The White and the Colored

Is this entry about race? Or is it merely about the separating one’s laundry?

(bShab 19)  The sages are still deliberating about technology/work leading up to shabbat. Here the question is raised about how many days before Shabbat to give your clothers to a gentile launderer. “Rabban Gamliel’s household would give white clothes to the launderer three days before the Sabbath. And coloured clothes even on Friday. From their words, we can learn that white clothes are harder to launder than colored ones.” Subsequently, we also learn (via Abaye and Rashi) that the price on colored clothes is lower – and so launderers of color (1)  get paid less.

At a minimum, we see that whiteness has economic implications (well, text only demonstrates this point for antiquity). If you want and own white, you have to pay for it.

Current analogue to the talmudic discussion: The debate over bleaching paper with chlorine in order to get your best whitey whiteness. [Insert here info about the pollution caused by chlorine bleaching of paper and tampons.] Yes, the industry can argue white paper is easier to read. But is that really all that this bleaching debate is about?

Segue now back to the Jewish community today. Intense preference for white shirts among Orthodox and, generally, for Shabbat. What are the unintended environmental implications of this indulgence in white clothing? And how does this preference jive with the construction of race?

Ok, this post is still in rough form. Like many I’ll be doing, it will need revision – suggestions welcome.

[1] This reminds me that a student at Harvard Divinity School once set up bins to separate “white paper” and “paper of color”. Funny irreverent, or funny dismissive of racism?

Comments

[Ben G.]

an interesting meditation on the life of "whiteness" in the Jewish and general population... would be interesting to tease it out in some direction or another—also remembering that Jews were not "white" until mid 20th century in the US...

now what I want to know is silver, and all the value associated with it and it's close relative, keseph, actually a special sort of shiny whiteness?

btw, Kaspit, one bit of feedback: you might want to consider configuring your posts to appear in reverse chronological order. Assuming you develop a readership—as I suspect you will—folks like to load up the page and find the most recent thing you've done at the top.

"also remembering that Jews were not "white" until mid 20th century in the US.."

David was fair and blue eyed...

it seems pretty clear that lightskinned were favored. eg there are references to rabbis with unusually white skin, the women who came up from babylon with tanned skin were considered less beautiful etc.

[ellen]

The comment that Jews weren't "white" until mid-20th century in America is silly. The point is that the ruling elite, until that time, was not only white, but specifically Protestant and of Anglo Saxon background. It is these last 2 characteristics that were the real classifiers, not the white part. Nonwhites were not very numerous (10%) at midcentury, and were certainly not, by virtue of education, wealth or accomplishment, in any position to become part of the elite. The Jews were kept out of this elite to some extent, not because they weren't white enough but because of cultural prejudices and fears. Culture is the issue, then, not skin color or "whiteness".