Reply to Is the refernece "he/she looks very Jewish" benign or an insult?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is unacceptable.  Period.  [/quote]

Are you Jewish? If not, it’s not for you to say.

If so, recognize not everyone gets offended by it, assuming it’s done innocently.[/quote]

I am Jewish and have expressed my opinion. I don’t care if it doesn’t offend you.  It offends me.   All Jews don’t look alike, feel alike, or have to express the same opinions.  We also are not collectively responsible for the actions of all Jews.  Some Jews have red hair and freckles.  Some have blond hair and blue eyes.  Some have button noses, and some have prominent noses.  Some Jews are brown and some are fair.  There is no one Jewish look.  To say that a person looks Jewish feeds into anti-Semitic stereotypes, in my opinion.  You don’t have to agree with me.  This is MY truth.[/quote]

Alright, fine. But do you accept the reality that 10-11 million of the 16 million Jews are Ashkenazi, which is a distinct genetic group that has physical similarities? Or are you just pretending that doesn't exist. [/quote]

I'm a DP, I posted above also saying (as a Jew) that I think it's offensive, and I agree with the PP. I accept that a large proportion of Jews are Ashkenazi, but I don't see why that makes a difference. [/quote]

If you accept that a large proportion of Jews are Ashkenazi, and thus have related genes, how do you deny the objective reality that many have physical characteristics in common, just as Swedes or Norwegians or Irish or Poles or Kenyans do? Is it offensive to observe -- in a neutral, non-derogatory way -- that there are a ton of super blond kids in Sweden even though not all Swedish kids are blond? Or that different African tribes may have different facial features? Or that Japanese say they can tell at a glance who is Japanese and who is of a different Asian ethnicity despite having similar hair and eye color because of a distinctive "look" even though not everyone looks that way? Yes, some Jews have red hair and freckles, and some have blond hair and blue eyes, etc, but overall in a given population of Ashkenazi Jews, there is a much higher percentage of dark and wavy or curly hair than red or blond hair. It's not a value judgement, it's an observation.

It's only when you impute negative stereotypes to observed characteristics that it becomes offensive.[/quote]

Yes, I fully accept what you are saying about Ashkenazis (and I'm one too), and that many of us have physical characteristics in common. What I'm saying though is that despite this, because of the history of antisemitism and persecution, and because of the way Jewish (Ashkenazi) characteristics crop up in antisemitic tropes (the long crooked noses, etc) saying that someone looks Jewish is not a benign statement and should be avoided. I'm the European PP above and perhaps my perspective is different to yours because I didn't grow up in a large Jewish community in e.g. New York, I grew up somewhere where a statement about Jewish looks would usually mean something negative. That is why, in my opinion, it is different to saying that someone looks Swedish because they have blonde hair.[/quote]

That's fair and I agree that it often is a negative statement, in context. But there are some posters who argue that "looking Jewish" doesn't exist or shouldn't be acknowledged because of the history of anti-Semitism and that's just not accurate.

I also didn't grow up in a large Jewish community -- and I went to a Christian k-12 school, in fact -- so I am certainly wary of hearing from a non-Jew that I do or do not look Jewish. But from other Jews, it's usually just a comment or a guessing game.[/quote]

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