What the New York Times’ racial list says about the persecution of Christians.
Maintaining its proud commitment to printing all the news that will divide Americans by race, sex, and creed, the New York Times published a list of what it claimed were the “922 of the most powerful people in America” while claiming that only 20% of them are people of color.
The term “people of color” is already ambiguous enough with white professors, grad students, and NAACP presidents claiming to be black. But the New York Times’ racial list, a thing reeking of Nuremberg and Goebbels, put the paper in charge of deciding who is a person of color by marking them with yellow. It’s a good thing no notorious racist ideology had the same idea.
(The Times had previously published a list of members of Congress who had voted against aiding Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorist regime by marking Jewish members in yellow.)
Like all racist Rohrsarch charts, the Times’ racial list says more about it than about America.
The Times claimed that only 112 of the 431 House of Representatives members are people of color. It lists Rep. Rashida Tlaib as a person of color, while listing Rep. Justin Amash as white.
Tlaib’s parents and Amash’s father came from Arab towns and neighborhoods in Israel. Amash’s mother came from Syria. They both have traditional Arab names.
How is Tlaib a person of color while Amash is white?
The Amash and Tlaib clans both have a sizable presence in Israel. They’re both Arabs, but, aside from Tlaib being a militant leftist while Amash is an ex-GOP Never Trumper, the only obvious difference is that Amash’s family was Christian while Tlaib’s family is Muslim.
The New York Times’ message is that Muslims are “people of color” and Christians aren’t. It doesn’t matter if their families might have lived some 20 minutes away from each other.
Arab Christians are white while Arab Muslims are a minority group.
As Twitter observers of the New York Times racial list noted, the paper of racial record appears to invariably list Arab Christians as white, while Muslims are described as people of color.
“24 people lead the Trump administration. 3 are Asian, Black or Hispanic,” the New York Times insisted. That doesn’t include Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, whose grandparents came from Lebanon, and Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, whose grandfather emigrated from Lebanon. The Times likewise lists Governor Chris Sununu, of partial Lebanese and Arab Israeli descent, as white, and certainly not a person of color.
What makes an Arab immigrant from Israel, Lebanon, or Syria, white? Christianity.
Israeli Jews, like Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, also don’t qualify. The New York Times lists Cohen, the son of Israeli immigrants, as yet another white non-person of color.
It’s not just Jews or Arabs who aren’t considered minorities unless they’re Muslim.
Rep. Anna Eshoo’s father was an Assyrian Christian who, in her own words, “was driven from the Middle East.” The New York Times still lists her as white. Assyrians and Armenians are not people of color. The difference isn’t, as we see in Amash and Tlaib’s case, racial, it’s religious.
It doesn’t matter whether you come from Syrian, Lebanon, Iraq or even Iran: if you’re not a practicing Muslim, you’re white.
Take the case of Farnam Jahanian, the Iranian immigrant who became the president of Carnegie Mellon. Jahanian came to America before the Islamic Revolution and enrolled in a Catholic school. The New York Times however decided that Jahanian is not a person of color.
He’s just white.
While the New York Times has a very rigid standard for being a person of color from the Middle East, it has a very loose one for being a person of color as long as they have Spanish ancestry.
Or speak Spanish.
The New York Times‘ attempt at defining race leads to awkward absurdities. It lists MIT President Rafael Reif, the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Venezuela, as a person of color, while next to him, Michigan University President Mark Schlissel, whose family came to America, without first going through Venezuela, is listed as plain old white.
Rep. Devin Nunes is listed as a person of color because his Portugese ancestors moved to America in the 19th century. Rep. Mike Levin, whose mother is Mexican qualifies, but Senator Pat Toomey, whose mother is of Portugese ancestry, doesn’t meet the Times’ racial test.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, of the powerful Lujan family, which has dominated New Mexico politics, has her governorship treated as an accomplishment for the oppressed.
“Of the people in charge of the 25 highest-valued fashion companies, 3 are Asian or Hispanic,” the Times huffs.
2 of the 3 are Pablo Isla, a successful Spanish businessman who runs a huge Spanish company, and Tadashi Yanai, who runs a huge Japanese company. Is celebrating the accomplishments of Spanish and Japanese tycoons in their own countries supposed to represent some sort of resistance to discrimination and racial inequity in America?
Why is a Spanish businessman listed as evidence of racial progress while Greek businessmen, including Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, who was born to an electrician in Phoenix, are just white guys whose success demonstrates that America is a racist nation defined by its color lines?
And that cuts to the absurdity of defining someone whose family came from Spain as a person of color, while those immigrants whose families came from Italy and Greece are white guys. Why are Portugese and Basque immigrants people of color, and Greeks and Italians aren’t?
