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White people (also white race or whites) is an informal label given to a segment of the human population based on inconsistently-applied characteristics such as ethnicity, country of origin, skin tone, language, and religion.

The designation has social, political, scientific, and legal implications such as on a nation's census, anti-miscegenation laws, racial segregation, affirmative action, eugenics, racial marginalization, and racial quotas.

Social vs. physical perceptions of white

See also: Social interpretations of race

Whether any individual considers any other individual as white comes down to whether the person looks white; however this is a very subjective judgement. Furthermore, white people is a term whose definition changes over time and space. Today, most Americans consider Eastern Slavs and many consider European Jews as white, but this was not always the case. In China, white people refers to a specific group of Asians - people who would not be considered white in the United States .

In medieval Europe, Christendom was the dominant community, and Pagans, heretics, Jews, and Muslims were the outsiders, regardless of skin color. When the primacy of religion was eroded by the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, and secularism, separation of peoples based on religion shifted to concepts like white and civilized.

United States

David R. Roediger argues that the construction of the white race in the United States was in direct effort to mentally distance slaveowners from slaves. By the 18th century, white had become well established as a racial term. In the United States, confusion over the designation white or Caucasian is considerable, due partly to the introduction of the term Hispanic in the 1980 United States Census.

The 2000 United States Census, speaking of race categories, states, "They generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria."

The United States Census parameters for race give national origin a racial value. This can be confusing in regards to people of Middle Eastern Americans and North African American — who are commonly classified as Caucasian. Another difficulty is that by responding Israeli in the U.S. Census, a person will be categorized as white, even though not all Israelis are of European descent (Ashkenazi); they may be of Ethiopian (Falasha), Yemenite (Teimani), or Indian descent.

During the era of racial segregation in the Southern United States, facilities were commonly divided into separate sections for white and colored people. These terms were defined by white people in positions of authority.

United Kingdom

In the UK, the Office for National Statistics uses the term White as an ethnic category. The terms White British, White Irish and White Other are used. White British includes Welsh, English and Scottish peoples, as well as residents of Northern Ireland who identify as British. Irish people may describe themselves as White Irish. The category White Other includes all white people not from the British Isles, these people were mostly of European, American and Australian descent followed by North African and Middle Eastern, although people of Middle Eastern ancestry are not seen as white people in the UK.

Latin America

In some Latin American countries, even those of visible partial African or Indigenous ancestry may be considered white. The individual decides what (if any) race he or she wishes to be considered as. In some countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile etc. the majority of the population is of Spanish or other European ancestry, making them white or half white (mestizo). Race in parts of Latin America "refers mostly to skin color or physical appearance rather than to ancestry. 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, skin color is used to identify racial heritage.

See also

• Apartheid
• Black people
• Caucasoid
• Caucasian race
• Caucasian American
• European American
• Human skin color
• Race
• Race (historical definitions)
• White American
• Whiteness studies

References

1. Painter, Nell Irvin. Yale University. Collective Degradation:Slavery and the Construction of Race. Why White People are Called Caucasian. 2003. October 9, 2006. <http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/race/Painter.pdf#search=%22%20%22light%20colored%20people%22%22>.
2. Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 186; Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York, 1998).
3. Questions and Answers for Census 2000 Data on Race from U.S. Census Bureau, 14 March 2001. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
4. Identity, Ethnicity and Identity, National Statistics online. Retrieved 03 November 2006.
5. Census 2001 - Ethnicity and religion in England and Wales, Ethnicity and religion. Retrieved 03 November 2001.
6. Gardener, David. Who are the Other Ethnic Groups. 2005. October 27, 2006.
7. Kissoon, Priya. King's College of London. Asylum Seekers: National Problem or National Solution. 2005. November 7, 2006.

Further reading

• Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945, 2003, ISBN 0-19-515543-2
• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, Harvard, 1999, ISBN 0-674-95191-3.
• Frank W. Sweet, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule, Backintyme, 2005, ISBN 0-939479-23-0.
• Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, Routledge, 1996, ISBN 0-415-91825-1.
• Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, Rutgers, 1999, ISBN 0-8135-2590-X.
• 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).
• "The United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept" A textbook/workbook for thought, speech and/or action for victims of racism (White supremacy) Neely Fuller Jr. 1984
• Alfredo Tryferis, "Separated by a Common Language: The Strange Case of the White Hispanic," The Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/tryferis/hispanic.htm

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
• Scientists Find DNA Change That Accounts for White Skin

• Ethnic groups in the United States
• Ethnic groups
• Race