Who Are “White People”?

Need to make sure I hate the right group of individuals

Our champion against cis, white, male privilege

Fellow SJWs, I’m faced with a quandary (I recently read a book for the first time). Some right-wing loser on the Internet told me there are people who may *look* white, but are actually not white and may even be persecuted minorities like myself. As you can imagine, I didn’t believe him at first because he was a man. #BanMen

But then I did a bit of research, which I know is frowned upon because I should blindly believe the toxic vitriol liberals spew about how the world works. I discovered Jews are somewhat of a racial anomaly in terms of their marginalized-ness. Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews have Middle Eastern origins, but look white. There was also something about how they were involved in the civil rights movements and blah blah blah, whatever. Point is, how can I tell which Jews I’m supposed to hate from the ones I’m not? This is serious, I don’t want to wish white genocide on the wrong group of people.

Should I hate Natalie Portman? She’s white, so that’s minus five points. But then she’s a woman (+15), and she’s also Jewish. I don’t know if being a Jew should earn you points or not. How oppressed is she? Does she know she has white privilege? What if someone benefits from being white, but doesn’t know they’re benefitting?

I know I should hate Jeff Goldblum, but did you see that scene in Jurassic Park where he’s all sweaty and his shirt’s unbuttoned and he’s heaving, oozing with sexual energy? Oh this reminds me, I have another question. As a feminist, am I allowed to find men attractive anymore?

I hate all of them, except Ross because he’s Jewish. Right?

You don’t have to tell me twice about hating Adam Sandler.

It’s important for me to know who is in the clear in Hollywood and who isn’t, because #OscarsSoWhite had me wishing I never had to watch another film again that didn’t arbitrarily cast people of color just to prove a point about equality.

I also have a ton of questions about Europeans! Are they all white? Even Eastern European immigrants with accents? What about Italians? Italians look more brown than white, but if you tell me to direct the anger and resentment I feel about my own life and choices towards them and start pointing out their white privilege, I’ll do it.

Seems like the Irish have been, and still are to some extent, a heavily persecuted group of people. They’re *obviously* white, so should I feel any sympathy towards their suffering? Or is their suffering justified? The Library of Congress has detailed records showing how oppressed Irish and Catholic immigrants were in the 1800’s, but since America was founded by slave-owning, racist, cis, white men with weird haircuts, I’m going to ignore all of history and continue to exist in blissful ignorance.

Norwegians are another head-scratcher for me. As Vikings, they only colonized parts of Greenland; so are Greenlanders oppressed too? Icelanders are direct descendants of Vikings, but the island of Iceland didn’t have any inhabitants when the Vikings arrived, therefore they didn’t actually colonize anyone; I don’t know what to do with this information! Moreover, Scandinavia has its own persecuted indigenous population known as the Sami people. God, it’s almost like white people aren’t one race, just like everyone else, which makes it hard to wish for their senseless extinction!

I feel dumb for not already knowing all the answers to these questions. This is why we need the ingenious ‘Problems of Whiteness’ course, to help us compartmentalize and make sense of our ill-wish towards other races. That course looks amazing, like something the prestigious Trump University would offer.

Well, those are all my questions. I’m going to stop reading now because it hurts my head. I think it’s super important we straighten out what we mean when we address “white people”. After all, we don’t want to sound like racists, LOL!