Most people I've had this discussion with say there is no Jewish race.
Does "Jewish" mean religion or the people?
At minimum, "Jewish" is a religion and a nationality. There are people who are considered "jewish" that are atheists but have never been to Israel.
The question is what exactly IS race? It's a human contruct that helps us to identify people - usually by distinguishing features that are characteristic of somewhat but not completely isolated genetic pools. When do genetic pools not mix? When people are geographically isolated or for social reasons. Aboriginal Australian never mated with American Indians because they never saw each other. Arabs and Jews don't often intermarry because young Arab kids don't care for dreidels and who wants to pray in that funny way anyway?
The distinction between race and nationality is quite blurred. Mentally, we seem to think of race as a larger category than nationality. Asian is race but Chinese is nationality. Some people though will even refer to a " German Race". Blur.
Geneticists will tell us that there is no fail-safe litmus test for race. In fact, features like nose shape, skin color and hair texture exist in separate and distinct geographical regions. They happen to overlap enough in the areas that we have decided to mentally label people. "Black" people are of brownish color, have nappy hair and flat noses. A cross-section of these features overlaps in certain parts of the African continent and therefore become the stereotype.
It is a quite fashionable to say that there really is no such thing as race. No non-arbitray test can decide what race a person is. If a grandparent was white and all the other grandparents were black, is that person white or black? Can they check either box on the next census? The definition becomes somewhat circular. That grandparent themself may have had an asian great grandmother.
For me though, there are many human constructs that could not pass a test of scientific identification that are quite useful anyway. If someone says "he is Asian", we all think of someone like Anthony, well not quite like him, kind of like him. Sometimes "common sense" triumps science.
Oh, what was the question again? "Is Jewing down a Racial Steretypr?" Since racial lines are arbitrary and decided by us humans, I guess "Jewish" could be considered a race if enough people think of it as race. What do other people think? There is no greater test. Good thing we have a poll.
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