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I honestly don't think these interviewees know what they're talking about. The most objective argument I have to support this is that they keep talking about "whites" as a race. Never "white Americans", "caucasians", "white europeans" etc etc, just "whites" or "white people". Which is hugely problematic considering the entire concept of white as a race is incredibly modern. Before the 19th century, there wasn't a concept of whiteness, you belonged to a nation rather than a race. And it kind of makes sense, since where do you even draw the line on white? Are Egyptians white (Rami Malek...)? What about much of the middle east, many Syrians could pass for either white or Arabic? Or some western Asian countries, like most of the -istans? Ultimately, the idea of a white race was created on classist principles. The Irish were accepted as whites, despite being persecuted for centuries, as they were seen as "better than black". They weren't seen as white at all since that concept had not been created until mass immigration to the US. There's a good quote on this: [1] >The Irish, arriving poor, were in direct contact and competition with the African Americans whose social class they shared. They managed to become identified as white through their complicity in the oppression of blacks. Despite, or perhaps because of, calls from Daniel O’Connell in Ireland for the Irish in America to support the abolition of slavery, the American Irish felt their tenuous position in America would be we