It is important, when discussing an issue to ensure you use primary experiences that will be subjective and look at the whole issue with an objective eye. My experience as a black woman with two university degrees is similar possibly to someone with learning difficulties.As I have worked with people in this area.

We inherit status, social position from our parents as we inherit skin and eye color. Traditionally blacks have been stereotypes by whites as lazy, indolent, simple-witted and child-like. So even if I gain a PHD, the natural reaction for people is to think I am automatically retarded. The degrees I obtained were probably easy, I cheated, I was helped or I am simply lying.

If I do talk about black rights I tend to be labelled a bigot as I am not championing Gay rights or rights of other minorities. However , I have met very few gay white men who champion anyone’s rights but their own and no other group has asked me to speak on their behalf, so I don’t.

Being Gay is not like being Black as you can refrain from sex and be psychologically gay, but abstinent.

I can never refrain from being black, so it follows you for life. You also can pretend not to be gay and still be a powerful, white executive or CEO. You can’t pretend not to be black, to get an easier life.

Many white powerful men have secretly been gay and have hidden their sexuality to “get on”. I dont know if anyone has been secretly black, arab or chinese etc.

When comparing minorities you have to compare like with like. I am English, but I could pretend to be an African- American or African to get a job as my race is obvious, not my ethnic group. I couldnt pretend to be white.

It is very rare that people ask you about your sexuality, when job hunting, walking down the street, buying clothes, driving in your caretc.It is apparent to everyone what colour skin you have, in everyday activities. These are when most prejudice occurs

It is important that white male homosexuals dont use “well I’m gay , so I know what its like to be a minority”. You know what its like to be a sexual minority , not a racial minority. You can also be black and gay, which is another issue entirely.

I am not homophobic, buy I get a little cheesed off, when I am told an organisation, department etc is multicultural and non racist, when every decision maker /shaper is white and male. Then I am told well :

two of them are jewish,
one has a great grand father who is black
five of them are gay
six of them irish
two poles etc

If you scrutinise an organisation or company 60 years ago the breakdown would be much the same . The employees just wouldnt be open about their racial, ethnic heritage or sexuality, but it would still be predominantly white males.

If people dont want to hire blacks or even acknowledge their existant in anything other than taking orders. Who am I to argue. But racial prejudice is racial prejudice, its not sexual, religious etc

Whether the party was private or not is irrelevant. We’re not bears, we’re human beings. We mind each other’s business, and when people act like fucktards on their own property, sometimes it’s easier to call them on it at the moment than let their fucktardiness grow unabated and then swamp us all afterwards.

Moreover, the students are all members of the University community.

And sure, the vast majority of Jews (particularly in the States) would considered a converted Jew to be a “real” Jew — but not all. My friend who converted is accepted as a “real” Jew by probably 95% (at least) of people out there. But that doesn’t stop her in-laws from stating that she isn’t a Jew, and neither are their grandchildren, because she converted, wasn’t born into the faith. Sure, she’s accepted in her Temple, and accepted as a “real” Jew. But she’s not accepted into her in-laws Temple (not as a Jew).

(The following is true of different Christian sects as well, but we were talking about Jews first :) )

The problem isn’t so much that your friend is a convert, as that the three main sects (Orthodox, Conservative (what I am) and Reform) have different “rules” for “Who is a Jew?” Someone who converts according to Orthodox halacha (law) is a Jew by all the sects, unless there was some flaw, for some technical reason, in that person’s conversion. But assuming there were no flaws, they are a Jew, period, and will always be a Jew, and in very, very few ways (only one I can think of — if female they cannot marry a member of the priestly class) are just as Jewish as any other Jew. Where things get dicey is with Conservative and Reform. All Conservative conversions are recognized by the Reform movement, but are generally not recognized by the Orthodox, and some Reform conversions (and children born to Reform Jews) are recognized by the Conservative movement, but the conversions almost definitely are not recognized by the Orthodox, and their children may not be either.

