White (people)

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White (noun, white or whites; adjective, white people) is a color-defined term used as a form of ethno-racial classification. Though literally implying light-skinned, "white" has been used in different ways at different times and places. It is somewhat of a misnomer. While the extremes of human skin color range from pink to blue-black, the vast majority of people have a skin color which can be best described as some shade of brown. A common element to the various definitions of "White" today, is that the term refers to a person of European descent. Also generally associated with white people are European culture, Christianity (whether as a religion or part of their cultural heritage) and Western civilization. Outside this scope, the inclusion and/or exclusion of other groups of people may vary from country to country due to differing popularly espoused understandings of the term, definitions based on government guidelines, or factors of socio-racial implication.

Regions and countries that are today predominantly white, in the sense of mainly European ancestry or Western culture, include Europe, Russia, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand.

Contents 1 The Epistemological Challenge 2 Synonyms 3 Historic use of the term in the United States 3.1 Early immigrants: Germans, Irish 3.2 Late nineteenth-century immigrants: Italians, Slavs, European Jews, Asians 3.3 Early twentieth-century immigrants: Arabs, Berbers 3.4 Late twentieth-century immigrants: Hispanics, West Indians 3.5 African Americans 4 Use of the term outside the United States 4.1 The Americas: Euro-predominant and mixed-race people 4.2 North Africa, Southwest Asia and South Asia 4.3 Whiteness and White nationalism 5 Social vs. physical perceptions of white 6 Criticisms of the term 7 "White" as opposed to "Light Skinned" 8 Areas of habitation 9 See also 10 Footnotes 11 External links 12 Further reading 12.1 References

The Epistemological Challenge

White (noun, white or whites; adjective, white people) is a color-defined term used as a form of ethno-racial classification. Though literally implying light-skinned, "white" has been used in different ways at different times and places. It is somewhat of a misnomer. While the extremes of human skin color range from pink to blue-black, the vast majority of people have a skin color which can be best described as some shade of brown. This include all races and ethnic groups whether they are described as "white", "brown", "black", "red" or "yellow". See Color metaphors for race for more discussion.

The concept of a "white person" (or a "black person") is scientifically useless. This does not mean that the terms are inaccurate, nor that there are no White people or Black people in the world. It means that the terms cannot be defined objectively so that they can independently be tested. Like aesthetic terms such as beauty and balance, religious terms such as sin and grace, and political terms such as liberal and conservative, they reflect something important in the minds of those who use them. Nevertheless, the claim that any specific individual is Black or White cannot be falsified?there is no way to demonstrate it to be an inaccurate depiction of factual reality. Hence, biology, genetics, physical anthropology, indeed the all of the hard sciences ignore the concepts of White people and Black people; they are as irrelevant to the scientific method as is the transubstantiation of the Eucharist.

Those who believe in the physical reality of "White" as a replicable human category use three kinds of definition to advocate the notion: ancestry, appearance, and self-identity. All three criteria must match in order to define one as White. The ancestry definition applies the label to anyone whose ancestors were all (or almost all) Europeans, but only if they "look White" and they also self-identify as White. All three criteria are epistemologically untenable.

A problem with the ancestry definition alone is that about one-third of White Americans (non-Hispanics who are members of the U.S. White endogamous group and check off "White" on the census) have easily detectable African DNA from the transatlantic slave trade that they inherited from recent ancestors who passed through the U.S. color line from the Black endogamous group to the White endogamous group[1]. On the other hand, dark-skinned East Indians have seldom been accepted as White, despite technically being "Caucasoids" in the obsolete craniofacial anthropometry of the early 20th century.

A problem with the appearance definition alone is that it is routinely demonstrated in college cultural anthropology classes that "racial" appearance is in the eye of the beholder. The same individual seen as White by a Dominican can be seen as Black by an American. Furthermore, such perceptions have changed dramatically over the centuries. In the mid-18th-century, some Americans saw Germans as being physically too swarthy of complexion to ever pass for White. Others accepted Germans as White without problems. Similarly, some encyclopedias of the time described mid-19th-century Irish immigrants as physically non-White, apelike, evolutionary throwbacks. However, some people of the time considered Celts to be white. The U.S. consensus seems to be that someone of completely Nordic appearance who was born into a Black (genetically biracial) family cannot become White by changing ethnic self-identity but merely "passes as White."

A problem with the self-identity definition alone is that no human society is monolithic. About 40 percent of Puerto Ricans living in the United States check off "White" on the census, fifty percent check off "other" and fill in something that the Bureau interprets as meaning "White," and ten percent check off "Black." Many individuals around the world choose to self-identify (or not) as "White" in an ethno-political sense, some in obedience to local political leadership, some in defiance of it. A deeper problem is that many if not most individuals change their ethno-political self-identity over their lifetimes; some do so often. And so, while claiming to be non-White disqualfies you from being White in some eyes, claiming to be White (as do millions of discernably biracial Puerto Ricans) does not guarantee acceptance as White.

