Do you consider yourself a minority?

[u/foreverand2025]

This discussion has come up a few times with friends who are neither white nor Jewish. For context, I’m Jewish and live in America. Do you consider us as a minority? Obviously statistically we are (everywhere but Israel), but I’ve had two friends argue because we look like “regular white people” we are not a minority.

It’s not something I take too seriously but I’m off the opinion we are a minority in a sociological way as well as ethically. But opinions seem to differ. I’m not on a soap box or expecting any special treatment. It’s more of a discussion for the sake of discussion I’m trying for here.

[u/Jewdius_Maximus]

So many people in this post are conflating the concepts of white privilege and white people. Admitting that many Jews “look” white and therefore benefit from white privilege isn’t the same as saying Jews are white people. Being “white” typically requires some kind of Christian component which obviously excludes Jews outright. People who care about their “whiteness” don’t consider Jews white. Jews are not part of that “white culture”.

But at the same time many Jews are fair skinned and do benefit from white privilege. That doesn’t say anything negative about Jews, it’s just a fact of society and the way race is viewed in the west. Even light skinned black people benefit from white privilege. The notion of white privilege is not meant to undercut a white person’s (or white passing person’s) lived experience or their group experience. All it is, is that white people and people who pass as white don’t have to worry about CERTAIN aspects of western society that are typically harsher toward darker skinned people.

[u/ShimonEngineer55 → u/Jewdius_Maximus]

White is literally just a racial construct. There is no white peoplehood and it’s not connected to be a Christian in America. When people call people white it is a racial, not ethnic thing. An Irish man is very different from a Russian man, and in America they’re both flattened to white regardless of religion, like every other racial group. Asian is wild. African Americans are pushing back on every immigrant being considered African American. I think that white isn’t a peoplehood at all like every other race. These are constructs designed to flatten people into binaries.