Salon: Donald Trump, Jews and the myth of race: How Jews gradually became “white,” and how that changed America

For most of American history, that wasn’t the case. Jews were a separate race, as blacks and Asians are today. But over time Jews became white, which made it harder for other whites to hate them.

That’s the great elephant in the room, when it comes to the tortured subject of race in America. The word “race” conjures biology, a set of inheritable — and immutable — physical characteristics. But it’s actually a cultural and social category, not a biological one, which is why it changes over time.

Until the 1940s, Jews were recorded as a distinct racial group by American immigration authorities. But many non-Jewish whites also believed that Jews shared traits with the most stigmatized race of all: African-Americans. [...]

For their own part, Jews couldn’t agree if they were a race or not. Some of them warned that a separate racial classification would inevitably link them to blacks, diminishing Jews in the eyes of other Americans. But others held tight to the racial idea, which could help make the case for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

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