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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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I want to begin with the statement that I am not, by typical definition, racialist, although I accept a weak form of HBD, and that to me you are correct with the view that "who is white" is a question with by-definition fuzzy answers because the boundaries of any racial group are by definition fuzzy.

Now, to continue, "are Jews white", yes, depends on how you define it. Obviously by a historical geography definition Ashkenazim are as white as poles(that is to say, generally understood to be), and I don't care if they're technically semites or khazars or whatever. By a phenotype definition they're as white as Italians(that is to say, generally accepted as). By a genotype definition they're definitely mixed but Maronites and Eastern Europeans are both conventionally accepted as white, and they are both major contributors to Ashkenazi Jewish DNA.

By a sociological definition, "whiteness" has been redefined almost literally into a way to describe Jews without naming the Jew(while conveniently pinning the blame on Billy-Bob from Nowheresville, Indiana), so that describes Jews as white.

Instead I think you're referring to the cultural aspect, where "white" describes people of ethnic groups that were historically part of Christendom. So Armenians but not Persians or Turks, Maronites but not Alawites, Ossetians but not Tatars, Romanians but not Romani, Spaniards but not Sephardi. And this is a semi-useful definition because there are real differences between Christian and Jewish or pagan or Islamic cultures. To start with, Christian cultures are unlike other Abrahamaic-influenced cultures in generally having strong traditions of both musical and representative art, requiring the woman's consent for marriage and not just her father's, making use of both pork and alcohol in their cuisine, viewing slavery with greater discomfort, lacking a thorough religious dictation for basic legal principles, viewing dogs as high status animals, celibacy/chastity as a virtue, and generally not expecting clergy to hold either secular political or military roles. And these are extremely relevant distinctions that line up pretty well with the things that distinguish the west from the middle east. But it's more useful to describe them as "western", because those things also encompass lots of Latin Americans and African Americans who are obviously from looking at them nonwhite. And so I think it's best to use "white" in a phenotypic way that would encompass lots of Jews, Middle Easterners, etc. And, personally, I care a lot more about common cultural background than common skin color.

This is the single best description of mostly-European Christian culture I’ve ever read. I have no idea how much the individual points are from barbaric cultures, but I do identify with this much more than the color of my skin, which I view as an accident.

I know it's more or less besides the point, but I can provide at least some evidence for any one of those things as being rooted in pre-enlightenment if not ancient Christianity. Yes, obviously current western views on consent or dog ownership or slavery or separation of church and state are more "postchristian" than "christian", but they more or less have to be postchristian and not postislamic or posthindu.

Imagine obsessing this fucking much about skin colour.