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Introduction

Recently, I have been seeing people say that Ashkenazi Jews (AJs) are not white. Some may say that Jews “pretend to be white”, so they can accomplish their “group goals” (like pitting whites and blacks against each other in an attempt to sow racial strife, due to their ethnic nepotism due to their genetic similarity). I have also seen people deriding Jews for saying “I’m white” and then finding an instance of them saying “I’m Jewish” (see here for an example), as if that’s a contradiction, but it’s not. It’s the same thing as saying “I’m Italian… I’m white” or “I’m German… I’m white.” But since pluralism about race is true, there could be some contexts and places that Jews aren’t white, due to the social construction of racial identities. However, in the American context it is quite clear: In both historical and contemporary thought in America, AJs are white.

But a claim like this, then, raises an important question: If AJs are not white, then what race are they? This is a question I will answer in this article, and I will of course show that AJs are indeed white in an American conception of race. Using Quayshawn Spencer’s racial identity argument, I will assume that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t white, and then I will argue that this leads to a contradiction, so Jews must be white. And while there was discussion about the racial status of Jews after they began emigrating to America through Ellis Island, I will show that Jews arrived to America as whites.

White or not?

The question of whether or not AJs are white is a vexing one. Of course, AJs are a religious group. However, this doesn’t mean that they themselves have their own specific racial category. It’s like if one says they are German, or Italian, or British. Those are mere ethnicities which make up the white racial group. One study found that AJs have “White privilege vis-á-vis persons of color. This privilege, however, is limited to Jews who can “pass” as White gentiles” (Blumenfeld, 2009). Jews that can “pass as white” are obviously white, and there is no other race for them to be.

This is due to the social nature of race. Since race is a social construct, then the way people’s racial background is perceived in America is based on how they look (their phenotype). An Ashkenazi Jew saying “I’m Jewish. I’m white” isn’t a contradiction, since AJs aren’t a race. It’s just like saying “I’m Italian. I’m white” or “I’m German. I’m white.” It’s quite obviously an ethnic group which is a part of the white race. Jews are white and whites are a socialrace.

This discussion is similar to the one where it is claimed that “Hispanic/Latino/Spanish” aren’t white. But that, too, is a ridiculous claim. In cluster studies, HLSs don’t have their own cluster, but they cluster near the group where their majority ancestry derives (Risch et al, 2002). Saying that AJs aren’t white is similar to this.

But during WWII, Jews were persecuted in Nazi German and eventually some 6 million Jews were killed. Jews, in this instance, were seen as a socialrace in Germany, and so they were themselves racialized. It has been shown that Germans who grew up under their Nazi regime are much more anti-Semitic than Germans who were born before or after the Nazi regime, and it was Nazi schooling which contributed to this the most (Voigtlander and Voth, 2015). This shows how one’s beliefs—and that of a whole society’s—are malleable along with how effective propaganda is. The Nuremberg laws of 1935 established anti-Jewish sentiment in the Nazi racial state, and so they had to have a way to identify Jews. They settled on the religious affiliation of one’s 4 grandparents as a way to identify Jews. But when one’s origins were in doubt, the Reich Kinship Office was deployed in order to ascertain one’s genealogy. But in the event this could not be done, one’s physical attributes would be assessed and compared to 120 physical measures between the individual and their parents (Rupnow, 2020: 373-374).

This can now be centered on Whoopi Goldberg’s divisive comment from February, 2022, where she states that the attempted genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany “wasn’t about race“, but it was about “man’s inhumanity to man; [it involved] two groups of white people.” Of course Goldberg is operating under an American conception of race, so I could see why she would say that. However, at the time in Nazi Germany, Jews were Racialized Others, and so they were a socialrace in Germany.

Per Pew, most Jews in America identify as white:

92% of U.S. Jews describe themselves as White and non-Hispanic, while 8% say they belong to another racial or ethnic group. This includes 1% who identify as Black and non-Hispanic; 4% who identify as Hispanic; and 3% who identify with another race or ethnicity – such as Asian, American Indian or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander – or with more than one race.

