I remember being forced to learn Hebrew and study Jewish history for my bar mitzvah, and as a 13-year-old, I hated it.
Looking back, though, I’m glad I learned about the long history of Jewish people overcoming oppression and turning hardship into a strong community.
If you look at me, you’d easily identify me as a white person. But I feel no connection to white people or “white culture.” From years of Hanukkahs, Passovers and family stories, I feel tied to my Jewish heritage.
Even white people have aspects of their identity that are important and diverse. But these are found in our ethnicities and smaller cultures, not skin color. The concept of “whiteness” is inherently flawed, as is race as a whole.
The modern concept of race has no biological basis. Many studies have found that human genetic diversity cannot be classified along racial lines. The way we view race today is arbitrary.
Far too often, we think of race as an ingrained form of categorization. But the concept of race — and whiteness — is relatively new. Prior to the 17th century, most people identified with their social class or religion rather than their skin color.
However, once the chattel slave trade intensified, the slave-owning class needed to create a hierarchical categorization that was intrinsic and permanently separated African enslaved people from themselves.
African slaves could convert to Christianity. They couldn’t change their skin tone. Therefore, slave owners began to refer to themselves as “white.”
In this period, the ethnic groups granted “whiteness” were more limited than they are today. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “… the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans.” He considered English and Saxon people to be the “principal Body of White People.”
Indeed, when groups like Italians and Irish people first immigrated in waves to America, they were demonized and treated as lesser than the dominant white population. Over time, these groups assimilated into whiteness by defending the established racial hierarchy, presenting themselves as oppositional to African-Americans.
Whiteness today has even expanded to encompass Jews, which would have been unimaginable even a century ago.
In America, we see all these varied quasi-European ethnic groups and arbitrarily classify them as white. Try telling a European Serb and Croat person that they’re basically the same because they’re both white. It won’t work out well.
The reality is that there is no “white culture.” It’s such a broad, arbitrary racial category that there isn’t a shared experience or culture to relate to. If you identify as white, what are you actually identifying with?
This is the reason why there can never be a “white history month,” or “white pride event.” Because the concept of whiteness only exists to reinforce racial hierarchy, people celebrating their “white heritage” have nothing to celebrate besides that hierarchy.
White people can still be diverse. We do have unique backgrounds, experiences and cultural expressions that are valuable and worth celebrating. But that is found in our ethnicities and smaller cultures, not our race.
There are cultural events and activities that I share with other Jewish people, but I don’t have any such connection with everyone who is “white.”
The importance of diversity is the unique backgrounds and experiences that each person brings to the table. Identifying only as white robs white people of the ability to find a shared culture that might actually give us meaning.