The three components (ancestry, appearance, self-identify) of the definitions of White and Black operate in an exclusionary manner for White (all must match), but in an inclusive manner for Black (one suffices).

Synonyms

Today "white" and "black" are less often used as nouns (e.g. "whites"), as they are often thought to be slightly impolite; instead the phrases "white person/people" and "black person/people" are used.

In North America, and to a lesser extent other countries, the term Caucasian is used for "white" people (even though Caucasian properly refers to people from the Caucasus region). In the United States, Anglo is a less commonly used alternative (mostly found in the American Southwest) that includes all white people who speak English as opposed to Spanish, not just those who are descended from the historic Anglo-Saxons. "European American" is a recent coinage on the model of African American, Asian American, etc., but not been as popular as the other terms.

Although it is most prevalent in casual conversation, the term white is increasingly rare in academic and formal discussions of racial demographics, but it is still often used in discussions of racial attitudes, particularly in the humanities, and in fields such as African American studies (Black studies), critical race theory and whiteness studies.

The scope of the term white has changed over time, and varies from place to place. In the United States, the term usually applies to people of ethnic European descent or anyone that appears European with no other discernable non-European features. But Americans have used the term differently in the past and other other countries use it differently today.

Historic use of the term in the United States

Pre-modern usage of white may not correspond to recent concepts; for example, the first Europeans who traveled to Northeast Asia in the 17th century applied white to the people they encountered (see suggested readings below) �the term having then no other connotations�and indeed, even today the name of the Bai people of Yunnan, China translates as "white".

As European colonization of the Americas and eventually other parts of the world brought Europeans into close contact with other peoples, the term white and other contrasting racial colour terms, such as black, brown, yellow (Far East Asian or Oriental), and red (Amerindian), etc, came into wide use as a quick shorthand to refer to race.

By the 18th century, "white" had begun shifting in meaning and started showing signs of becoming an exclusive label. Europeans, including European colonists in the New World, defined the other terms with reference to "white." "Black" or "brown" people came to be defined by having darker skin than a "white" person, and the same "color" came to be applied to unrelated peoples.

Early immigrants: Germans, Irish

In the United States, the term became more exclusive, coming to refer only to those of Anglo-Saxon heritage. Benjamin Franklin's essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc." defined white to narrowly include only the English (Anglo-Saxons) and North Germans�Anglo-Saxons also originally North Germans, from Angeln and Lower Saxony�even then excluding nationalities such as the French and Swedes. In 1751, he wrote, "[The Germans] will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. ? The Germans are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion. ? The English make the principle Body of White People on the Face of the Earth."¹ Despite their early perception as non-White, German immigrants came to be accepted as White in the 1820s, about the same time that they became known as "Pensylvania Dutch."

The Irish took nearly a century to become accepted as White. According to the 1860 American Encyclopedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, "[The Irish race shares] inherited features such as "low-browed and savage, groveling and bestial, lazy and wild, simian [ape-like] and sensual...." Scholars of the time described such uniquely Irish race-distinguishing features as eye and skin color, facial configuration, and physique.² As late as 1881, English historian Edward A. Freeman (1823-1892) opined that the United States "would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a negro, and be hanged for it."³ As recently as thirty years ago, some people sincerely believed that they could spot an Irishman trying to pass for White.⁴

Late nineteenth-century immigrants: Italians, Slavs, European Jews, Asians

Italians, Greeks, and eastern Europeans were also considered ineligible for membership in the White endogamous group until the twentieth century. Before World War II, some Italian-American children in the South were even forced to attend segregated schools for children of the Black endogamous group. Eleven Italian-Americans who tried to pass as members of the White group were lynched in 1891 New Orleans and five more were lynched for the same reason outside the Madison Parish, Louisiana, courthouse in 1899.⁵ It was not until the World Wars that Italians and other southern Europeans were considered white in American society.

A nineteenth-century physician wrote, "The Slavs are immune to certain kinds of dirt. They can stand what would kill a White man."⁶ European Jews in America did not become accepted as White until the 1940s. Again, as with the Germans, Irish, and Italians, Americans rationalized rejection as based on hereditary appearance. In 1911, Franz Boas (1858-1952) concluded in his groundbreaking The Mind of Primitive Man, "No real biological chasm separated recent immigrants from Mayflower descendants."⁷ In reply, the New York Times book review told readers that this book was "the desperate attempt of a Jew to pass himself off as white."⁸

Nineteenth-century Asian-American men were not considered White either. Those who dated women of the White group provoked mass lynchings. Twenty were hanged in 1871 Los Angeles, twenty-eight killed in 1885 Rock Springs, and thirty-one in 1887 Hell's Canyon.⁹ Their voting rights were similarly restricted. The 1875 and 1880 modifications of the federal Naturalization Act of 1790 were meant to bar citizenship even from Asian Americans born in the U.S.?ironic, considering that the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution granted citizenship-by-birth to former slaves.