A super majority (94%) of American Jews are (and identify as) white and non-“Hispanic” in Pew’s 2013 research, which is down slightly from the 2020 research (Lugo et al, 2013):

AJs were viewed as white even as early as 1790 when the Naturalization Act was put into law, which stated that only free white persons were allowed to emigrate to America (Tanner, 2021). Even in 1965, Srole (1965) stated that “Jews are white.” But the perception that all Jews are white came after WWII (Levine-Rasky, 2020) and this claim is of course false. All Jews certainly aren’t white, but some Jews are white. Thus, even historically in the history of America, AJs were seen as white. Yang and Koshy (2016) write:

We found no evidence from U.S. censuses, naturalization legislation, and court cases that the racial categorization of some non-Anglo-Saxon European immigrant groups such as the Irish, Italians, and Jews changed to white. They were legally white and always white, and there was no need for them to switch to white.

…

White ethnics could be considered ethnically inferior and discriminated against because of their ethnic distinctions, but in terms of race or color, they were all white and had access to resources not available to nonwhites.

It was precisely because of the changing meanings of race that “the Irish race,” “the German race,” “the Dutch race,” “the Jewish race,” “the Italian race,” and so on changed their races and became white. In today’s terminology, it should be read that these European groups changed their ethnicities to become part of whites, or more precisely they were racialized to become white.

…

Our findings help resolve the controversy over whether certain U.S. non-Anglo-Saxon European immigrant groups became white in historical America. Our analysis suggests that “becoming white” carries different meanings: change in racial classification, and change in majority/minority status. In terms of the former, “becoming white” for non-Anglo-Saxon European immigrant groups is bogus. Hence, the argument of Eric Arnesen (2001), Aldoph Reed (2001), Barbara Fields (2001), and Thomas Guglielmo (2003) that the Irish, Italians, and Jews were white on arrival in America is vindicated.

But one article in The Forward argued that “Ashkenazi Jews are not functionally white.” The author (Danzig) attempts to make an analogy between the founder of the NAACP Walter White who was “white-passing” (both of his parents were born into slavery) and Jews who are “white-passing”, “due to years of colonialism, expulsion and exile in European lands.” The author then claims that as along as Jews maintain their unique Jewish identity, they therefore are a racial group. This article is a response to another which claims that Ashkenazi Jews are” functionally white” (Burton). Danzig discusses Button’s claim that a “white-passing ‘Latinx'” person could be deported if their immigration status is discovered. This of course implies that “Hispanics” are themselves a racial group (they aren’t). Danzig discusses the discrimination that his family went through in the 1920s, stating that they could do certain things because they were Jewish. The argument in Danzig’s article, I think, is confused. It’s confused because just because Jews were discriminated against in the past doesn’t mean they weren’t white. In fact, Jews, Italians, and the Irish were white on arrival to the United States (Steward, 1964; Yang and Koshy, 2016). But this doesn’t mean that they didn’t face discrimination. That is, Jews, Italians and the Irish didn’t change to white they were always legally white in America. (But see Gardaphe, 2002, Bisesi, 2017, Baddorf, 2020, and Rubin, 2021. Italians didn’t become white as those authors claim, they were white upon arrival). So Danzig’s claim fails—Jews are functionally white because they are white and they arrived in America as white. Claims to the contrary that AJs (and Italians and the Irish) became white are clearly false.

So despite claims that Jews became white after WWII, Jews are in fact white in America (Pearson and Geronimus, 2011). Of course in the early 1900s as immigrants were arriving to Ellis Island, the question of whether or not Jews (“Hebrews” in this instance) were white or even if they were their own racial group had a decent amount of discussion at the time (Goldstein, 2005; Pearlman, 2018). The fact that there was ethnic strife between new-wave immigrants to Ellis Island doesn’t entail that they were racial groups or that those European immigrants weren’t white. It’s quite clear that Jews—like italians and the Irish—were considered white upon arrival.

Now that I have established the fact that Jews AJs are indeed white (and arrived to America as white) despite the confused protestations of some authors, now I will formalize the argument that AJs are white, since if they aren’t white, then they would need to fit into one of the other 4 racial categories.

Many may know that I push Quayshawn Spencer’s OMB race theory, and that I am a pluralist about race. In the volume What is Race?: Four Philosophical Views, philosopher or race Quayshawn Spencer (2019: 98) writes:

After all, in OMB race talk, White is not a narrow group limited to Europeans, European Americans, and the like. Rather, White is a broad group that includes Arabs, Persians, Jews, and other ethnic groups originating from the Middle East and North Africa.

Although there is some research on the racial identity of MENA (Middle Eastern/North African people) and how they may not perceive themselves as white or be perceived as white (Maghbouleh, Schachter, and Flores, 2022), the OMB is quite clear that the social group designated “white” doesn’t refer only to Europeans (Spencer, 2019).