But if the New York Times appears to be vague on what makes someone a person of color if they speak Spanish, it’s quite firm on what it takes to be legitimately from the Middle East.
It’s no coincidence that the New York Times has adopted the same idea as ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Mohammed, that non-Muslims don’t have any place in the Middle East.
The Left barely polices the boundaries of Latino or Indian identity. Even black identity is so loosely policed that white leftists have been able to get away with pretending to be black. But when it comes to the Middle East, it recognizes only one group of people as legitimate.
Its conquerors.
Christians, Jews, and non-practicing Muslims need not apply. When it comes to other groups, the categories are drawn around race, ethnicity, and even immigration status. But in the Middle East, it doesn’t matter if your parents or grandparents emigrated from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, or Syria. Their ethnic ancestry doesn’t matter either. Only one thing matters: religion. Islam.
This pernicious bigotry was used to cut off immigration for Christian refugees during the Obama administration while welcoming in Muslim migrants, a perverse reversal of oppression in a region whose Christian population is vanishing under the fire and fury of Muslim persecution.
The New York Times’ racial list is revealing when it comes to the prejudices and agendas of the allies of the Islamist movements and their organizations ethnically cleansing Christians.
The Left’s twisted ideas about race lead it to present the region’s persecuted Christian, Jewish, and non-Muslim minorities as white oppressors, while its Muslim supremacist majority are the oppressed people of color who need to be liberated from the oppression of their victims.
This isn’t just twisted. It’s an ideological argument for genocide.
Peter Buckley says
In a few hundred years’ time, after two or three centuries of inter-race marriage/ relationships, and most of the world is largely populated by people of an attractive light brown/ olive hue, they will look back at the present day and wonder why on earth people were so obsessed by defining people by their “colour”. They simply will not understand “why”.
Needless to say, it is the Left who continuously demonstrate they are the most obsessed with pigeon-holing people in this way.
curious george says
Peter Buckley,
+1
Under the scenario that you laid out; the left would make an issue of the different shades of Brown/olive. Some would be too dark, while others to light. And then we’re right back where we started, “defining people by their “colour”.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
– Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Simon says
We already have grades of colour. Look at the ‘person of colour’ actress Zoe Zaldane. She has had to perform mea culpa for not turning down the role of Nina Simone. Apparently she had to have her skin darkened and a prosthetic nose to play the role and was lambasted by the BLM movement and by Simone’s family and now Ms Zaldane regrets the distress and hurt she has caused for not turning down the role she was offered. Of course we don’t know if she gave up her multi million dollar fee that went with it.
Jedothek says
This is a good illustration of the truth that racial politics is not only bad but stupid.
gravenimage says
+1
curious george says
It does seem to be that way.
“To argue with a person who has denounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”
– Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Holger Kruger says
+10
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
“How is [Rep. Rashida] Tlaib a person of color while [Rep. Justin] Amash is white?”
Let’s have some sympathy for the New York Times Racial Classification Czar. I too would have assigned Mr. Amash a different ethnicity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg
gravenimage says
“Weird” Al is always funny.
Simon says
Perhaps these people should remember the words of President Ronald Reagan at his inauguration in 1981
‘We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick–professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans.’
Cornelius says
Mind-boggling to say the least.
To quote Orwell….
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
gravenimage says
Arab Muslims are People of Color, Arab Christians are White
………………….
Utter madness–but completely intentional.
Here is a picture of Rashida Tlaib:
https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/michigan/files/styles/x_large/public/201808/rashida-tlaib-twitter.jpg
And of Justin Amash:
https://www.bridgemi.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_hero_image/public/hero_images/screen_shot_2020-04-29_at_11.29.01_am.png?itok=tQM6jbvD
If anything, Amash is as dark or darker than Is Tlaib.
But of course this does not matter. Linda Sarsour infamously said this:
“Linda Sarsour says her hijab transformed her from ‘white’ into a ‘person of color’”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/09/linda-sarsour-says-her-hijab-transformed-her-from-white-into-a-person-of-color
Any Muslims is automatically considered to be a “person of color”, and any non-Muslim, regardless of their being of the exact same ethnicity, is not.
RichardL says
I commented about this when Hugh Fitzgerald did exactly the same thing and wrote about “Arab Israelis” and “Arab Christians”. In the first Arab refers to Muslims and in the second use it refers to ethnicity. Daniel Greenfield would never make such a mistake and I urge every one writing and commenting here to be careful. One last word: Egyptians, and thus 80% of the inhabitants of Gaza, are not Arabs, they are North Africans.
