[LittleOldLady]

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Warik, see LOL's post.

JWNED.

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I am not here to defend anyone's position or champion anyone's cause, but let's be honest--any objective person who reads LOL's post can plainly see that she is positing that the rules as determined by the group in question (i.e. Jews) are definitive in this dialogue, and they are not.

The notion of race is not to be determined by the Talmud, the Torah, the Koran, or Mad Magazine. It is defined by science, which is not to be found in the texts mentioned.

What an odd exchange.

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Race in the sense we have been discussing is a cultural concept, not a biological ('scientific') one. (There are other senses of 'race' which are scientific and are not relevant here.) For example, in the state of Louisiana where I spent most of my adult life, race is determined by law. Anyone who has just 1 of his/her 32 closest ancestors with genetic material deriving from a population originating in sub-Saharan Africa is, by law, black. Period. End of story. People who did not want to be classified as black have challenged this in court and lost--and that in recent years. It is not a thing of the distant past. From a biological point of view this is ridiculous. What does it mean to be black when only one of your 32 forebears is of African descent? It means that in Louisiana there are blonde, blue-eyed 'blacks' and red-haired, green-eyed, freckled 'blacks.' This is clearly a cultural, not a biological, concept.

Now, I would not call Jews a race. You totally missed the point. I was speaking of genetics in response to Warik who was deriding the possibility of a genetic component to Judaism. In fact, because for many millennia Jews have defined themselves as Jews by birth (without regard to whatever religion is eventually espoused) and have been endogamous, Jews form a distinct gene pool (breeding population) as evidenced by the appearance of certain genetic diseases, blood type patterns, and other commonalities of DNA. This would be more analogous to ethnicity, such as being Irish or Italian (which groups have both cultural and genetic ties), than to race. I am quite sure that when it comes to ticking off 'race' boxes all Ashkenazic Jews tick 'white' or Caucasian. I personally have the fairest skin imaginable, almost as fair as an albino, and very light eyes. What else would I check? (pace David Duke)

Jews have genetic ties, cultural ties, and religious ties. Christians and Muslims have only religious ties. Adherents of Christianity and Islam can be of any genetic and cultural background. Religion is their only shared feature.

To go back to the OP, "to jew down" is offensive because it applies a negative stereotype to a (minority) group. The terms 'race' and 'racist' are really irrelevant.