After World War II, Chinese-Americans in Mississippi achieved membership in the White endogamous group by deliberately disdaining African Americans. Community leaders influenced Chinese males to end relationships with Black females, to expel Afro-Chinese kin, and to force such biracial families to leave the Chinese community. They ended friendships with members of the Black group and ceased interacting courteously with Black customers. In the presence of members of the White group, they joked stereotypically about members of the Black group. They excluded Blacks from birthday parties, weddings, and funerals. The carefully planned strategy paid off. By the late 1960s, Chinese-American children attended White schools and universities. They joined Mississippi's infamous White citizen's councils, became members of White churches, were recorded as White on driver's licenses, and could marry members of the White endogamous group.¹⁰

Nevertheless, Asian Americans' acceptance into the U.S. White endogamous group is in its earliest stages. Although some Asian Americans in the South can now join exclusive White-only private country clubs, pockets remain on the West Coast where they are still considered "colored." And although Asian-American intermarriage with "white" Americans now approaches the acceptance level of, say, Italian Americans or Irish Americans, EEOC regulations still define them as a distinct "race," and the federal decennial census form has a separate check-box for Asians under the "race" question.¹¹

Early twentieth-century immigrants: Arabs, Berbers

Unlike Germans and Italians, who have been accepted as White by almost all Americans, Berbers and other North Africans, and Arabs and other middle-easterners, are still in a state of transition that is similar to the Whiteness of Jews and Asians. U.S. federal agencies unanimously agree that such people are White. EEOC regulations explicitly define White as "peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East." And the Census Bureau's decennial form offers no check-box for such a self-identity under the "race" question. Given the process whereby Congress routinely demands (and gets) changes in Executive Branch regulations that are requested by the public, it seems likely that most U.S. voters would agree that North Africans and Middle Easterners are White, otherwise EEOC regulations would be changed.

Nevertheless, some Americans still consider Arabs, Berbers, Iranians, Mizrahi Jews, Kurds, Turks, etc. to be non-white. This may reflect earlier historical attitudes. From 1790 until the 1960s, the U.S. restricted immigration and naturalization depending upon whether an immigrant was White, and U.S. courts waffled back and forth many times when considering whether people from western and central Asia were White.¹²

Late twentieth-century immigrants: Hispanics, West Indians

Despite vast differences in ancestry among Latin Americans, Americans tend to label all such people (from the Southwestern United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and sometimes Spain) as Hispanic, disregarding differences in skin tone. Sometimes the term "non-Hispanic white" is used for clarity to designate members of the dominant culture of the US. The question, hoewever, is whether some, all, or no Hispanics are seen as White by non-Hispanic Whites.

Judging by census intermarriage statistics, U.S. Hispanics are in the process of becoming accepted as White. In 1950, Florida and Georgia demographers defined all Puerto Ricans as Colored, no matter how pale. The census takers' instruction book said, "The term 'white person' shall include only persons... who have no trace of... West Indian.... 'West Indian' shall include anyone with a West Indies background, regardless of whether his antecedents were... Spanish or French Caucasians...."¹³ And yet, ever since the 1960 census instructions allowed self-labeling, ninety percent of Puerto Ricans have chosen to be census-White.¹⁴ And the Hispanic/White intermarriage rate in the U.S. is now comparable to the out-marriage rates of Irish Americans or Jewish Americans.

Still, despite such signs of acceptance, the U.S. popular definition of "white" often excludes Hispanics, epecially those who are discernably of mixed racial descent (mestizos and mulattos). Federal agencies differ in this regard. The EEOC explicitly defines Hipanics as a separate and distinct "race."¹⁵ On the other hand, the Census Bureau separates Hispanic self-identity from "racial" self-identity on the decennial census form. A respondant who checks the Hispanic/Latino box can, in a following question, also check any of the race categories such as white, black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American/Alaskan Native. Apologists for this scheme claim that statistics on Hispanics as a group must be collected in order to track discrimination, for affirmative action purposes, etc., in the same way that they are for non-white racial groups, and for women. The Bureau, in contrast, simply says that they are mandated to ask such questions by the U.S. Congress.

