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Who is white is huge question.
Irish were not considered white until fairly recently, my parents & grand parents still don’t consider Portuguese ppl white, there was no such thing as white Jewish ppl until fairly recently.
Whiteness as a phenotypical category is...shaky at best https://twitter.com/rizikaoikonomik/status/1298346880548700160">https://twitter.com/rizikaoik...
Irish were not considered white until fairly recently, my parents & grand parents still don’t consider Portuguese ppl white, there was no such thing as white Jewish ppl until fairly recently.
Whiteness as a phenotypical category is...shaky at best https://twitter.com/rizikaoikonomik/status/1298346880548700160">https://twitter.com/rizikaoik...
More helpful to think about power, history & domination.
Many North Africans, Middle Eastern folks & even Asian ppl phenotypically would look ‘whiter’ than most French & Italian ppl. So of course whiteness is not only about your appearance, although it is too. Africans can never be white for example, you’d think...
Until you study ‘Latin’ America and you realise that whiteness is so linked to status, power and social class that you do have folks who in most places on earth would be considered black, identify as white and are accepted as such bc of their social class/status/position.
So who is white is not such an easy question. What I think is, whiteness holds much of its power from its shiftiness, I often speak of the shiftiness of whiteness (which you find are every single level of its operation including epistemically & morally).
And it is precisely this shiftiness that allows it to evolve & mutate. The same shiftiness that keeps everyone in line, on their toes, as your white card can be removed, through policing, if only in fantasy. Access to whiteness is through gatekeeping...
That very shiftiness thus ambiguity that allows everyone to project onto it, all ‘we’ aspire it to be. Beauty, intelligence, superiority, sophistication, evolution, wealth, power. It becomes that all that, WE make it that. Who would want to be excluded from that illusiory club?
So...always return to power in a nutshell. Structural & historical & geopolitical power are the most helpful criterion, but let’s not fool ourselves, these are imperfect too...
A system based on genocide & mass atrocities which now holds itself as the moral authority on genocide and mass atrocities. You can’t get more shifty than this.
