As we have seen, the federally enforceable civil rights of Jewish students largely turn on whether Jews are a “race” within the meaning of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But what does it mean to be a “race,” given the extent to which traditional conceptions of race have been discredited in recent years. For our purposes, there are three alternative approaches to determining whether Jews are a “race” in this specific and technical sense: evaluating what Congress meant by the term “race” in 1964, determining the current scientific meaning of the term, or exploring its usage in contemporary common parlance. All three methods yield the same intuitive result, which is both emotionally compelling and entirely incorrect. After sustained reflection, they also have the same correct answer, which is as important as it is counterintuitive. The degree to which this conclusion has been resisted over the years, both by policymakers and by members of the Jewish community, suggests the power of the preconceptions, illusions, ideological assumptions, and institutional baggage that stakeholders bring to the underlying question.