Some British West Indian immigrants may also be in the initial stages of acceptance as White. Growing numbers of British West Indians living in the United States also apparently seek mainstream acceptance by deliberately distancing themselves from the Black endogamous group. Actress Gloria Reuben (The Agency, Salem Witch Trials, Little John, ER), once said to a dimwitted interviewer who failed to notice several hints, "Stop calling me African-American! I am not African-American; I am Jamaican-Canadian!"¹⁶ West Indians' ongoing acculturation is eerily reminiscent of Puerto Ricans' bleaching a generation ago.¹⁷ Like Puerto Ricans then, many British West Indians now are comfortable with their African heritage and enjoy tracing names, music, or folklore back to Wolof, Fulani, or Yoruba customs, while they simultaneously resent being mistaken for members of the U.S. Black endogamous group. They avoid intermarriage with members of the U.S. Black community, but have no objection to marrying other West Indians of partial African ancestry.¹⁸

The slow acceptance as White experienced by Germans, Irish, and Italians in the distant past, by Jews and Slavs in the recent past, and by Arabs and Hispanics today, does not always lead to a sense of inclusion. Even today, individuals of any non-Anglo-Saxon group can be rejected by the U.S. mainstream due to religious, cultural and language issues, and such rejection is often expressed as their "not being White." In recent years, for instance, U.S. Muslims have particularly suffered from such rejection. Whereas the EEOC (and apparently by most voters) define middle-easterners and north Africans as white, Americans who see those same groups as non-white often rationalize their perception by the argument that there is a significant Black sub-Saharan component in their populations [2]�a long-spanning presence throughout the history of that largely contiguous region. On the other hand, given that about one-third of White Americans also have traces of African ancestry, the more plausible cause of their rejection is cultural, religious, or linguistic.

African Americans

Many authors have explained how each immigrant group became accepted into mainstream American society and thereby redefined as "White."¹⁹ To become accepted as White, immigrants had to learn a few vital American attitudes: tolerance of the religion and customs of others who have already been accepted as White, respect for education (for generations, Irish-Americans forbade their children to learn to read because they feared that it was a Protestant plot²⁰), acceptance of class mobility (the idea of the self-made man), and finally�like the Mississippi Chinese Americans of the Jim Crow era�they had to learn to display open contempt towards African Americans. The third item is unfortunate, but the evidence is incontrovertible. ²¹ In short, the U.S. endogamous color line is the lever by which immigrant groups continue to wrench themselves into the White mainstream using Black Americans as the fulcrum.

African Americans are apparently the exception to the U.S. process of acculturation, whereby each immigrant group is gradually embraced by the expanding definition of Whiteness, in a process that can take several generations and is still underway for many. Apparently, African Americans are the antithesis of Whiteness by definition. Due to the historic one drop rule in the United States, for the past century or so English-speaking Americans with any known African ancestry, no matter how slight or invisible, have often been categorized as Black. As suggested above, however, non-Anglophone Americans, such as those of Hispanic, Middle Eastern, or North African heritage are an exception, in that those who look utterly European, or occasionally even those appearing mixed, are not labeled Black even though they may acknowledge slight African ancestry.

The one-drop rule is historically recent. As mentioned above, before the 18th century the terms "black" and "white" did not designate groups. Before the Civil War, your "racial identity" depended on the combination of your appearance, African blood fraction, and social circle.²² Throughout the 19th century hundreds of families were socially accepted as White despite having known but undiscernible traces of African ancestry (especially in originally Hispanic Florida, Barbadian South Carolina, and the French Gulf Coast).²³

Nevertheless, that the endogamous isolation of the African-American community has lasted for centuries is confirmed by DNA admixture studies. Many recent studies in genetics and molecular anthropology have shown that there is a surprisingly small degree of genetic overlap between members of the U.S. Black endogamous group and the U.S. White endogamous group. In the United States, most of those who self-identify as non-Hispanic Whites are overwhelmingly European (about 99.3 percent European genetic admixture, on average) and most African Americans are quite African (about 83 percent African admixture, on average). Regarding the small overlap, only about one-third of White Americans are found to have traces of African ancestry; they average about 2.3% African admixture (of 128 grandparents, 3 are black and 125 are white). And almost all Black Americans have some European admixture, averaging about 17 percent.²⁴

Use of the term outside the United States

Race in the US Federal Census
The 7th federal census, in 1850, asked for Color:[3] white black mulatto
The 10th federal census, in 1880, asked for Color:[4] white black mulatto Chinese Indian
The 22nd federal census, in 2000, had a "short form"[5] that asked two race/ancestry questions: 1.Is the person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino? 2.What is the person's race? White Black, African American, Negro American Indian or Alaska Native 10 choices for Asian and Pacific Islander Other This census acknowledged that "the race categories include both racial and national-origin groups." See also Race (U.S. Census)
Race in the UK Census
Census 2001 asked for a person's ethnic group:[6] White British Any other White background Mixed White and Black Caribbean White and Black African White and Asian Any other Mixed background Asian or Asian British Indian Pakistani Bangladeshi Any other Asian background Black or Black British Caribbean African Any other Black background Chinese or other ethnic group Chinese Any other