James Lincoln says
Another great article by Daniel Greenfield – one smart guy!
And if you don’t think that white is a color, try going to Sherwin-Williams to buy some white paint.
They’ll show you at least 24 different colors of white…
Boycott Turkey says
Didn’t the New York Times defend putting a black man called Ota Benga in a zoo in 1906 ? Christians in the Middle East are brown to and they are the ones persecuted by the majority Muslim Arabs it’s the Middle Eastern Christians who are the persecuted minority not the Arabs Muslims. The New York Times is defending persecution of Middle East Christians by racist anti Christian Muslim Arabs and Turks same way as it defended Ota Benga being in a zoo.
Patrick Ludwig says
The USofA is one of the few countries left on this planet, who officially categorise people according to their phenotype, aka “race”.
And the employed characterisation is definitely absurd.
They call “white” people “caucasian” and real Caucasians from the Caucasus “coloured”.
They call a Mexican of Spanish stock “coloured” but a Spaniard “white”.
An Inuit from Iceland or a Sami from Finnland would go as “Asian”.
Etc. Etc.
In the past, this categorisation was used to privilege one group, the “whites”. Now, the same categorisation is being used to pander similar privilege by the “coloureds”.
Not to speak of the creation of new moral hierarchies. Blacks consider themselves more “coloured” than Asians, Asians consider themselves better than “Hispanics” and all think they are worth more than “whites”.
Gender is mixed into the mess, to further complicate the matter.
Why not just scrap the “official” categorisation – anyway the equivalent of the “J” stamp in German Jewish Passports of the “Reich” – and let the people sort it out themselves.
The USofA is so bigotted and stupid.
Bryanw says
Patrick, are you joking when you say that Americans categorize Inuit, whether from up here or Greenland (there are none in Iceland, those are all Danes) as “Asian”? Seriously, or was that hyperbole? And by the way, you spelled it “coloured” – you a Canuck like me?
gravenimage says
Patrick Ludwig is completely full of it here. No–Inuits are not categorized as Asian, and there are no Inuit in Iceland.
And the claim that any of this–usually done through the Census and not identified with individuals, in any case–is used to persecute anyone as the Jews were persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust, is just grotesquely false.
Linda Goudsmit says
The radical leftist Democrats are redefining the English language to support their radical leftist ideology. George Orwell described the technique in his dystopic novel 1984. Newspeak is the inverted language of the totalitarian state where freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, and war is peace. This contrasts with Oldspeak where slavery is slavery, ignorance is ignorance, and war is war. Barack Obama launched the era of Newspeak in America. When Obama promised to fundamentally transform America, he was not talking about achieving the American dream, he was talking about collapsing our constitution and replacing it with socialism. Words matter. Only in the manipulative Newspeak language of radical leftist Democrats is skin color defined by religion.
Bikinis not Burkas says
Muhammad was a person of color the Islamic books tell you he was a “White color” and “a fat dwarf”
The perfect man, NOT, defective DNA.
Muhammad was WHITE!
http://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2340/
Muhammad was a dwarf and fat!
http://sunnah.com/abudawud/42/154
Roger McBride says
There are no white people. We are all people of color. Sure, some are darker than others, but we are all colored,even to so-called “white bread.”
Holger Kruger says
The new York times can´t be more wrong.
That there indicate about you are black of color or white is where you live. How much the sun is shining on you. The times for daytime. You live in a warm country or cold country.
That is all.
The New York Times make racism in a wrong way to splitting up people in what people are or not are….
SamB says
Well, the riposte in the hadith agrees with New York Times, the Prophet Muhammad was white [Narrated Anas bin Malik: While we were sitting with the Prophet in the mosque, a man came riding on a camel. He made his camel kneel down in the mosque, tied its foreleg and then said: “Who amongst you is Muhammad?” At that time the Prophet was sitting amongst us (his companions) leaning on his arm. We replied, “This white man reclining on his arm.” The an then addressed him, “O Son of ‘Abdul Muttalib.”…] and [Narrated ‘Abdullah bin Dinar: My father said, “I heard Ibn ‘Umar reciting the poetic verses of Abu Talib: And a white (person) (i.e. the Prophet) who is requested to pray for rain and who takes care of the orphans and is the guardian of widows.” Salim’s father (Ibn ‘Umar) said, “The following poetic verse occurred to my mind while I was looking at the face of the Prophet (p.b.u.h) while he was praying for rain. He did not get down till the rain water flowed profusely from every roof-g utter: And a white (person) who is requested to pray for rain and who takes care of the orphans and is the guardian of widows . . . And these were the words of Abu Talib.”] The clear conclusion, the Prophet was a racist