two men from the same small town, an African-American Baptist pastor and a Scots-Irish Presbyterian minister, were good friends. Sometimes when they had lunch together, the subject turned to whether Jesus was Black or white. The arguments got heated on occasion, and one day on their way home from a conference, the two men were arguing the topic when they died together in a car accident. On their way up to Heaven, one turned to the other and said, “I guess now we’ll find out who was right all along.” Finally, they floated up through the topmost cloud. Saint Peter asked their names, checked the book, nodded, and let them in. Immediately they beheld a glorious figure approaching. They squinted because of the brightness of the light as their new eyes started adjusting. It was clearly Jesus, but they couldn’t quite make out His features. He opened His arms wide, and in a big, booming voice, said "Buenos dias, amigos!"
The Logos, the second person of the Trinity, ineffable and infinite mind of God, devised a perfect plan outside of spacetime before He created the world. As part of that plan, God chose the people descended from Abraham the faithful, Isaac the obedient, and Jacob the trickster as His priesthood here on Earth, and also as the wetware which would house the human mind of the Son of God. That man, Jesus of Nazareth, was superbly Jewish in all three ways: by genetic descent, by His religion, and by culture. The God of Christianity is inseparable from Judaism, and that’s how He had always planned it. This is not a problem for me and my faith.
People who care a bit much about “the Jewish question” one way or the other are usually atheists or have some twisted religious beliefs about blood and/or covenants. I have some opinions on why God did it that way, but this really isn’t the thread for it.
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But that quote and the philosophy behind it is about a future happy hunting ground with no connection to this world. Saying the great hope is that you’ll be in heaven is abandoning this world and your responsibility to and for this world.
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Is this quote supposed to inspire hope, or further bitterness and derision?
"But consider this: if I lied to you, then you won't get everything I promised! Wouldn't you be better served to keep believing me instead?"
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