Eventually, in the U.S.A, "black" came to denote African ancestry and "brown" became attributed to non-European-looking Hispanics and South Asians (people of the Indian subcontinent). In Australia, on the other hand, "Black" denotes Aborigines and "Brown" came to denote South Asians and Middle Easterners/North Africans.

In contrast to the United States, where Jews were explicitly seen as non-White (see the New York Times's review of Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man, above), Europeans often split whites into two sub-groups. A common 19th century European view categorized most white people as either Semitic or Aryan. The latter term was used as a synonym for Indo-Europeans, who were conceived of as racially separate from Semitic peoples on the grounds that the two groups had distinct linguistic histories. This was thought to imply separate ancestry, which was supposed to be visible in different cultural and physical traits. The term Aryan derived from Indo-European speaking peoples who occupied ancient Iran and the Indus valley, a fact that problematised its equation with the term "white". However, from c1880 some writers theorised that the earliest Aryans came from northern Europe. This led to the Nazi claim that Aryans were identical with Nordic peoples. Later 20th century scholars were much more reluctant to assume coincidence between linguistic and genetic descent, since language can be easily passed to genetically unrelated populations.

The Americas: Euro-predominant and mixed-race people

Outside of the United States, people of undiscernible African admixture are considered 'white', while those of slight African appearance are often called "coloured" or mixed race �a blanket term for people of multiple racial heritage. Meanwhile, in Latin American countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or Brazil, even those of clearly visible partial African ancestry may be considered, and may consider themselves, white.

Unlike in the United States, race in Latin America "refers mostly to skin color or physical appearance rather than to ancestry."²⁵ "American orthodoxy is that a single drop of African blood inevitably darkens its host."²⁶ In Latin America, "the problem is approached from the other end of the scale: A single drop of European blood is seen to inevitably whiten... A person with discernible African heritage is not necessarily immutably black."²⁷ Upwardly mobility, physical appearance and lighter skin colour allow for choice of an array of intermediate "categories", as well as white. According to census takers' instructions in Brazil, "color" is explicitly defined as recording the subject's observed skin tone and has nothing to do with "race." Nevertheless, it has been shown that the same individual's perceived skin tone lightens and darkens on the Brazilian census depending on the rise and fall of his or her socioeconomic success. In short, it is proven statistically that money whitens, at least in Brazil. ²⁸

North Africa, Southwest Asia and South Asia

Another contemporary difficulty of the term is the difference between any given popular definition versus the parameters used for the official government definition in the same locale. In the United States for example, many view Arabs, Berbers, Iranians, Mizrahi Jews, Kurds etc. as non-white. This is despite the fact that for the purposes of statistics, all the aforementioned are always categorised as white by US government agencies and the U.S. census, and even though some of the people in these groups may look very similar to Southern Europeans. Governmental categorisation does not always lead to a sense of inclusion, as they are often excluded from the general structural concepts of white-American society, and may even experience hostile rejection- particularly Muslims in recent decades.

By contrast in Europe and Australia those same Middle Easterners and North Africans are never regarded or categorised as white. Instead, they are regarded as racial minorities. This latter understanding of the term in Australia has little to do with white supremacist exclusionism, but rather a traditional, narrower, definition of white which has never encompassed Middle Easterners or North Africans, and which, unlike the definition of "white" in the United States, has not undergone continuous alterations to include an increasing number of people. (See also: Wog, 2005 Sydney race riots).

In the American context, where Middle Easterners and North Africans are grouped as white by government agencies, the popular contention of excluding these Caucasoid groups of North Africa and the Middle East from the white label has sometimes been based on the argument that there is a significant Black sub-Saharan component in their populations [7] - a long-spanning presence throughout the history of that largely contiguous region - but moreso on their disparate cultural, religious, linguistic heritage and ancestral origins. While it is undeniable that many Arabs in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, etc) and the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, etc.) have enough black African ancestry or are dark enough�at times being as dark-complexioned as some African Americans�to be considered black by popular US standards, some may also be lighter-complexioned by comparison, comparable to Southern Europeans. And although some Arabs of the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, etc.) may also be as dark as those found in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, here, many more are lighter-complexioned and comparable to Southern Europeans. A tiny percentage throughout the entire region (North Africa, Arabian Peninsula and the Levant) may even resemble Northern Europeans.