It’s these weird (hey, I’m Jewish, I can call them weird) rules that make pinning down the precise answer to “Are Jews a race, ethnicity or something else?” because “Who is a Jew?” such a complex matter. My father is 100% definitely a Jew by Orthodox law, even though he thinks he’s a Southern Baptist. But by Israeli secular law, he isn’t entitled to the Right of Return because he’s a Christian. He’s not Jewish by the Reform movement, and may or may not be by the Conservative movement. I wouldn’t call him “ethnically” Jewish or “culturally” Jewish or anything else of the sort. He has some of the racial markers that are associated with Eastern European Jewry, but that’s about it for culture, ethnicity or race.

They were only imitating what they see in Black culture. Perhaps we African Americans should take a look at their own culture if we don’t like what we see when others imitate it. We are the ones who give them the ammunition.

But are whites accurately mirroring back black culture? Or are whites picking and choosing the embarrassing parts? Hip-Hop culture isn’t an accurate reflection of “the black experience”, any more the industrial metal, trance, or the dance club scene is an accurate reflection of “the white experience”.

As mean spirited as the party was, we live in a free country and have the right of free speech and free association. I say they should be able to do whatever they want and people who are offended should realize that they are idiots and just move on and get over it.

They were only imitating what they see in Black culture. Perhaps we African Americans should take a look at their own culture if we don’t like what we see when others imitate it. We are the ones who give them the ammunition.

For example, if your mother is Jewish you are Jewish in the sense that you don’t need to go through a process of conversion. If, as you grow older, you decide that you are Jewish (and go through any rituals your sect requires)… there you are. However, if you later decide that you’re not Jewish then you’re not Jewish. So, Jewish mom = no need for conversion - in practical terms. If you don’t get Bar Mitzvah’d you won’t be considered Jewish, even if Mom was Jewish.

Although it is somewhat subtler than what has been explained to me here about becoming a Christian, a conscious choice must still be made at some point in your life. For most of us, both Christian and Jewish, that decision is made and recognized by the community before we probably have the critical faculties for making an informed decision. My Catholic friends went to confirmation long before I got Bar Mitzvah’d.

But, as I said, those cognitive problems are mine and do not invalidate what others have put forth as a definition of ethnicity.

Ethnicity in a non-academic setting is something that one only acknowledges in people who aren’t like oneself (thus, the use of the term “Ethnic” as a signifier of ethnicities very different from one’s own, very different from the dominant ethnicity), so in a country where most of the population is Christian, Christianity is not going to be seen as a marker of ethnicity in a non-academic sense. Where Christianity is one religion among many, then “the Christians” will mark an ethnicity (consider Lebanon). Likewise, in a culture in which Christian denominational fellowship is fluid (many people convert between denominations), denomination will not be seen as equaling ethnicity either. Where denomination is not fluid, then denomination is more likely to be seen as a marker of ethnicity. If what marks a Lutheran as different from a Catholic is not that the Lutheran personally feels more comfortable with the structure or theology of Lutheranism, but that the Lutheran’s ancestors have been Lutherans for many generations, and likewise the Catholic, and their ancestors can be presumed to have fought on different sides in the Thirty Years War, then Lutheran and Catholic are much more likely to be the markers of ethnicity.

However, where national origin or other ethnicity determiners clash with shared religion, it is less likely that the religion will be seen as marking a shared ethnicity (instead, differing religion marks different ethnicities where a shared ethnicity might otherwise be expected). So we are less likely to talk about Catholic as an ethnicity, because the ethnic differences between Italian Catholics, German Catholics, Irish Catholics, and an American Catholic who converted in college after a Pentecostal upbringing outweigh the shared religious beliefs. Instead, we talk about Minnesotan Catholics and Minnesotan Lutherans, or Serbs (Orthodox) and Croats (Catholic). Or American Jews and American Christians.

If there were more Sephardic Jews in the US, then people would be more likely to view Sephardim and Ashkenazi as two separate ethnicities, and not view Jews as an ethnicity, but the cultural/linguistic/religious differences between American Jews whose ancestors were Russian Jews and those whose ancestors were German Jews are small enough that I don’t think most people (Jewish or not) tend to view national origin differences among Jews as creating different ethnicities.

