Quick Poll.

Jew. Apparently.

This is completely unrelated to my feigned anti-semitism...but I have an actual, legitimate question that I am actually curious about:

For non-Jewish people, at what age did you realize that the Jews were a "separate" group?

To give this question some additional contour, I spent my entire childhood and most of my adolescence (Ohio, Michigan, South Carolina) with the impression that Jews were simply another subcategory of whiteness. For me, "white" encompassed all races of European descent and Jews. During my childhood, I could identify Italians, I could identify Albanians (because I grew up near Detroit), and I could identify other groups, but it was not until I was probably 17 or 18 that I was able to recognize that there was a distinct Jewish subgroup that was distinguishable from the big stew of Europeans...whether through appearance, last name, or whatever. (I am not delving into the issue of whether Jewish is ethnic, religious, social, etc. etc. blah blah blah.)

Jew. Easily.

Maybe the explanation wasn't helpful...but I feel like you'll have an answer for the question if you ever had a similar experience. So really. Let me know. I am truly curious that it took me 18 years to recognize the significance...and I wonder if that's why I am so casual in downplaying Jewishness and cavalier in my feigned anti-semitism.