Are Jews people of colour? Here’s another thoughtful piece from Dani Ishai Behan (pictured) in The Times of Israel:
The question remains: are Jews a people of color (or POC)? This is something I’ve thought long and hard about for years, and I’m still not sure if I have it right. Nevertheless, I think that, in many ways, we do qualify as a POC. For one thing, we are an indigenous people of the Middle East. Our identity, our DNA, our culture, our language, and our history all attest to who we are as a people – centuries of exile doesn’t change that, unless you’re prepared to advance the position that white British settlers are now indigenous to the United States and Canada. And if Middle Easterners writ large are considered POC, then Jews are by extension POC as well (although I suppose one could make a case for the very rare convert, e.g. Ivanka Trump).
Second, and most importantly, racism has always been a factor in our daily lives, even if it doesn’t always take on forms that are immediately recognizable to non-Jews. After all, each minority’s experiences are shaped by their own respective histories and relations with the dominant majority, and we are no different. People who routinely compare us to Irish and Italians invariably fail to acknowledge that antisemitism remains a powerful force in Western society, whereas anti-Irish and Italian prejudices have long since taken their rightful place in the dustbin of history.
Another argument that is frequently made is that a large percentage of us have white-ish appearances, but this is fairly common among all Levantine groups, not just Jews. Moreover, fair skinned Latinos, Iranians, Pashtuns, and Native Americans aren’t exactly rare either. This is called “white passing”: the ability to blend in and escape some of the more immediate effects of non-whiteness while still suffering from the marginalization and othering that non-Jewish minorities experience. To put it another way, looking white is not the same as being white.
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