i think irish being not-white (and a number of similar propositions) is either ahistorical or equivocating in some manner.

where irish ever required to use 'colored' restrooms? did anti-miscegenation laws outlaw 'white and irish' marriage or sexual relations?

consider that 'paddy wagon' is a term from irish association with policework in the 1800s... does it seem likely that 'white' citizens of that time would be content with 'non-whites' arresting them and carting them off to jail or court?

> Where does culture enter into this?

For one you cite a phenomenon that was unique to a certain time/place (the irish).

> The point is that whiteness in America isn't a race at all; it's a social construction

My objection is how this misses the forest for the trees. There's a weak correlation between some rednecks in appalachia who hate blacks and, say, the hiring behaviour of wealthy whites in business, or the politics driven out of middle-class America which push out ineffective criminal justice policy.

These need to be confronted on a culture-by-culture basis.

For example, just look at how so many people with honest concern about violence in ghettos often blame it on the black race, or because of the popularity of the former, non-racists who criticize it will get dismissed as merely being racists. But just because they are primarily black doesn't mean the problem is racial nor does it mean their race is entirely why they got into that position. There are plenty of non-black ghettos with high violence and low educations in many countries.

If you lump it all into a racial issue you will only get a huge push back as we see here in this thread. For good reasons too, it's as reductive and irrational as the racists or anti-semites.

You could get all social-science academia about it, but all cultures are partially social constructs. And pretending it's only a social construction is similarly reductive, there is more than enough resesrch on the genetic S culture.

What does the box on college, job, and other forms mean when it says race: "Black," "White," "Hispanic," etc??

So Whites select a social construct, while all others select a race? This is remarkably convoluted and confusing. Maybe I am just not smart enough to understand this.

Everyone has a different lived experience than everyone else. If certain people are experiencing life in a negative way because of superficial characteristics, then we should advocate for a world where those superficial characteristics don't get in the way of our judgement of them: a colorblind world. You think that adopting a colorblind perspective ignores racism, but it is actually a solution to the problem of racism.

There are many problems in many communities (poor rural white, inner city black, etc.) that are caused by the actions of those in the communities themselves, rather than by oppressive outside forces. Attitude and behavioral change within those communities is necessary for any lasting improvement in the lived experience of it's members.