It looks hereditary because that’s the way Christianity works — parents take their kids to Sunday school, kids absorb Christianity and Christian traditions, kids grow up to take their kids to Sunday school.

But there’s no Christian law, in the sense of Jewish law, which says that if one’s mother and/or father were Christian, one is automatically assumed to be Christian, or unavoidably Christian.

And while genealogy may not be big among all American Jews, there are sects of American Judaism where genealogy is hugely important, especially as you get into the more Orthodox / Hasidic communities, as well as the Converso / Crypto-Jewish communities where they can often give you genealogies going back 400 years or more. By comparison, the 200 or so years of genealogical history I have for myself is a stroll in the park.

So Jews aren’t an ethnicity, but there are ethnicities whose membership are Jews.

You might be correct that the Jews might not meet some technical requirement for a distinct ethnic group. I don’t know. I did a quick google search:

wikipedia:

Jewish ethnic divisions refers to a number of distinct Jewish communities within the world’s ethnically Jewish population.

From a page called “Judaism 101″

Is It a Culture or Ethnic Group?
Most secular American Jews think of their Jewishness as a matter of culture or ethnicity. When they think of Jewish culture, they think of the food, of the Yiddish language, of some limited holiday observances, and of cultural values like the emphasis on education.

This doesn’t prove anything other than maybe it is not such an outlandish notion. Anyway, I am no expert on this, but really whether they meet some technical threshold for “ethnicity” is probably beside the point.

Nope. Not until they personally and intentionally take Christ, are they genuinely a Christian. This was a pretty big controversy in the church - infant baptism, and all that. But it’s become a consensus value that becoming a Christian is an act of adult will, not a matter of parentage or upbringing.

For Catholics, the moment of truth is the sacrament of confirmation. Protestants have altar calls and such, but in reality the sacrament or the call is just a ceremony or a public confession. The actual change is internal and private. You could become a Christian right this minute, if you wanted to. (And, of course, you should!)

The genealogy comment, I believe, has to do with the fact that Judaism does provide a genealogical entry into the faith. If your mom was Jewish, and so forth.

I’m certain I’m not getting your meaning here. Okay, in Judaism you are considered Jewish at birth if your mother is Jewish. In Christianity, are you not considered Christian if your parents are Christian? I’ve never known anyone from a Christian family to say that there was a moment when they decided to become a Christian. They were Christian from birth.

Anyone can convert to Christianity at any time, there isn’t a single Christian out there who is going to think that a convert is not a “real” Christian because their mother (or father) wasn’t a Christian.

The same can be said for Judaism. Sure, you have the same arguments among sects about whether the other sects are “real” or not. But, within the sect to which you convert, nobody is going to consider you not a “real” Jew. Hell, in the synagogue that my parents belonged to, there was a black family. They were certainly a curiosity since you don’t find a high percentage of American Jews to be POC, but I never heard anybody question whether or not they were “real” Jews.

The fact that there aren’t Christian beliefs regarding ancestry and geneology and Chrisitanity pretty much exclude it from any definition of an “ethnic group” right there.

I may be totally off-base here, but geneology is not big among American Jews. It may be that I’m not understanding what you are saying or it may be that your understanding of what Jews consider important to Jewishness is somewhat mistaken.

I believe that is true in a scholarly sense. However, I think that the non-academic usage of “ethnicity” does exclude religion. At least in the USA. Seriously, outside of academia have you ever heard the phrase “ethnic Episcopalian?” Or heard Christians referred to as an ethnic group? I certainly haven’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m 100% sure that I’m right about this.

I think your racist example, by the way, commits a sort of a logical error. I have no doubt that a racist has more authority to speak about ‘what it’s like to be a racist’ than an African American person, but I also believe that an African American person has more authority to speak about racism (having had more of a lived experience of racism) than the racist. It’s two different topics.

