this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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What is passing complexion? What is colorismo?
I assume those are American concepts, part of American racial politics that primarily focuses on skin colour. But those genuinely aren't as relevant to countries half way around the globe.
America is not the world. Foreign countries are genuinely foreign. No, really. Allow me to illustrate:
Example 1: imagine you just heard someone complaining about racism against white people.
In an American context, you'd likely (often correctly) assume they were a right wing lunatic or a racist.
But here in Europe, the Sámi and Irish travellers would likely seem 'whiter than white' from an American racial politics perspective. IRC there are some theories that suggest Irish Travellers are the descendants of people who lived in Ireland before the celts arrived. We're talking millenia. And yet they face plenty of outright and often pretty nasty racism to this day.
Example 2: Israel.
My understanding is that Mizrahi Jews (sometimes known as 'Arab Jews' although that's considered a pejorative by some) historically and still do face plenty of racism in Israel from 'white' Jews....
And yet they also vote for Netenyahu and Likud en masse. The far right Itamar Ben-Gvir is (still?) the current Minister of Security. Iraqi and Kurdish heritage. Not 'white' by American standards. And yet here's an excerpt from his wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir
TLDR: more complicated than 'brown people/white people'
Colorismo is a Latin American phenomenon.
Also Israel is the 51st state so...