Why does Elon Musk care what color Jews are?
Musk’s missive came as a response to a thread detailing what he believes is the possible “extinction” of Caucasians. A commenter attempted to sympathize and noted that Jews have faced a long history of potential extinctions and exterminations, to which Musk replied with his now-controversial comments on Jews and their supposed “whiteness.”1 View gallery Elon Musk, X logo (Photo: X, Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters)The response to Musk on social media was immediate and outraged. While many Jews — particularly in the U.S. — may be white, multiple X users noted that Jews come in all shades and colors. And X itself slapped a “community note” onto Musk’s original post explaining…“While there are many white Jews, Jews are not white, Jews are very diverse.” X also added links to Wikipedia articles about Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews.Although this may sound well and good, both Musk and X have got it all wrong because the #fail here isn’t whether Jews are “white” or “black” or “brown” or even #peakwhite — but in attaching race to Jews in the first place. Now let’s move on to the more serious stuff. Because the real issue here isn’t whether Jews are white, but why race is being attached to Jews at all. And does the color of Jewish people even matter?Of course, this is America — race matters, it always matters. But the problem is that when it comes to Jews, race always matters to those who hate Jews most — particularly those who love #palestine. Indeed, the “Jews are white” canard has been a central pillar throughout the history of antizionism — from its inception to the current chatter dominating pro-Palestinian activists now that they can no longer clamor for a ceasefire in Gaza. Indeed, what else is UN Resolution 3379 declaring “Zionism is Racism” but a not-so-subtle demand that Jews be perpetually classified as white.I am the son of a “white” Ashkenazi Jewish mother and “Black” Baptist father — so the intricacies of race and Jewishness have been central themes of my identity for as long as I can remember. But after years of contending with what many have assumed are conflicting identities, there is actually no conflict at all. I know Jews are not “white” because I see a non-white Jew every time I look in the mirror. But what I see is not a “brown” Jew or a “black Jew” or a Jew of any color, for that matter. Like the rest of my coreligionists, I am just a “Jew.” And when it comes to race and Judaism, Jew is the only “color” that matters.This matters for many reasons. In pure historic terms, attaching race to Jews reflects a deeply American view of identity that is barely 500 years old — a blip in the millennia of Jewish existence. Of course, Jewish communities have always taken on the political and cultural totems of their diasporic hosts — both as a tool of assimilation and as a sheer survival mechanism. But only in America — with its complex legacies of race and, most crucially, racism — has Jewish identity been so closely intertwined with ethnic groups (the “whites) so far beyond our own. The goal, of course, isn’t community building, but erasure of both our distinctive identity as Jews as well as our connections to the Jewish homeland, Israel. This is why the anti-Zionists so gleefully insist on attaching Jews to other “whites” such as Poles and Russians and Germans. But while Jews may have lived in those nations – even thrived in those nations – we have never been of those nations. We are not like those nations. Centuries of global anti-Semitism as virulent as American racism have never let us forget it. Ultimately, the most odious element of the “Jews are white” charade is how quickly it can become a tool for virulent antisemitism and ultimately violence. Here in the US, the failure of DEI programs across academia and the private sector to address rising antisemitism is rooted in the claim that Jews are “white” — and don’t “need” Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts. In fact, with its race-based hierarchies and ethno-favoritism, DEI’s obsessive focus on “privilege” and “whiteness” is entirely intended to penalize Jews. More worrisome is the fact that laced throughout every element of pro-Palestinianism is this assertion that Jews are “white.” It’s a claim that has garnered outsized potency amid talk of “white Jewish settlers” who are “colonizing” Palestinian land and “ethnic-cleansing” its original non-white natives. In the conversation around who truly belongs in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, whiteness has become a legitimate cause for resistance, retribution, terror – Jihad!And guess what, Jews are the only “white” targets that seem to matter.David Christopher Kaufman is a former New York Post editor and columnist; follow his work on the Substack COUNTERINTUITIVE.
