Overreaching on Jewish Whiteness
June 15, 2009 Jewish Community, Race
Half Sigma, a Jewish realist blog, risibly overreaches in his insistence to the affirmative to the JQ, “Are Jews White?”
Half Sigma starts out with a half-truth, noting, “Judaism is a religion and not a race. Jews can be of any race…” This is, in and of itself, true, of course. Judaism is not based or limited to any race. In fact, there is no explicit term for race in the Torah.
But Jews are, to a large degree, a specific people sharing similar genetic code. The reference to The Jews in our liturgy is filled with the mention of “am Yisroel,” or, “the nation of Israel.” Who comprises “the nation” of Israel? The twelve tribes. The convert is a “stranger.” Not the illegal immigrant — the convert.
Half Sigma insists that, “Only white nationalists and Stormfront types insist that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t white.” This is also an exaggeration. As one woman noted to her numerous Jewish friends after a few drinks at a party, “In the U.S., Jews are white.” In the U.S., Jews are white. But in Europe, Jews are not white.
A year ago, Steve Sailer posted a 3-D chart showing how Ashkenazi Jews cluster genetically when compared to other ethnicities, and it’s clear from the chart that Jews are similar to Russians and Western Europeans, and quite dissimilar from Middle Eastern ethnicities such as Druze, Samaritans, and Yemenites.
But Half Sigma is conveniently ignoring the other 3-D graph Sailer posted, which illustrates how far the Jews are from other European genetic clusters.
And then HF offers this jaw dropper:
There are many Jews who, when asked their ethnicity, say that they’re Jewish, but I don’t say that. I tell people I’m half Russian and half Polish. I would encourage more Jews to identify themselves that way.
Now Half-Sigma has revealed the spurious root of his argument. Half Sigma isn’t a Russian and he isn’t a Pole. Just ask the Russians, or better, the Poles.
Culturally, a good case study is the German-Jewish colony on the west side of Washington Heights. Those Orthodox Jews that received refuge considered themselves German. But the grandchildren consider their ancestors from Germany.
More incontrovertibly, Half Sigma, who talks like a race realist, ignores that Poles share a genetic code…a genetic code that the Jews in Poland did not share in any significant way. But when it comes to the Jews, then suddenly having lived in Poland makes them Poles forever more? If so, then how is genetic code of any serious consequence to Half Sigma? He may as well join the “race is a social construct” camp with that one.
Ashkenazi Jews appear to be in between Middle Eastern and European people. It isn’t helpful to anyone to pretend you are something you aren’t, or come from somewhere that you don’t. Especially to yourself.
We are who we are.
10 comments
It’s impossible to convert to an ethnicity.
Jews consider themselvess white in the sense that their skin IS white, and a different skin color gives more of a sense of “otherness” than some other differences. On the other hand, most jews I know do belong t othe race is a social construct camp. Including me.
mohammed, the “race is a social construct camp” becomes untenable when the differences are stark and obvious. It sounds nice when discussing provisionally white or mixed people, but it just doesn’t add up when comparing starkly different peoples.
Then again, I guess if we are talking about Jews who belong to “the universe is literally less than 6,000 years old” and “macro-evolution never happened,” they will believe whatever they want to believe.
The “other” Steve Sailer chart is one I wasn’t previously familiar with. I had always heard Ashkenazi are most closely related to Greeks and Armenians (“other” makes it look like they are closest to Italians, Germans, and Germans, but Armenians aren’t on there).
In any case, “white” is a pretty broad term. You want a more specific term, use “Eurowhite”. That’s what I advise. Arabs, Hindustanis, etc. are arguably “white” too, but that is because my (perhaps eccentric) definition of “white” is pretty much the same as “Caucasoid”, i.e., a big racial area of which natives of the Caucasus are the middle.
For Jews to be an ethnic group, I would think Sephardim and Ashkenazim, at least, should be more closely related to each other than they are too Spaniards, Arabs, Poles, etc.. Whether or not this is true, I don’t know, but yesterday I would have guessed, “Definitely not!”, i.e., that the
Sephardim:Spaniard difference < Sephardim:other Jews
Ashkenazim:Polish/Lithuanian difference < Ashkenazim:other Jews
etc.
