The Middle East's Invisible Jewish Identity

An interesting, because representative article from PopMatters on Middle Eastern Americans provides grist for my own thoughts on Jewish identity. The author writes:

To truly be an American and to be accepted in America is to do certain things, “perform” in a certain way in order to be considered as part of the white, Eurocentric majority. These include speaking English, following some form of Christianity or Judaism and of course, looking or acting “white”.

I have previously toyed with the question: are Jews white? Leftist Jews would rather identify with "racialized" minorities, but the fact remains that only white supremacists share their conception of Jews as a distinct, non-white race. Muslims see Jews as white interlopers; the black homeless man who cursed my family as "white motherfuckers" in San Francisco certainly sees Jews as white. That is not to say that Jews are Anglo-Saxon, or have always been considered white; simply that as far as social reality goes, today's Jews are closer to Italians and Irishmen (who were once considered non-white as well) than Arabs and Mexicans.

That Americans of Middle Eastern descent could be Arab, Persian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Kurdish, Pashtun or other tribal affiliations or ethnicities and drawn from an extremely diverse mixture of languages and religions is lost on many Americans. Or that people from the Middle East have long been immigrating to the United States is seldom realized. Or that many from this large, “panethnic group” (in the words of Yen Le Espiritu) have “made it” in America tends to be forgotten. What does matter is that since the attacks of September 11, Middle Eastern Americans have been reduced to a single grouping: the Other.

I love the irony of this passage. Americans don't recognize that Middle Easterners can come from all different backgrounds, says the author who lists every major Middle Eastern group with one glaring omission. I would not expect him to categorize assimilated Ashkenazi Jews as Middle Eastern, but what of Israelis and Mizrahi Jews? Obviously the "panethnic group" is not big enough to include them.

What is unusual and somewhat shocking, however, is that according to almost every formal American governmental system of classification, Middle Eastern Americans are white. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Census, Middle Eastern Americans, who might even derive their origins from African nations like Egypt and Algeria, are considered to be white because they do not have their own racial classification.

And therein lies the rub, according to lawyer and author John Tehranian, in his new book, Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle Eastern Minority. “The dualistic and contested ontology of the Middle Eastern racial condition therefore creates an unusual paradox,: writes Tehranian, “Reified as the other, Americans of Middle Eastern descent do not enjoy the benefits of white privilege. Yet, as white under the law, they are denied the fruits of remedial action.”

Welcome to the club, boys! Ashkenazi Jews were the original "Americans of Middle Eastern descent" and didn't enjoy the "benefits of white privilege." Yet somehow we got ahead without the "fruits of remedial action." We got so far ahead in fact, that our Semitic successors now consider us part of the white mainstream.

For every American of Middle Eastern descent who “made it” in Hollywood or popular music, there was an actor who was always forced to play the same role or a film that exploited stereotypes. So, for every actor like Danny Thomas (Lebanese origin) and F. Murray Abraham (Syrian origin) or band like System of a Down (all members are of Armenian heritage), there have been grossly inaccurate films like Not Without My Daughter (1991), Rules of Engagement (2000) and the most recent, 300 (2006).

All the Armenians I know consider themselves white; and does not Iran literally mean "Land of the Aryans?" If Hollywood oversimplifies matters, so do the predictable anti-Hollywood complainers. Who even remembers those movies, besides 300, which is basically a cartoon?

Tehranian highlights a few of his own personal experiences with racism and bigotry. He discusses being stared down at an airport while waiting for a plane. When he tries to be friendly to the woman and explain he is a lawyer, to assuage her fears and showcase his white-collar profession, she replies accusingly, “You don’t look like a lawyer.” And then there are his unfortunate job interviews – one where he is not hired because he’s perceived to be “white” by a department looking for a minority candidate, and another where a woman asks him what it is like to be “studying our law”, when she finds out he is of Iranian origin.

How many "non-Jewish Semites and possible lookalikes" (which is what the author really means by "Middle Easterners") have been lynched? As a non-Christian, I have a limited supply of sympathy, and I'd rather share it with victims of genocide (i.e. the Darfurians not considered "Arab" enough because of their skin colour) than with victims of moderately frustrating misunderstandings. As a Jew I know what it's like not to fit into neat categorizations. I am white enough to be considered a plausible lawyer (doubly so as a Jew); but I am also enough of an "other" not to fall for white liberal guilt.

Semite, heal thyself, says one paradox to another.