Forget the tick-box, let’s open up a discussion

Here we go again. I sit in front of an online form and I don’t know which “race/ethnicity” box to tick. I scroll through the options of acceptable identities, the categories that are meant to define me, and find myself outside of all of them. I settle for “white minority” and move to the next question. Perhaps I am a white minority. I certainly benefit from the privilege of appearing caucasian and I am grateful to be shielded from colour-based discrimination, but this doesn't encapsulate who I am and how I want to be seen.

I'm sure I’m not the only one faced with an inner conflict when asked to answer to which ‘group’ do I belong. Categorising Jews as white seems to neglect so much of the lived experience of being a Jew that encompases both race and ethnicity. In a world where social identity is defined through these vehicles, isolating Jews from the ability to identify with reference to these measures is harmful.

The Jew navigating the landscape of race and ethnicity is left isolated: excluded from BAME spaces, yet exposed to daily racism. Told that their Jewishness is a religion, not an ethnicity, yet categorised as genetically "at risk" because of their distinct genetic markers. It seems as though the routes to self identification that have emerged throughout human history has left Jews unaccounted for. If this is how we think humans should be categorised, then the act of excluding Jews from these is dehumanising.

The truth is we, as Jews, straddle all groupings. We are a nation since we have a land, we are a race as we have common ancestry, and we are an ethnicity because we have our own collective history and practices. Judaism is also an ideology that takes many forms across various geographies.

Perhaps this is the root of the confusion over how we should identify. We do not fit into boxes of race/ethnicity since we transcend the categories each box represents. What is my race? What is my ethnicity? What is my culture? To all of these questions I say: "I am a Jew." We, as Jews, have been denied access to recognition according to these categories because it cannot be done. Instead, we tick “white other” and surrender to an identity that has been artificially bestowed upon us so that we fit.

Should we accept that Jews are fundamentally their own category of human? In which case should be asked to fill in “race/ethnicity/Jew” questions on forms? No, that would cause more problems than it solves. Instead, we should do away with the race/ethnicity landscape and devise a new scheme of how we should identify. It is here where I think the solution lies. We should promote self-identification and replace tick-boxes with boxes of dialogue. This, it seems, is the only way to account for us all.

By Charlotte Zemmel

This essay was longlisted for the JR Young Journalist Prize 2020. Follow Charlotte on Instagram: @Charlotte.Zemmel.

Read the other prize entries on the JR blog.