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Are Jews white?
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Race is a misleading construction

Whiteness does not exist outside of the public imagination. Race is a cultural context used to help explain subjective differences between populations. Increasingly, it is seen as an outdated method for understanding superficial differences.

The Argument

Race is a social construct used to explain differences between populations, without any biological basis. “Whiteness” gains and maintains power in the public because it has become a “default” culture. Despite its power, “whiteness” exists only in the public imagination.[1] There is no scientific evidence that supports the existence of such a concept. Genetic research supports the idea that race is a social construct without any biological meaning. A scientific study found that racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out.[2] In 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a statement that “race” is a myth, not a biological reality. It emphasized that all humans belong to the same species and that the word “race” is misleading.[3] Therefore, Jews or any other population should not be categorized as “White” or under any “race.”

Counter arguments

New analyses of the human genome have established that race has a biological basis. Biologists scanned various genomes for evidence of natural selection. They detected signals of many genes that have been favored by natural selection in the recent evolutionary past. According to the analyses, the difference between races seems to stem from relative allele frequency. Therefore, it is not true that race is only a social construct.[4] The genetic analysis explains the emergence of high cognitive ability among Jews. The average verbal IQ of a Jew is 120, the highest score among all races.[5] This implies that the genes affected by natural selection control not only the expected traits (such as skin color and nutritional metabolism) but also some aspects of brain function.[4] Overall, race appears to be both a biological and a social construct. We can, therefore, use the word "race" to describe Jews.

Proponents

Premises

Rejecting the premises

References

  1. https://www.magellantv.com/articles/what-is-whiteness-how-the-idea-of-a-white-race-came-to-exist-in-america
  2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/
  3. https://medium.com/swlh/there-is-no-such-thing-as-race-at-the-genetic-level-e0e1ba86a540
  4. https://time.com/91081/what-science-says-about-race-and-genetics/
  5. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/498027/jewish/Are-Jews-a-Race.htm
This page was last edited on Tuesday, 29 Sep 2020 at 17:19 UTC

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