Just to muddy the waters further…. Technically I don't know if these guys consider themselves “white nationalist”, but they have some opinions on the subject that might be a surprise. (Everyone on that thread is in agreement, I think.) In any case I bet Half Sigma isn’t thinking about them.
Dear Kvetcher:
I appreciate what you are trying to argue, but I think that you are mistaken, as I will shortly explain. The second Sailer figure is really figure 1b from the European-American study by Tian et al. Plos Genetics 4(1) 29-39.
http://www.plosgenetics.org/ar.....en.0040004
The way one is supposed to read these principal component plots is to look at the axes separately. This follows from the statistical framework used to separate the principal components. In essence, these are procedures for simplifying multivariate data with minimum loss of information. This is why when interpreting these graphs, each axis should be read independently. For more details consult a recent textbook on human population genetics or the relevant section from Cavalli-Sforza’s magnum opus, the History and Georgraphy of Human Genes. There are two major findings from this figure. The first is when restricting the analysis to the X-axis, (the first principal component) there is a clear north-south gradient. For example in this figure, reading from left to right, one finds the Irish, the British, the Scandinavians, the Dutch and the Germans all containing negative values on the X-Axis. Next, there are the Spanish with an X-axis value of roughly 0. Finally, there are the remaining southern populations including Italians and Greeks and Jews who all have positive values on the X-Axis. This is thus a clean linear progression on this axis from the Irish all the way to the Jews which roughly corresponds to a north-south progression.
The second major finding is the surprising one. When examining the y-axis, the second principal component, places the Jewish population within the NORTHERN cluster together with the Irish, British, Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans all with mainly positive values on the X-Axis. The Spanish, one German, and some Italians have intermediate values on the axis, and most Italians and Greeks have more negative values comprising an apparent southern cluster. It is this differential in the y-axis which sets the Jewish population off from the other populations so dramatically in the figure. Once again, this does not mean that Jews don’t lie within the genetic variation of a European cluster, but that they surprisingly appear with the Northern as opposed to the Southern populations. The authors actually address this surprising finding in the discussion section. They write on p. 36 of the paper, “the current results differ from previous studies in defining a northern European axis that was critically important in the case control analyses [23]. The relationship between the population groups was consistent when analysis was restricted to “northern” European population groups. As discussed further below, when more disparate populations are examined (including different “southern” populations) E.G. THE JEWISH POPULATION] these relationships are not as clearly defined (see Figure 2). Thus, differences in these results compared to other studies can in part be attributed to both inclusion of different population groups and perhaps complex relationships reflecting different population origins that includes migration, admixture, and isolation.”
Finally, because this study does not include adjacent populations from the Middle East, it is impossible to say with certainly where various Middle Eastern populations would fall within this figure.
Other studies have shown that Jews fall within the parameters of European genetic variation. See for example figures 3, 4 and 7 from Bauchet et al., Am J. of Human Genetics 80:948-956 (2007). The article is available free on the internet.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.g.....obtype=pdf
There has unfortunately been only one paper that included both European populations and Middle Eastern populations in a detailed autosomal study consisting of many thousands of SNPs. There were earlier studies that examined Jews within the context of other Middle Eastern populations but they typically only examined the y-chromosome or the mitochondrial DNA which together only captures a fraction of the total genetic information. The new autosomal study which includes Europeans, Jews and other Middle Eastern populations was published this year by Need et al. Here is the URL:
http://genomebiology.com/2009/10/1/R7
Figure three is the relevant Principal Component plot and as you can see there are two primary clusters. The first consists of the sampled European populations, the Adygei and the Jews. An intermediate cluster consisting of the Druze lies roughly midway between the European Cluster and the “Middle Eastern” cluster. This “Middle Eastern” cluster consists essentially of Palestinians and Beduin. It should be pointed out that these clusters may be slightly or even greatly altered by the inclusion of more representative samples from this region, e.g. from Turkey, Armenia, Lebanon, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Yemen etc.
It certainly appears that there is a tendency within the Jewish cluster towards the Druze intermediate population, but one need not resort to advanced statistical cluster analysis such as optimum allocation to infer Jewish placement in the first cluster consisting of the European populations and the Adygei.
