Last time I checked over half of Israel’s population is at least partly of Mizrahi descent. Ie. they have Middle-Eastern, Asian, or North African ancestry.
I assume those are American concepts, part of American racial politics that primarily focuses on skin colour. But those genuinely aren’t as relevant to countries half way around the globe.
America is not the world. Foreign countries are genuinely foreign. No, really. Allow me to illustrate:
Example 1: imagine you just heard someone complaining about racism against white people.
In an American context, you’d likely (often correctly) assume they were a right wing lunatic or a racist.
But here in Europe, the Sámi and Irish travellers would likely seem ‘whiter than white’ from an American racial politics perspective. IRC there are some theories that suggest Irish Travellers are the descendants of people who lived in Ireland before the celts arrived. We’re talking millenia. And yet they face plenty of outright and often pretty nasty racism to this day.
Example 2: Israel.
My understanding is that Mizrahi Jews (sometimes known as ‘Arab Jews’ although that’s considered a pejorative by some) historically and still do face plenty of racism in Israel from ‘white’ Jews…
And yet they also vote for Netenyahu and Likud en masse. The far right Itamar Ben-Gvir is (still?) the current Minister of Security. Iraqi and Kurdish heritage. Not ‘white’ by American standards. And yet here’s an excerpt from his wikipedia article:
Itamar Ben-Gvir … is an Israeli lawyer and far-right politician who serves as the Minister of National Security. … His father was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish immigrants. … His mother was a Kurdish Jewish immigrant … Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. … He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology. … Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election … He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel. Ben Gvir is “widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities” … led several visits to the Temple Mount as activist and member of Knesset, contentious marches through Jerusalem’s Old City Muslim Quarter, and set up an office in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood which witnessed several evictions of Palestinians. On 3 January 2023, he visited the Temple Mount where the al-Aqsa Mosque is located, spurring an international wave of criticism that labelled his visit purposely provocative. As a lawyer, he is known for defending Jewish radicals and terrorists on trial in Israel. … Prior to entering politics, he defended Jews spitting at Christians as a “an ancient Jewish custom”. … Ben-Gvir is married to Ayala Nimrodi… The couple has five children, and they live in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba/Hebron, which is deemed illegal under international law, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
What is passing complexion? What is colorismo?
I assume those are American concepts, part of American racial politics that primarily focuses on skin colour. But those genuinely aren’t as relevant to countries half way around the globe.
America is not the world. Foreign countries are genuinely foreign. No, really. Allow me to illustrate:
Example 1: imagine you just heard someone complaining about racism against white people.
In an American context, you’d likely (often correctly) assume they were a right wing lunatic or a racist.
But here in Europe, the Sámi and Irish travellers would likely seem ‘whiter than white’ from an American racial politics perspective. IRC there are some theories that suggest Irish Travellers are the descendants of people who lived in Ireland before the celts arrived. We’re talking millenia. And yet they face plenty of outright and often pretty nasty racism to this day.
Example 2: Israel.
My understanding is that Mizrahi Jews (sometimes known as ‘Arab Jews’ although that’s considered a pejorative by some) historically and still do face plenty of racism in Israel from ‘white’ Jews…
And yet they also vote for Netenyahu and Likud en masse. The far right Itamar Ben-Gvir is (still?) the current Minister of Security. Iraqi and Kurdish heritage. Not ‘white’ by American standards. And yet here’s an excerpt from his wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir
TLDR: more complicated than ‘brown people/white people’
Colorismo is a Latin American phenomenon.
Also Israel is the 51st state so…