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Caucasian ≠ White. Many who check "Caucasian" on forms can't name any ethnic groups from the Caucasus. The term was appropriated and popularized by a German man who was obsessed with the beauty of a skull found in the Caucasus mountains. It is rooted in scientific racism. Thread https://twitter.com/offbeatorbit/status/1298680825807097857
Blumenbach used pseudoscience to erroneously claim that the “White” race came from the Caucasus mountain region. But the whiteness of people from the Caucasus (like Armenians) was contested in America and didn’t fit neatly into the black-white binary. It still doesn’t.
This is not to say that Armenians in America today don’t benefit from white supremacy and dispossession of Native land. We absolutely do. In America, we are legally white, as is the rest of SWANA (a term used for Southwest Asia and North Africa in place of “the Middle East”).
Our proximity to whiteness allows us to escape systemic racism: police brutality, mass incarceration, redlining, maternal mortality, polluted environments, unequal pay, the school-to-prison pipeline.
But privilege is not binary - it’s not that you either have it or you don’t. It’s a gradient. We absolutely benefit from our proximity to whiteness, AND America has been racist to us (see Fresno’s past: landowning and employment discrimination, being openly hated by white people)
AND in post-9/11 America, many of us face xenophobic/nativist discrimination for not reading as white (whether because of our facial features, brownish skin or names), AND there are stereotypes of Armenians in the US being crooks and frauds.
Also ironically, light-skinned Brown women often get labeled as white not because they look like white women but because white women look like them: https://www.instagram.com/p/CD4-5GanERz/
This is obviously nowhere NEAR the deeply racist reality that BIPOC people in America face today, and we must use our proximity to whiteness to uplift and center Black and Native voices.
There is definitely anti-Blackness in our communities and we need to keep dismantling it. Whiteness is toxic to all of us but ESPECIALLY to BIPOC. America was founded on genocide and built on the backs of Black people. They continue to face the worst of what America has to offer
But in America, calling us white erases our complex reality and contributes to the “genocide of whitewashing”, where as Brown-ish people indigenous to West Asia (where Western Armenia is still occupied by Turkey), we are pressured to assimilate to whiteness
This includes forgetting our language, changing our names, losing our history. UNESCO has classified Western Armenian as an endangered language. We have not lasted >2,500 years and survived genocide, conquest, displacement, war, and colonialism just to disappear into whiteness.
And the existential threat isn’t just in the West. In the East, what’s left of Armenia is sandwiched between two countries that deny the Armenian genocide while dreaming of finishing it.
Just last month Azerbaijan called peace talks meaningless, threatened to bomb Armenia’s nuclear power plant, and shelled a PPE factory and several villages in Armenia. Thousands gathered in Baku to protest FOR war and chant “Death to Armenians”.
We are a small, land-locked country of two million people in the mountains (1/4 of whom live in poverty) with two closed borders, trying to protect the last of our land, the rest of which was stolen by Turkic oppressors.
Western media rarely covers our stories, and if it does it usually does so under a false parity. Americans don’t know much about Armenia.
And Armenians in Turkic and Slavic countries face immense racism that we often aren’t educated on in the West. When we talk about our white privilege here in America, we shouldn’t erase the experience of those like the Hidden Armenians of Turkey.
Look up Hrant Dink. Look up racist murders of Armenians in Russia. Look up Azerbaijan and Turkey’s state-sponsored anti-Armenian hate crimes last month: Armenia cafe in Ukraine set on fire, mobs in Moscow attacking Armenians.
Last month Azerbaijanis were showing up to peaceful protests around the world, instigating violence and flashing the sign of the Grey Wolves – a far-right neofascist hate group that openly espouses the eradication of the Armenian people.
So yeah, it’s not that simple. This never-ending online discourse about whether Kim K is white is death by a thousand cuts. Kim K does NOT represent us and we hate her appropriation of Black culture. Please stop trying to understand Armenian racialization by analyzing her.
Seek out the voices of other Armenians. Read about our long and painful history. And when Armenians tell you what their lived experiences are like, please don’t use racial science to talk over us lol. Let’s build bridges not burn them down.
We want to keep uplifting BIPOC voices and using the white privilege that we do have to dismantle white supremacy
#armeniansforblacklives https://armeniansforblacklives.org/
#armeniansforblacklives https://armeniansforblacklives.org/
/end
why doesn't twitter have an essay option lol
why doesn't twitter have an essay option lol
I have learned so much of this from people like @kavakian9, @carenerose, and @kooyrig. Thank you for all the educating that you do 
Sign petitions / donate to Armenia using the links here: http://helparmenians.carrd.co
And please keep learning about us!
And please keep learning about us!
I'll *actually* end by saying that Armenianness is global, ancient, complex. There is so much to learn, it can be overwhelming. Different communities worldwide face different problems. If you don't feel that I accurately represented your community please let me know