In conclusion, one should adequately examine the literature rather than rely on popularizers like Steve Sailer to identify and interpret genetic information. Likewise, a report of a new medical finding in the popular press such as the New York Times should be taken with a grain of salt before the original study is examined together with relevant previously published findings.
Simple solution: distinguish Judaism (religion) from Hebrew (ethnicity) to end the confusion once and for all.
Judaism is a religion.
Hebrew is a race.
Not all Jews are Hebrew.
Not all Hebrews are Jews.
Simple.
Ben, you can’t divide so cleanly, because Jewish texts intertwine the two.
Hmmm … not to speak for Ben, but I think it may be a good idea to start using these historical synonyms as non-synonyms. Sort of like the way Communist and socialist started meaning different things in the mid-19th Century. I wouldn’t go so far as to Hebrews are a race … they certainly were 2000 years ago.
Let’s ask (and I’m not sure of the answers myself) – is anyone ever described as converting to Semitism, or having “become Hebrew”? I don’t think so. That implies that there is some tendency to treat these terms as not-quite-synonymous. (On the other hand, no one would question the meaning of “the Hebrew faith”.)
There’s nothing wrong with terms being ambiguous, but it would be a lot easier for those of us who don’t like endless debates if things were a little more cut-and-dried.
Half-Sigma has a reluctant relationship with the truth. He likes making pronouncements, but often fails to defend them (he likes hiding behind the “delete comment” button).
I consider myself a moderate ethnic nationalist (of the WASP persuasion), ethno-patriot, what have you. But, I long considered myself a white nationalist and here’s my shorthand take on “are Jews white?”:
1) If you consider the question to be a purely genetic one, and employ a relatively broad definition that includes southern Italians, Greeks, etc., then yes, Jews are white. This explains the typical HBD-er position that Jews are white.
2) White nationalism isn’t simply about genetics, it’s about genetics, history, culture, politics, etc. (This is part of why I stopped calling myself a WN; the name encourages confusion) In this context, it makes perfect sense for WNs to exclude Jews from whiteness on several grounds:
A) Jews already have an ethnicity. A man cannot serve two masters.
B) Jews don’t really consider themselves white. They’re white when it serves their purposes, but Jews when it does not. E.g., white guilt doesn’t apply to Jews. As Steve Sailer has noted, Jewish guilt and white guilt are opposites. Mike Wallace tacitly agreed when he interviewed Morgan Freeman; they were discussing race-relations and Freeman said Wallace was white, and Wallace replied “I’m Jewish” (several times) by way of denial.
C) Jews already have an ethnostate. They have a seat at the table already, and no need to take the one we’re building for ourselves.
D) Jews and whites (in the sense the term is used by WNs) have strong conflicts of interest. Jews lead the vanguard opposing WNism, Euro ethnic nationalism, etc., and Jewry as a whole (organized Jewry in particular) is vehemently opposed to WNism.
E) Jews are, frankly, way better at this sort of thing than whites, and have a long history of crypsis and subversion. WNs welcoming Jews into their ranks is a spectacularly bad idea to every WN paying attention.
The bottom line is, groups have a right to define themselves, and WNs overwhelmingly define Jews out. Attempts to deny our right to do so are obviously supremist and hostile in nature.
Again, this is part of why I call myself an ethnic nationalist, which I think is more clear, and explains why I don’t include Armenians, Iranians, Jews, etc., in my definition of “us.”
Obviously, answer “C” is where we will have conflict — since I am both 1) a Diasporist who 2) doubt the viability of Israel long-term and 3) have no interest in a white ethno-state in the U.S.
Other than that, I see no reason for WNs to accept Jews into their ranks, or for Jews to want to join WN movements or demand they be accepted.
I think a very different case can be made for realistic and fair policies, of course, and whites are the ones who today are being discriminated against.
First of all “WE JEWS ARE NOT WHITE.’” W e didn’t ever start in europe we start in north africa so that means we when up not down i mean come on now. so that means you can be trulycall your self white and be jewish and the most important thing is there is no jewish race any more theres just identifying and living
to the fullest an thats all we can do as jews so you people need to stop trying to put us in these boxes it makes no sense. And for the record the most likely closely related people would be from
north africa, middle east and the mediterranean. so it does not come from germany, poland, russia, sweden ect. Thank you/Toda raba
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