0% — Percentage of Me that is Catholic.

1.4% - Percentage of American population that is Jewish
22.2% - Percentage of Supreme court that is jewish [Ginsburg, Breyer]
33% - Percentage of Supreme Court nominated by a Democratic president [Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer]
100% - Percentage of Jews on the court nominated by a Republican president

what's your point?

erp, i mean democratic president on that last one.

Jews get a special exemption from the "white males are teh evil" rule.

didn't republicans used to hate papists?

jews are not white.

also check this out:
http://www.adherents.com/adh_sc.html

over all, catholics are *underrepresented* (10.2% of all justices). it's the episcopalians you want to watch out for.

jews aren't white?

well, people who consider themselves religously jewish can be of any race. but traditionally jews are semitic, and I guess there are reasons to believe that it's its own race:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic#Ethnicity_and_.22race.22

Notice the error I just corrected. Which means that every justice nominated by a Democrat is Jewish!

jews are not white.

Have you seen Jon's untanned torso lately?

american jews are mostly Ashkenazi and can "pass" for white because of centuries of european dilution. but we're not white. one serious economic downturn will prove that here, as everywhere else.

also, crazymonk, you confuse the issue by saying "people who consider themselves religiously jewish." if you mean to imply that jews who are not jews by birth but by religious conversion, you are correct, they can be "white."

i mean, jbg, that's really stretching it. do you therefore think that any historical strain of genetics counts to make you 'not white?' cuz obviously we are all, therefore, black, which seems not quite right. you may find "centuries of european dilution" objectionable, but does it really change the fact that most american jews are, quite obviously and culturally, and most importantly for 'race' reasons, reacted to and treated as though they are, in fact, white?

of course, that's a current thing. 50 years ago crazymonk wouldn't be considered white either. Sports reporters used to note how dimaggio, despite being italian, wasn't smelly and didn't grease his hair. But as jbg says, times can change.

Well, since "white" generally means the exploiter rather than the exploited, the powerful rather than the powerless, the question of whether Jews are white is pretty much always up for debate.

"Jews get a special exemption from the “white males are teh evil” rule."
-I would say that at this point that's not really true.

1. jews are not white. i will maintain that until my dying day. we are a middle eastern nomadic people that have been either been forced out of every country we have lived in, or been murdered, until the United States. and it's only a matter of time, here.

2. i would tend towards crazymonk's opine that the italians (also the irish, the polish, the spanish) are not white. but you gotta fight your own battles. i have sand on my feet and history on my side.

3. jews don't NEED special exemption from any rules. we are not white, we are not historically oppressors. i'm not saying one can't make an argument that current israeli policy leans towards oppression, but i am saying that your argument will be flawed, innaccurate and dismantled pretty easily.

White people are, and always will be, whoever I think looks white. Jews, using that technique, are almost all white.

People consistently confuse Race with Ethnicity. Technically there are only "three" races, White, Black, and Asian. All others stem from there. Generally speaking, it seems like there are Jews that look Middle Eastern and there are Jews that look white. European dilution or otherwise, it seems that at least some Jewish folk certainly "appear" white as in fair skin, fair eyes, and fair hair. Now weather or not all the true "Jewishness" has been diluted out of their genes is another question. I find some similarities between the issue of Jewish as a race catagory as I do with Hispanic as a race catagory. It's true one is in reference to a religon as well, but I feel as though some of the same issues crop up ---cause HIspanic really isn't a race either its an ethnicity. We're all some crazy mix of the original three races, basically Europeans who came over and conquered, the African slaves they brought over, and the Indigenous (Indian) populations that were living in South/Central America and the Carribean. I know hispanic people who look African, and others who look German, some who look Native American and others who look Sicilian. I do find however, that whatever one's ethnicity might be the "more caucasian" they look, the more people lean towards counting them as "white". Hence the catagories I see in some race surveys that have two catagories of Hispanic (white) and Hispanic (non-white) --seems to me like there's some similarities with the Jewish element.

it is not, and has never been, about how people "look." we "look" white. we "looked" german. it is about who we are. i am not an anglo, i am not a european, i am descended from swarthy, middle-eastern nomads, goddamnit, and them's not white.

i agree. i think that race at this point is so muddled that the only true meaning is your outward appearance - that is, how you are treated based on people's perception of you (and that includes language and carriage in addition to pure skin color). i find it hard to believe that jbg, with his lovely peaches and cream complexion and articulate english, has ever been harrassed by whitey as an 'other.' i also find it somewhat offensive that jbg thinks he can voluntarily put on a mantle of race when that has such implications of oppression. i have, however, no problem with his calling himself ethnically or religiously jewish, and white, and i wouldn't doubt that he has experienced some kind of discrimination based on those traits. and of course, this in no way takes away from his credibility to argue, incorrectly, that the Israeli state is not an oppressive one.

that being said, i would apply the same test to myself even within my own lifetimeline. i feel it would be disingenuous for me to go around toting my blue-collar bona fides after having gone to harvard law, because what matters is how people i meet perceive my amount of privilege/oppression, unless it's relevant to explaining how my beliefs are informed. that doesn't mean I don't deeply care about lower-income individuals or even stop working for economic justice, but it would sure ring false to pretend to be a part of that oppression as an individual.

things get very complex when you start talking about race: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial

but if there's one statement above that i am sure is not true, it's that race can be boiled down strictly to outward appearance. in fact, race has a large biological component -- e.g., blacks are more predisposed to sickle cell anemia, asians are more predisposed to lactose intolerance, etc.

no doubt race is more of a continuum than made up of discrete categories, but certain lines can be drawn, at least for the time being.

i think eddie murphy would disagree
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/84/84iwhitelikeeddie.phtml

I find it interesting that this conversation began with Marco pointing out that now the majority of serving Supreme Court Justices are Catholic.

