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Revision as of 11:14, 10 November 2006 by 208.107.74.139 (talk) (→United States)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)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.
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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.
World distribution
White people are common in Europe, North and South America, especially in countries like Argentina and Uruguay, and in Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. It should also be noted, that due to the European expansion, huge numbers of people all around the world are also of partial white ancestry. According to Cavalli-Sforza's map of genetic diversiy, which does not take into account the recent European expansion, for example in Australia, important areas in the Middle East have greater genetic affinity with Europe than areas inside of Europe, especially much of Scandinavia. See: For the genetic and therefore ancestral relationships among the peoples of the world, including Europeans, see the Macdonalds' World Haplogroup Map:
See also
- Apartheid
- Black people
- Caucasoid
- Caucasian race
- Caucasian American
- European American
- Human skin color
- Race
- Race (historical definitions)
- White American
- Whiteness studies
References
- 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>.
- Identity, Ethnicity and Identity, National Statistics online. Retrieved 03 November 2006.
- Census 2001 - Ethnicity and religion in England and Wales, Ethnicity and religion. Retrieved 03 November 2001.
- Gardener, David. Who are the Other Ethnic Groups. 2005. October 27, 2006.
- 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