Furthermore, while many South Asians are also anthropologically caucasoid �and recognized as such by the United States Supreme Court�not only are they also excluded from the popular definition of "white", but US government agencies further categorise them as "Asians", be they Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians or Indian Jews. (See also: Race in the US Census). Even outside the American context, this trend of excluding caucasoid South Asians is almost universal, as is the disregarding of a comparable lighter-complexioned phenotypical presence as discussed for North Africa and Southwest Asia.

For an example of legal contradictions in United States Supreme Court rulings of "white" vs "caucasian", please see United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.

Whiteness and White nationalism

Main article: White nationalism

The strictest definition held by most white nationalist groups around the world - whether white separatists or white supremacists - is that anyone of total ancient ethnic indigenous European ancestry is 'white.'

White-nationalists in the United States often have a definition of "whiteness" that is much more limited than the official government definition. "Whiteness" in this case requires not only an ancestry that is solely or overwhelmingly European, but also a psychological identification with the European ethnicity and a commitment to advance its interests. Under this definition, many ethnically European peoples are excluded despite being virtually indistinguishable from their respective co-regionals, such as Northern European and Eastern European Jews (Ashkenazim), Iberian Jews (Sephardim) and Balkan Muslims (Albanians, Bosniaks, Macedonian Torbesh, Bulgarian Pomaks, and Serbian Goranis). Despite this "whiteness" method used by white nationalists, as with many other racially-minded groups, the definitions still vary greatly.

Among some more exclusionist white-nationalist groups, a serious ideological point is the bestowing of the "non-white" label upon ethnic European peoples of Southern European and Eastern European (Slavic) descent. Quite a few of these groups in the United States, however, have now accepted Southern Europeans and Eastern European peoples as white, considering that the blonde-hair and blue-eyed type in the Eastern European region especially is proportionally large. This is demonstrated in the written requirements for membership in white-supremacist organizations such as the National Alliance. The requirement for membership is that an individual be of "wholly European, non-Jewish ancestry."

Social vs. physical perceptions of white

Ultimately, whether any individual considers any other individual as White (or not) often comes down to whether the person "looks White. As mentioned above (in The Epistemological Challenge), physical appearance (whether someone "looks White") is subjective. Physical appearance is often cited as the reason for categorizing entire nations as non-White. For instance, many residents of Arab countries have enough black African ancestry to "look non-White" to most Americans, especially in the Eastern Province and Tihamah of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, southern Iraq, southern Egypt, and above all Sudan. On the other hand, many other individuals of these same populations "look White" to most Americans, especially in the northern Levant, northern Iraq, and some parts of the Atlas Mountains. Finally, many people of other cultures (Britons, Spaniards, Latin Americans) who also see specific middle-eastern individuals as clearly White (or not) often disagree with the U.S. perception in any particular case.

It is hard to disentangle "social" from "physical" perceptions because the latter depends upon the former. How American attitudes changed over the centuries exemplifies this. German-Americans were not seen as physically White until the late 1700s. As mentioned above, Today most Americans see German-Americans and Irish-Americans as physically White�otherwise they would be listed as "races" on the federal census. Jews are an in-between category. Many Americans today see Jews as physically non-White; although again judging by the census, most do not. Finally, Chinese Americans are listed as non-White on the census and so are apparently seen as non-White by the majority of Americans. And yet, in Jim Crow Mississippi, Chinese-American children were allowed to attend White schools and universities, rather than forced to attend segregated Black schools, as Italians Americans had been.

The differences between social and physical definitions of white can be explained as identification of white with the dominant community or in-group, as opposed to the Other. In medieval Europe, Christendom was the community, and pagans, heretics, Jews, and Muslims the outsiders, regardless of skin color. When the primacy of religion was eroded by the Protestant Reformation and Renaissance and Enlightenment secularism, and Europeans started to colonize lands outside Europe, the in-group signifiers shifted to concepts like white and civilized, but much of the earlier attitude remained, such as exclusion of the religiously different. In the US, white consciousness was first encouraged to help maintain a caste system and control of labor; then when expansion of the in-group became politically desirable in the early 20th century as a result of mass politics, the definition of white was widened to include Southern and Eastern Europeans. Still later, when inclusion of Asians and some sections of other groups became useful, the term white has been played down as divisive, and emphasis has shifted to other signifiers like educated, professional, and modern.