I would never claim that Catholics have suffered anywhere near the worst prejudice and oppression in our nation's history, but I would contend that until recently in the U.S. being Catholic was a strike against you.

considering how the nation started that's not a huge surprise. What is a surprise is how long it took - for some reason it's easier for me to believe that racial and gender prejudices would last a lot longer than minor ecumenical differences and a fear of ultimate devotion to rome, which is just so 13th century. but, go figure.

>>i find it hard to believe that jbg, with his lovely peaches and cream complexion and articulate english, has ever been harrassed by whitey as an ‘other.’

my reply seems to have been cut off. i'll try again:

i find it hard to believe that you, of all people, can make the ridiculous assumption that i've never felt "oppressed" or "harrassed" because i appear, as you say, "peaches and cream." what, honestly, the fuck do you know about whether or not i have ever felt attacked, picked on, or unsafe because of things that have nothing to do with the color of my skin?

i know plenty of white homosexuals who would find fault with your assessment. plenty of jews, too.

if that's your honest opinion, the ACLU is probably in trouble.

ps. thanks for the "permission" to consider myself religiously or ethnically jewish.

pps. here's a tidbit from the HAMAS charter. in case you didn't read, they're the ones that israel is "oppressing" :

"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)

my comment about your complexion was an honest compliment! you have lovely skin.
trust me, i think most aclu members/employees would agree with you wholeheartedly; my apparently very offensive comments are my own.

but al qaida is also provably evil; that doesn't make gitmo legitimate. don't think i prefer terrorists because i believe (wonderful) liberal democracies should make a point of obeying int'l law.

aaaaaaaaaaand "scene."

Wait, what have I seen?

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.” (Article 7)

That sounds like the line from Jesus Christ Superstar where even if the mobs around Jesus were silent the rocks and stones would start to sing.

or like something from Sesame Street, with talking tree muppets...

"heeeeeey Cookie Monster... theeeeere's a jew over heeeeeeeerrrre!"

"3. jews don’t NEED special exemption from any rules. we are not white, we are not historically oppressors. i’m not saying one can’t make an argument that current israeli policy leans towards oppression, but i am saying that your argument will be flawed, innaccurate and dismantled pretty easily."

-(as a Jew who has been trying to sort this for a while) I am currently reading Righteous Victims by Benny Morris and all I can say is that when it comes to Israel, the word 'easily' is pretty much useless. The question of whether Zionism can be considered a European colonial/imperial project has not been 'officially' solved as far as I can tell, and probably never will be- it will probably always come down to individual/national/whatever perspectives, in terms of how you see it. And it's usually with respect to European colonialism/imperialism that we use 'white' as a negative/critical description. Right? I mean, that's why anyone would *not* want to be labeled 'white'.

And to say that "Hamas" is who the Israelis are "oppressing" and then use their vehement literature to absolve the Israelis of ill-intent is a little bit disingenuous. Not that I support Hamas's stated intentions, don't get me wrong...

i'm all set with this argument, hence the talking trees silliness. it's impossible to have these discussions over the internet, we're just adding to the problem and you're just pissing me off, even though i doubt that would happen if we were speaking face to face. ultimately, i continue to be frustrated by the assertion that i'm denying a jew's "whiteness" based on opinion, rather than FUCKING FACT. this is not up for debate. i'm not saying "oh, jews have always been oppressed, therefore we can't be white." i am saying -- as a TOTAL NONFUCKING RELIGIOUS JEW -- that my ANCESTORS are NOT russian, lituanian or polish -- they are JEWS. ASHKENAZI FUCKING JEWS who were expelled from the middle east over the last several thousand years in a diaspora across the fucking globe. and evolutionary adaptation does not take away the Semitic blood running through my fucking veins. i am closer in blood to an ARAB or PERSIAN or SEPHARDIC JEW than a fucking white dude.

and all of this is coming from a semi-ANTI-zionist-atheist; see how the internet is completely useless?

ps deny it all you want, DoorFrame, you're a fucking tentdweller.

i dunno, jbg, i think your typed argument gives one a pretty good idea of what your live argument would be like. I don't mean that as a dig - when I read your words I imagine your voice and face and it seems quite natural.

"a semi-ANTI-zionist-atheist"
-yeah, I know what you mean, although in my experience face-to-face conversations can be just as infuriating. Anyway, of course, it's called anti-SEMITISM for a reason. Whatever.

that's because you KNOW i'm a loudmouthed asshole. these other people don't know that. can't a brother push a reset button? T.O.!

ps i forgot to include i'm an anti-semitic-anti-zionist-atheist. maybe i can get into Georgetown, too.

huh?

The quota is filled.