White people

For other uses, see White (disambiguation).

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 include Europe, Russia, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand.

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.

Synonyms

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. and has not come into popular use to date.

Historic use of the term

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.

Pre-modern usage of white may not correspond to current 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 word not having the racial and cultural connotations Europeans later used to differentiate themselves from non-Europeans - and indeed, even today the name of the Bai people of Yunnan, China translates as "white". By the 18th century, however, "white" had already begun shifting in meaning and started showing signs of the term's nature as an exclusive label. 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. [1]

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. Europeans defined the other terms with reference to "white", in other words, a "black" or "brown" person is defined by having darker skin than a "white" person, and any given "color" may apply to unrelated peoples. In the U.S.A, "black" quickly came to denote African ancestry and "brown" was later attributed to non-white Hispanics and South Asians (people of the Indian subcontinent); in Australia, for example, "Black" denotes Aborigines and "Brown" denotes South Asians and Middle Easterners/North Africans.

A common 19th century view categorized most white people as Indo-European. This description was based on language family and perceived cultural and physical traits. 20th century scholars are much more reluctant to assume coincidence between linguistic and genetic descent, since language can be easily passed to genetically unrelated populations.

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.

Who is white?

Race in the US Federal Census
The 7th federal census, in 1850, asked for Color:[2] white black mulatto
The 10th federal census, in 1880, asked for Color:[3] white black mulatto Chinese Indian
The 22nd federal census, in 2000, had a "short form"[4] 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:[5] 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

The Americas: Euro-predominant and mixed-race people

Due to the historic one drop rule in the United States, for the past century or so Americans with any known African ancestry, no matter how slight or invisible, have often been categorized as Black. Americans of Hispanic and Middle Eastern or North African heritage are an exception, in that those who look utterly European, or ocassionally even those appearing mixed, are not labeled Black even though they may acknowledge slight African ancestry.

One recent genetic study by Mark Shriver, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University, states that "there is a very small degree of overlap in the population distributions. In America, most of the whites are extremely European and most of the blacks are quite African." [6] Among those white people found in Shriver's study to have black ancestry, they average an admixture of 2.3% black (of 128 grandparents, 3 are black and 125 are white).

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 almmost exclusively African descended.

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.¹ 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).² 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." ³ "American orthodoxy is that a single drop of African blood inevitably darkens its host." ⁴ 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." ² Upwardly mobileness, physical appearance and lighter skin colour allow for choice of an array of intermediate "categories", as well as white.

White and Hispanic categories in the US

The definition of white in the United States often excludes Hispanics, most of whom are of mixed racial descent (mestizos and mulattos), although many others may be of unmixed European extraction. Officially however, in the United States the term Hispanic itself does not designate race, and the US Census considers race and Hispanicity to be separate; a respondant who checks the Hispanic/Latino box can in the following question also check any of the race categories such as white, black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American/Alaskan Native. Statistics on Hispanics as a group are kept 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.

Despite these vast racial differences, there is a tendency in the U.S. to label all people of the Spanish-speaking Americas (from the Southwestern United States, Mexico, Central and South America) and Spain as Hispanic, no matter how white, black, or "brown" they might be in appearance which is appropriate since the term refers more to culture and not race.. Sometimes the term "non-Hispanic white" is used for clarity to designate members of the dominant culture of the US.

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 Anatolian Turks, Arabs, Berbers, Iranians, Mizrahi Jews, Kurds, Armenians, etc. as non-white. This is largely because they are non-Europeans. However, for the purposes of statistics, all the aforementioned are categorized as white by US government agencies and the U.S. census. 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 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).

In the American context, while 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 been based primarily on the argument that they are non-Christian and non-European ancestral origins, and from a disparate cultural, linguistic heritage. An additional premise is 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. 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.

While many South Asians are also anthropologically caucasoid —and recognized as such by the United States Supreme Court— they are excluded from the popular definition of "white". The US government agencies categorizes South Asians as "Asians", be they Buddhists, Sikhs, or Indian Jews. (See also: Race in the US Census). Outside the American context, the trend of excluding caucasoid South Asians is almost universal, as is also disregarding 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", see United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.

Whiteness and White nationalism

The strictest definition held by most white nationalist groups around the world 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 more limited than the official government definition as it excludes Middle Easterners, North Africans, Persians, and Jews. "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 non-European peoples are excluded, such as Jews and (Sephardim) and Balkan Muslims (Albanians, Bosniaks, Macedonian Torbesh, Bulgarian Pomaks, and Serbian Goranis). Despite the "whiteness" definition used by white nationalists, as with many other racially-minded groups, the definitions can vary.

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

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. According to Benjamin Franklin, German-Americans in 1751 Pennsylvania were too dark to pass for White. In his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind 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." Similarly, the 1860 American Encyclopedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge said that “[The non-White Irish race has] inherited such features as low-browed and savage, groveling and bestial, lazy and wild, simian [ape-like] and sensual....” 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 overwhelming majority of Americans. And yet, in Jim Crow Mississippi, Chinese-American children attended White schools and universities instead of attending Black ones. The Chinese Americans 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.⁵

The differences between social and physical definitions of white may 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 cultural identity and 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.

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 goverment 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. He 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. Thus people who are not white in the traditional sence, but have light skin, such as Japanese, Koreans and Northern Chinese may well be able to legitimately describe themselves as white. 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 those 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 term white and light-skinned is often used interchangelby.

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 cultural, not genetic. Every New World nation save one (the United States) has a unimodal Afro-European admixture scatter diagram revealing complete mixing of European with African and Native American ancestries.

The world-unique 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.

Significant minorities of whites live in the various Latin American countries and South Africa. Many of these nations have experienced considerable political conflict between the 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.

Footnotes

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.

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.

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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.

External links

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