>
>>There are definitely some people (I'm kinda on the fence)
>who
>>see Jewish as a race/ethnicity. For thousands of years, we
>>were prohibited from intermarriage. We were chased out of
>>pretty much every place we've tried to call home. Due to
>these
>>things, we share more in common with each other genetically
>>than we do with any particular country we may have been
>living
>>in at the time. A Jew living in Russia may likely share more
>>genetically in common with a Jew living in France than he
>will
>>with his next-door neighbor who is non-Jewish.
>
>Well, sure; two Jews in France are more likely, by
>probability,
>to have a more recent common ancestor than two random
>Frenchman.
>
>That is pretty liberal criteria for an "ethnic group,' though.
>

I was referring more to the fact that a Jew in France and a Jew in Russia are more likely to have a more recent common ancestor than a Jew in France and a non-Jew in France. So that Jew in France has more genetically in common with a stranger in Russia than he does with his next-door neighbor.

>
>I know Jews who have the opposite opinion: Jews are dope
>specifically because of the breadth and depth of the diaspora;
>
>there are Ethiopian Jews black as tar; there are Jesus Jews
>(who
>look sorta like an average fair-skinned African-American);
>there
>are Jews with blue eyes and blonde hair; all are chosen by god
>
>and are not to be fucked with.
>
>Blue-eyed and blonde haired Jews don't share a particularly
>common ancestor with black-as-tar Ethiopian Jews
>but both are Jews.
>
>But I'm not Jewish and so should probably shut the fuck up,
>quite honestly,
>
>


I may have been exaggerating a bit by extending it to all Jews all over the world, but European Jews have more DNA in common with one another than with whatever countrymen they have.

Look at Italians as an example. Most "ethnic Italians" have been living in the region currently known as Italy for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. As a result, ethnic Italians share common physical features, genetic DNA, etc., because their ancestors have all been living and breeding in the same part of the world for all that time.

Same thing for ethnic French, ethnic Spaniards, or any other group of people whose ancestry traces back to one country for multiple generations.

With European Jews, we've never had one specific country that we were able to stay in for very long. So as a result, that shared DNA is more specific to other European Jews than it is to other Spaniards, Italians, or whatever. That's as a result of living 3-4 generations in one place, then moving somewhere else and living there for 3-4 generations, then moving again. When they got to the new place, they weren't allowed to marry or mingle with the people who lived there, so the gene pool stayed within the same group of people.

Things were a little different for Ethiopian Jews and Arab Jews, so I shouldn't have lumped them in.

If I were to meet a member of the KKK, or some other virulent racist, and they learned I was Jewish, they certainly wouldn't consider me to be "white" like them. It may not be the most rational thing to (partially) base my self-identification on the opinion of the fringe elements, but isn't the existence of racists and racism the only reason that race matters? If there were no racists/racism in the world, the color of your skin would matter as much as the color of your eyes.

So, since racists don't consider me to be white, why should I fully look at myself as white? To me, that's trying to gain acceptance into a club that doesn't want you. So I look at myself as Jewish first, White second. I can't completely deny my whiteness, because I enjoy the benefits of white privilege (at least partially because I don't "look" Jewish). But I don't fully embrace it either, because once my Jewish identity is revealed, I become an "other" in the eyes of some.