I think it is more an example of lack of desire to produce a meaningful self-examination of what the experience of being a “racist” means. What a self-avowed racist even care that being a racist isolates them from others? Wouldn’t that be, perhaps, an objective of a racist? The whole “separation of the races” thing?

Where being a POC, woman, queer deviates from being a self-avowed racist is the power relationship. The disadvantaged group member desires to move upward in the social structure, and I think a lot of that analysis — “What it means to be a woman” — comes from trying to understand how women are at the effect of sexism. But for a racist nothing is to be gained by examining “racism” — they’ve already gained whatever it is they want to gain (or are actively working towards it by becoming “more racist”).

I basically agree with this. (It’s Fellowship Day at Alas!) I think the authority of one’s viewpoint is proportional to its personalization. My grandmother can speak with authority about how it felt to be an Italian immigrant in the 1920s; she was one and she was there. She has a unique contribution/perspective to make in a discussion of how Italian immigrants were treated overall - but we don’t have to give special consideration to her views on how things went down in Chicago, because she wasn’t there. And if we’re talking about “what should immigration policy look like”, then she has a unique and valuable perspective on the topic, but it doesn’t deserve any priority over anyone else’s POV; we all have something to say about that.

If you really believe in frames of knowledge which only group members have access to, then you have to accept the privileged narratives of all groups, not just the ones you are sympathetic to.

I also believe that this is true, and I see the hypocrisy you’re pointing out often. I think it was especially visible in the recent threads on transgender issues.

For me, this doesn’t mean that I need to ’shut the hell up’ or something when issues about the lives of women come up, but it does mean that I need to listen closely and offer my opinions humbly, if at all.

I think your racist example, by the way, commits a sort of a logical error. I have no doubt that a racist has more authority to speak about ‘what it’s like to be a racist’ than an African American person, but I also believe that an African American person has more authority to speak about racism (having had more of a lived experience of racism) than the racist. It’s two different topics.

So Jews aren’t an ethnicity, but there are ethnicities whose membership are Jews.

I like the subjectivity argument. Of course, if the argument is actually taken seriously and not simply used as a rhetorical club when convenient, then it grossly undermines the whole anti-intentionalist view of racism. Racists are the experts on being racists, so their narrative of what’s racist or not should be the privileged one, per this argument. If you really believe in frames of knowledge which only group members have access to, then you have to accept the privileged narratives of all groups, not just the ones you are sympathetic to.

Personally, I prefer the shared universe vision, where everyone’s opinion has some weight, and we argue these things out instead of accepting the word of small groups of people. But that’s just me.

Jews aren’t an “ethnicity”. Come to my synagogue. I’ll let the rest of the Jews there tell you the same thing.

And I don’t much care if you think I’m “rude”. The proper behavior is to listen to the people who are members of the group being discussed, not to tell them they are all wrong because you’re somehow the expert on other people. You’re not. That’s one of the central principles of feminism — subjectivity. Women are the experts on being women, members of the African diaspora on their experiences wherever they might be, big queers on the experiences of being big queers. We constantly get told what it “means” to be whatever by people such as yourself all the time. It’s very seldom for benevolent reasons, and when it isn’t for malevolent reasons, it’s part of the overall brainwashing of people to reinforce whatever malevolent purpose the incorrect information was put out there in the first place.

And in case you think you’re $0.02 is worth even $0.02, as a non-member of the groups you keep throwing your $0.02 at, in my opinion, I’m tired of having wooden nickles thrown at me by people who think they are worth a nickle.

I could be wrong, I am just giving my opinion. Look at Bosnia-Herzegovina. The genocide by the Serbians was directed against the Muslims. As far as I know they were considered as a separate ethnic group, not just a just a different religion.

And I really wish you would stop ascribing my motives. Its rude. I didn’t “jump on” ethnicity for any reason other than its what I believed for a long time. It was being discussed and I put my 2 cents in, just like you. And whether you acknowledge it or not, its certainly plausible and entirely debatable.