June 12, 2017
Gal Gadot
Source: Wikimedia Commons
America’s founders, as well as its population for nearly four centuries running how, were predominantly white Christians. Since the primary racial divide in America was phenotypical”white versus black”Jews appeared to be white and were generally recognized as Caucasian. As they arrived in larger numbers around the turn of the 20th century, many Jewish immigrants would famously “goy” up their Eastern European surnames to appear more WASPy and assimilate without catching hell from a Christian population which still tended to see them more as Christ-killers than as Americans” greatest allies.
But as demographics shift in a nonwhite direction, and as propaganda intensifies that “whiteness” is basically cancer and that any positive association with it is a mortal sin, it appears that there are far fewer incentives than before for Jews to identify as white. Whereas it was once safer to huddle quietly among the white sheep, there appear to be far more perks these days if one poses as an Oppressed Person of Color.
Writing in the Village Voice back in 1993, Michael Lerner argues:
In America, to be ‘white’ means to be the beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world….Jews can only be deemed white if there is massive amnesia on the part of non-Jews about the monumental history of anti-Semitism.
In a 2014 article for the Times of Israel blog, Hila Hershkoviz emphatically states that “Ashkenazi Jews are not white,” because that would mean that they”re evil:
Ashkenazi Jews have been the victims of Europeans and Western imperialism for centuries precisely because they were not perceived as part of the “white people world”, beginning with the Roman colonialism of their nation state and ending with 6 million of them being killed precisely because they were non-whites….Jews are not white.
It appears that there is no fixed answer to this particular Jewish Question because it has changed to suit the times. Back when it was advantageous in American society to be white, Jews were able to “pass.” But now that being white is considered the Worst Thing on Earth, Jews are rapidly rediscovering and embracing their nonwhite roots.
I can therefore only conclude that the Israeli actress playing Wonder Woman is not white, because in the modern scheme of things, there is nothing wonderful about being white.