So, if AJs aren’t white, then they must be part of another of the 4 OMB races (black, Native American, East Asian or Pacific Islander). Part of this racial scheme is K=5—where when K is set to 5 in STRUCTURE, 5 clusters are spit out and these map onto the OMB races. But of those 5 clusters, there is no Jewish cluster. Note that I am not denying that there is some kind of genetic structure to AJs, I’m just denying that this would entail that they are a racial group. If they were, then they would appear in these runs. AJs are merely an ethno-religious in the white socialrace. So let’s assume this is true: Ashkenazi Jews are not white.

When we consider the complexities of racial classification, it becomes apparent that societies tend to organize individuals on numerous traits into distinct categories based on physical traits, cultural background, and ancestry. If AJs aren’t white in an American context, then they would have to fall into one of the four other racial groups in a Spencerian OMB race theory.

But there is one important aspect to consider here—that of the phenotype of Ashkenazi Jews. Many Ashkenazi Jews exhibit physical traits which are more likely associated with “white” populations. This simple observation shows that AJs don’t fit into the established categories of East Asian, Pacific Islander, black or Native American. AJs’ typical phenotype aligns more closely with that of white populations.

So examining the racial landscape in America, we can see that how social perceptions and classifications can significantly impact how individuals are positioned in a broader framework. AJs have historically been classified and perceived as white in the American racial context, as can be seen above. So within American racetalk, AJs are predominantly classified in the white racial grouping.

So taking all of this together, I can rightly state that Jews are white. Since we assumed at the outset that if they weren’t white they would belong to some other racial group, but they don’t look like any other racial group but look and are treated as white (both in contemporary thought and historically), then AJs are most definitely seen as white in American racetalk. Here’s the formalized argument:

P1: If AJs aren’t white, then they must belong to one of the other 4 racial categories (black, Native American, East Asian or Pacific Islander).
P2: AJs do not belong to any of the four racial categories mentioned (based on their phenotype typical of white people).
P3: In the American racial context, AJs are predominantly classified and perceived as white.
Conclusion: from P1, if AJs aren’t white then they must belong to one of the other 4 racial groups. But from P2, AJs do not belong to any of those categories, because from P3, AJs are perceived and classified as white. These premises, then, lead to a contradiction, since they all cannot be simultaneously true.

So we must reject the assumption that AJs aren’t white, and the logical conclusion is that AJs are considered white in the American context, based on their phenotype (and the fact that they arrived to America as white). Jews didn’t “become white” like some claim (eg, Brodkin, 2004). American Jews even benefit from white privilege (Schraub, 2019). MacDonald-Dennis’ (2005, 2006) qualitative research (although small not generalizable) shows that some Ashkenazi Jews think of themselves as white. AJs are legally and politically white.

All Jews aren’t white, but some (most) Jews are white (in America).

Conclusion

Thus, AJs are white. Although many authors have claimed that Jews became white after arrival to America (or even after WWII), this claim is false. It is false even as far back as 1790. If we accept the assumption that AJs aren’t white, then it leads to a contradiction, since they would have to be one of the other 4 racial groups, but since they look white, they cannot be a part of those racial groups.

There are white Jews and there are non-white Jews. But when it comes to AJs, the question “When did they become white?” is nonsense since they were always perceived and treated as white in America from it’s founding. Some AJs are white, some aren’t; some Mizrahi Jews are white, some aren’t. However in the context of this discussion, it is quite clear that AJs are white, and there is no other race for them to be, based on the OMB race theory. In fact, in the minds of most Americans, Jews aren’t a racialized group, but they are perceived as outsiders (Levin, Filindra, and Kopstein, 2022). But there were some instances in history where sometimes Jews were racialized, and sometimes they weren’t (Hochman, 2017). But what I have decisively shown here, in the American context ever since its inception, AJs are most definitely white. Saying that AJs are white is like saying that Italians or Germans are white. There is no contradiction. Jews get treated as white in the American social context, they look white, and have been considered white since they have arrived to America in the early 1900s (like the Irish and Italians).

The evidence and reasoning presented in this article points to one conclusion: That AJs are indeed white. This of course doesn’t mean that all AJs are white, it merely means that some (and I would say most) are white. AJs have been historically, legally, and politically white. Mere claims that they aren’t white are irrelevant.