Even now, the current social climate in the West (although primarily the United States) seeks to be nearly all inclusive, taking an about face from the social considerations of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This has prompted other groups, especially black people, to label this a form of hypodescent similar to the "one drop rule", except the hypodescent carries large numbers of mixed people to being labeled as white instead of black. In one such instance, an Egyptian man was forced to accept a white classification imposed by government officials when he entered the United States. He was threatened to lose his professional career otherwise. Even though his phenotype, ancestry, and social characteristics would classify him as Black, he was told he had to accept white as his background. Mostafa Hefny sued the U.S. government to have his racial classification changed to Black. What was more socially intriguing was that many Whites and Arabs found the issue to be an unnecessary concern on Hefny's part.

Criticisms of the term

The broad usage of "white" is sometimes criticized by those who argue that it de-ethnicizes various groups, although the same charge is not leveled at the question of ethnic diversity within blacks. During the era of Jim Crow Laws in the Southern United States, facilities were commonly divided into separate sections for white and "colored" people. These terms were defined by law, with people of northern and western European being labeled white and African-Americans labeled as "colored". The categorization of people of other ethnicities and mixed ancestries varied by state, county, and municipality.

"White" as opposed to "Light Skinned"

There is considerable controversy as to the difference between "light skinned" as opposed to "white". As mentioned above, the term "white" is a misnomer, as almost all people (regardless of race) have a skin color which is some shade of brown. It has been noted that the descendants of light-skinned Arabs (like Ralph Nader), North Africans, and South Asians (like Keanu Reeves) have been fully accepted as White by most Americans. Although acceptance as White by fair-skinned individuals with slight African ancestry (like Carol Channing) is less common, about 35,000 Americans per year re-define themselves from Black to White. In non-western countries, the terms white and light-skinned are often used interchangeably.

The uniquely pale complexion and melanin-deficient hair common to Nordic adults is often considered the hallmark of those seen as White. This phenomenon's cline is densest within a few hundred miles of the Baltic Sea and, unlike other Old World skin-tone distributions, is independent of latitude (the natives of lands at higher latitudes than the Baltic are invariably darker than Nordics). See Human skin color for an overall explanation of skin-tone distribution. See The Paleo-Etiology of Human Skin Tone for an explanation of the near-albino paleness of Nordics and the lack of variation in Native Americans.

Areas of habitation

Ever since the era of European expansion, and especially since the 19th century, most Europeans have come to see most other Europeans as White (although Greeks, Sicilians, Spaniards and Portuguese are sometimes considered non-White by other Europeans). Hence, one could say that the indigenous habitat of White people is Europe. Nowadays, countries with a majority of ethnic Europeans include all the nations of Europe, as well as some of the countries colonized by them through the 15th century to 19th century, such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Asiatic Russia, and Oceanic Australia and New Zealand. In those nations, the relatively small indigenous populations were overwhelmed by White colonists from one or more European "mother countries". In the New World today, however, the White/non-White distinction is apparently cultural, not genetic, since every New World nation save two (the United States and Canada) has a unimodal Afro-European admixture scatter diagram revealing complete mixing of European with African and Native American ancestries.

Of the countries of Latin America, those that it can be said are composed of an overwhelmingly European population are Argentina and Uruguay. Chile and Costa Rica are also quite "European", and possess mestizo majorities (mixed European and Amerindian) where it is not uncommon for the European element to predominate heavily over the Amerindian one (See also: Castizo); of those, many would simply identify as white. Countries such as Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, on the other hand, possess Amerindian majorities, and although they also harbour large mestizo minorities, on average the Amerindian element predominates over the European one. Also, the Dominican Republic and Cuba are composed of mulatto majorities (mixed European and African), though both with black and white minorities, which in Cuba is a relatively large white minority. Furthermore, South Asians constitute the largest segment of the population in both Guyana and Suriname, while Haiti is almost exclusively African descended.

Significant minorities of European-descended populations in the various Latin American countries and South Africa. Many of these nations have experienced considerable political conflict between the so-called white minority (those who self-identify as being descendants of settlers from the former colonial power) and those who see themselves as mixed, or in the case of South Africa those who are seen as non-European unmixed majorities.

See also

• Caucasoid
• Caucasian race
• Human skin color
• Race and Intelligence
• Validity of human races

