Discussion with an asshat on FB

[Orrex]

This guy spent some time howling about "woke Hollywood," finally focusing his disgust on what he calls the "racist" policy of changing the ethnicity of characters.

He posted several comments about this until, having gotten a general sense of his views, I replied "Yeah, like when Republicans turned Jesus Caucasian with blue eyes and light brown hair."

The he replied "Not sure why that's funny considering that part of the world was very Caucasian at that time."

And I confess that this threw me, because I'd simply never heard it before. I mean, I've seen True Romance, but they were talking about Sicily.

Since he's a Conservative, there's no point in asking him to cite his sources, but does anyone know where he got it, and he'll simply dismiss any references to this forensic reconstruction:



Any thoughts?

[Aviation Pro]

1. Fetal alcohol syndrome comes to mind

But that's just a shot in the dark.

[Jim__]

2. "Why Are Middle Easterners Classified as Caucasian?"

I found this on Medium, Why Are Middle Easterners Classified as Caucasian? I can't vouch for its accuracy.

An excerpt:

...

According to the United States Census Bureau, the official agency tasked with counting every person in the country, the definition of being white in America is “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”

Middle Easterners and North Africans (also known as MENA) are therefore an invisible group here in America. Yes, we are somewhat represented through the American Community Survey, but since it’s not an actual count, disputes about the exact number of MENA people living in America ranges from 1.8 million to 3.7 million people.

If it seems a little counter-intuitive to be considered white, that’s because it is. During the first wave of immigration in the 19th century, Arab Christians trying to escape persecution in the Middle East, while also trying to avoid the racist restrictions of Asian immigration, won key court cases to change their racial classification from “Mongolian” to “Caucasian.”

In 1909, Levantine Christians pooled their resources in Los Angeles County to win the first case to classify Middle Easterners as Caucasian. In his statement, the lead defendant George Shishim argued: “If I am Mongolian, then so was Jesus, because we came from the same land.”

...

[Major Nikon]

4. Caucasian just basically means white skinned

I'm sure there were white skinned people from the region during the 1st century, there were also very dark skinned people and those in the middle.

Given Jesus' alleged origins, it's not very likely he would have been Caucasian.

[czarjak]

3. Alternitive Facts.

The poorly educated's base.

[Otterdaemmerung]

5. Jesus was Caucasian, but not white.

Caucasian means basically anyone spanning from the Atlantic coast of Europe through the Middle East, bounded by Africans to the south and Indians and Asians to the east. As with most racial designations, it's arbitrary with no fixed boundaries, and it seems to have more to do with physiology than skin color. From dictionary.com's definition: "Anthropology. (no longer in technical use) of, relating to, or characteristic of one of the traditional racial divisions of humankind, marked by fair to dark skin, straight to tightly curled hair, and light to very dark eyes, and originally inhabiting Europe, parts of North Africa, western Asia, and India."

That said, "white" as we use it here in the U.S. is a subset of Caucasian, meaning northern European. Traditionally, the "white" designation excluded people from Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the rest of the Mediterranean coast.

There's a great meme going around that asserts (in my opinion, correctly) that there are no "white" people in the Bible.