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Comment by YuriNiyazov | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean?

I mean that, since his skin was brown, he didn't fit into my "white" mental category, because in New Mexico, people whose skins are brown typically identify as "Indian", "Hispanic", or "Black", not "White" (aka "Anglo"). Classifying people into separate "races" is pretty much racist bullshit anyway, but the fact that the classification varies so much from place to place makes that even more obvious.

I didn't actually know he was Jewish until last week.

He might have meant that the mental categories he used when classifying Swartz did not include race. If you'd asked me, I'd have acknowledged his race, but I wouldn't have used it as a way to describe him. "Young hacker", not "Young white hacker". Rich, even, but it would not have occurred to me to mention the color of his skin. We have been, after all, discussing the content of his character instead.

I'm going to guess he means "Jewish." Some people don't consider that white.

Wow, well ain't that some shit. And in year 2013, no less.

He probably means "caucasian".

Yeah, my grandma died four years ago - 2009 - and I'm pretty sure she considered Jews kind of a third group, neither white nor "colored". I couldn't swear that my own contemporaries still in Indiana don't think the same, but everybody's wised up to the point that they don't actually come out and state anything explicitly. (This is a good thing; it'll slow down the transmission of that attitude to their own kids.)

America's a weird place.

It's odd to lump categorise. Some Jews are white, and some are not.

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