To me Russians seem like white people who reject their whiteness, sort like the Irish but the Irish don’t try to reject it anymore. What’s your opinion?
They are white until they are orcs.
Unless you live where I do. We have a large Slavic population here that faces a number of structural barriers, to the extent that a lot of demographic forms here list White (Western European) and Slavic (Eastern European) separately and there are specific social service organizations serving them like with other minority communities here.
Shit is super contextual.
what the hell is with people trying to overthink this?
you know when you see someone
for the west's perception pre-2008 fellow white, post-2008 asian horde
It strongly depends on when you ask, who you ask, and why you ask.
Because it's all made up and shouldn't be taken seriously as a concept.
Race as a biological concept is false, race as a social class does exist. And white people are oppressing everyone.
I don't see how attempting to define the whiteness of russians is doing anything other than reinforcing harmful structures and ideas
I think Russians constitute an exception that demonstrates how absurd the framework of race is. Actually, race is a means to simplify and create a mass ideology to support national oppression. I.e. someone is exploitable because they 'look' like a certain 'race'. In actuality, 'race' is a paper put over a political-power relationship. This is not to say that race does not radically structure and effect people's lives! Anti-blackness and racism are very real and very harmful institutions.
They myth of 'race' requires biologically distinct 'races' that have different innate worths. Ethnic russians create a paradox in this system because on the one hand they meet the white aesthetic ideal, but on the other hand, the Russian state's interests are diametrically opposed to the Western States' interests.
[CW: ethnic slur for Russians] This is why you see the absurd anti-Russian 'orcs' propaganda. Because Russians are aesthetically 'white' none of the established racist tropes can be applied because there is not enough supposed difference between Russians and 'white' Westerners. That's why it falls so flat and feels so forced, in my opinion.
Well as I understand it whiteness isn't an actual ethnicity, but a relation to power in the imperial core. Italians, Irish, Germans, Polish etc. were slowly enveloped into whiteness in the 20th century if they maintained the status quo of the West even though they were the target of varying amounts of discrimination.
I'm sure
could tell an hour long history of how European nations have always othered Russia and other Eastern European nations but I doubt Russians have ever really been accepted into Whiteness, especially not the ethnic minorities. Russia is just not in the West 
As other commentator said this odd thing to ask. Definitely not at rainbow scale. On the serious note, I guess we are talking about ethnic Russians coz there are many ethnicities in Russia. I have no idea how “white scale” looks like but I guess not completely white coz they’ve been fucked by mongols for a while, like many others.
Bringing back the Spanish casta system but make it leftist this time
: They're basically a type of Mongolian.