Footnotes

1. As quoted in Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968), 102, 143. See also [8].
2. Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America, 1st ed. (Middletown CT, 1986), 88. As quoted in Jonathan W. Warren and France Winddance Twine, "White Americans, the New Minority?," Journal of Black Studies, 28 (no. 2, 1997), 200-18, 203; David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991), 133.
3. As quoted in Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, 2 vols. (London, 1994), 1:29.
4. H.L Gates, Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (New York, 1992), 49.
5. Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens GA, 1995), 6.
6. As quoted in Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley, 1990).
7. Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man (New York, 1911).
8. Lothrop Stoddard, as quoted in Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, 1998), 184.
9. Harry H. L. Kitano and Roger Daniels, Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1995), 24.
10. James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (Cambridge MA, 1971); Warren (1997), 200-18, 209-11.
11. See Employer Information Report EEO-1 and Standard Form 100, Appendix � 4, Race/Ethnic Identification, 1 Empl. Prac. Guide (CCH) � 1881, (1981), 1625.
12. For a comprehensive list of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that repeatedly reversed prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions (back and forth many times) regarding whether or not Afganis, Syrians, Asian Indians, and Arabians are White, see "Appendix A" of Ian F. Haney-Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University, 1996).
13. Stetson Kennedy, Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was (Boca Raton FL, 1990), 47-49.
14. Clara E. Rodriguez, "Challenging Racial Hegemony: Puerto Ricans in the United States," in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick NJ, 1994), 131-45.
15. Oddly (in a linguistic sense), the regulation states that the distinct Hispanic "race" comprises, "All persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race". [Underline is the author's.]
16. One might ask whether Ms. Reuben's scolding does not reflect a desire to deconstruct the U.S. color line, rather than to distance herself from the Black community. It is, of course, impossible to know Ms. Reuben's innermost motives. But the literature of West Indian resistance to being involuntarily assigned to the Black endogamous group by American society (especially by members of the U.S. Black endogamous group) is vast. See, for example, Stephen A. Woodbury, Culture, Human Capital, and the Earnings of West Indian Blacks, (1993); Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (New York, 1999); Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York, 1981), 219; or Malcolm Gladwell, "Black Like Them," The New Yorker, April 29 1996. The interpretation presented above makes Ms. Reuben's statement unexceptional. The alternative (that she wants to defy the U.S. social system, rather than position herself advantageously within it) would be anomalous.
17. One might also wonder whether this suggests or implies that West Indians are currently following the same trajectory as the earlier Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Jews, and so forth, who achieved acceptance into the U.S. White endogamous group. That is precisely what the evidence study suggests. Finally, one might ask: "Why have other ethnic groups (Germans, Irish, Italians, Slavs, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, and Puerto Ricans) achieved or begun to achieve acceptance as White, but native-born members of the Black endogamous group have not achieved acceptance into the White endogamous group?" This is a mystery. There is, of course, no physical trait that would prevent it. After all, it is a clich� among forensic anthropologists that the only way to tell if an unidentified corpse is Hispanic, rather than Black with lots of European genetic admixture, is to search the pockets for a shopping list written in Spanish.
18. See Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York, 1981), 219. Incidentally, not all those of B.W.I. lineage reject the Black label. Jamaican-descended General Colin Powell, for example, identifies himself as Black.
19. See, for example: Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America (New Brunswick NJ, 1998); Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York, 1995); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, 1998); Ian F. Haney-Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York, 1996).
20. Oscar Handlin, Boston's Immigrants, 1790-1880, Rev. and enl. ed. (Cambridge MA, 1959), Chapter 5.
21. The best overall survey of such evidence is Jonathan W. Warren and France Winddance Twine, "White Americans, the New Minority?," Journal of Black Studies, 28 (no. 2, 1997), 200-18.
22. See "Chapter 9. How the Law Decided if You Were Black or White: The Early 1800s" in Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230. A summary of this chapter, with endnotes, is available online at How the Law Decided if You Were Black or White: The Early 1800s.
23. See chapters 10-12 of Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230. Summaries of these chapters, with endnotes, are available online at Barbadian South Carolina: A Class-Based Color Line.
24. Although abstracts of most such peer-reviewed studies can be found in pubmed, a current index to recent admixture studies, along with full-text links, is available at: Various admixture studies.
25. Template:Journal reference issue
26. Template:Journal reference issue
27. For detailed sources and citations, see "Chapter 6. Features of Today's Endogamous Color Line" in Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230. A summary of this chapter, with endnotes, is available online at Features of Today's Endogamous Color Line.
28. George Reid Andrews, "Racial Inequality in Brazil and the United States: A Statistical Comparison," Journal of Social History 26, no. 2 (1992): 229-63.

External links

• A History of the White Race
• Legally white Precedents of legal opinions and judgments authored by US courts in whiteness cases filed by non-Europeans
• Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab American Experience, by the Arab American Institute

Further reading

• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, Harvard, 1999, ISBN 0674951913.
• Frank W. Sweet, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule, Backintyme, 2005, ISBN 0939479230.
• Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, Routledge, 1996, ISBN 0415918251.
• Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, Rutgers, 1999, ISBN 081352590X.
• Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)
• Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, 2 vols. (London: Verso, 1994)
• Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America, New ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1997)
• Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1996)
• Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1999).[[pt:Branco (ra�a)]]

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "White_(people)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_(people), used under the GNU Free Documentation License

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Categories: Ethnic groups in the United States | Ethnic groups