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Latest revision as of 22:16, 10 December 2024

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the White people article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

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This article was nominated for deletion on March 3, 2007. The result of the discussion was Speedy keep.

This  level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

Anthropology Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anthropology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anthropology on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnthropologyWikipedia:WikiProject AnthropologyTemplate:WikiProject AnthropologyAnthropology Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale. Ethnic groups Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ethnic groups, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles relating to ethnic groups, nationalities, and other cultural identities on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Ethnic groupsWikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic groupsTemplate:WikiProject Ethnic groupsEthnic groups Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. WikiProject Ethnic groups open tasks: Here are some open WikiProject Ethnic groups tasks: Meta-tasks: Place the {{Ethnic groups}} template on the talk page of articles within the scope of this project. Resolve the disparity in importance rankings among different ethnic groups Articles about ethnic groups that currently have issues needing resolution: Category:Unassessed Ethnic groups articles Category:Ethnic groups articles needing merge action Category:Ethnic groups articles needing infoboxes Category:Ethnic groups articles needing reassessment Category:Ethnic groups articles needing attention Iyer Peruvian people Start an article: Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Ethnic groups/Article requests Feel free to edit this list or discuss these tasks. Europe Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Europe, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to European topics of a cross-border nature on Misplaced Pages.EuropeWikipedia:WikiProject EuropeTemplate:WikiProject EuropeEurope Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed. Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.

This article needs to be cleaned up.

We absolutely need more emphasis on the social significance of this topic, and much less bloat consisting of regional definitions of whiteness. This article is severely cluttered with the latter. Alexander Shipfield (talk) 12:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Missing countries

Lots of missing countries in the census information. Germany, and many others. Request for those to be added in please. 184.57.56.79 (talk) 03:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Germany has a problematic history with racial classification. At least according to Misplaced Pages, such information is not collected by today's German government. Really, that whole section is a mess, not least because of the unresolvable problem of differing definitions of "white people". The article would arguably be better without the section. CAVincent (talk) 04:41, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Can we fix the percentages of African countries?

The percentages in African countries are way off. For example Kenya says 42,800 White people is 2% of the population. This would imply Kenya only has a population of 2 million people. Malawi and Morocco are also inaccurate (0.06% and 0.03% respectively) Can we change the percentages of these? Or possibly remove it for being such a small portion of these countries populations? Otterstone (talk) 04:16, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Questionable map

The main map placed in the page is very inconsistent and inaccurate for specifically Latin America. Places such as Jalisco and the north of Mexico are shown with almost no European ancestry even though the ancestry of the region is comparable to the southern cone of South America and Costa Rica. Not only that, one state would have predominantly European ancestry whereas a bordering state has almost none which makes no sense considering the demographic history of Latin America, even more so for Mexico where 1/3-2/5 (30-40%) of the population are European descended. I am also not sure how Chiapas and Yucatán have more European ancestry than the central north region of Mexico. For Colombia as well I see it’s very inaccurate as Nariño and the southern Andes of Colombia are somehow predominantly European even though the people there are indistinguishable from Ecuadorians, and your basis being that “40% are white in Colombia and 47% are mestizo” despite the fact that those numbers are made up and aren’t proven by any source and most sources state in fact that 20% are European, 50-60% re mestizo and the rest are ethnic populations, I recommend reading into the sources in Race and ethnicity in Colombia and adjusting the map from that. There are also other places in the world that have European ancestry that the map doesn’t show. ElMexicanotres (talk) 23:56, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

And this is based from several sources across the specific Misplaced Pages pages related to these ethnic groups. I recommend you view Ethnic groups in Latin America instead as it provides a better insight to the actual demographics of the region. ElMexicanotres (talk) 00:14, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

The over-arching problem here is WP:OR, specifically WP:SYNTH. Images from Commons are not a hack to bypass the need for reliable sources. That's what this map represents. Further, the map has a very, very long list of qualifications in its description at Commons:File:European Ancestry Large.svg, including a paragraph that starts "This is NOT a map of the White race, just an "European ancestry" map." None of this context was included, it was just presented as if it were an accepted bland fact.

Unlike many of these racial/ethnic maps on Commons, this one at least appears to be made with good intentions... or maybe not. There is a lot of racist junk science on Commons, so it's hard to tell. This map would need far, far, far more context and many reliable sources before it would belong in this article, and especially in the lead. Grayfell (talk) 00:23, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

The Page European emigration also has this exact map, what shall we do with it for now? ElMexicanotres (talk) 01:52, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning that. I have removed it and started a discussion at that article: Talk:European_emigration#European_Ancestry_map. Grayfell (talk) 04:07, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Just adding two cents: I'd agree that the recently removed map is a mess of OR and SYNTH. Given differing definitions of whiteness and even "Europeanness", this would likely be an irresolvable problem for *any* map attempting to display a global distribution of white people. Also, a lengthy set of qualifications would defeat the purpose of a simple at-a-glance map graphic, and without qualifications the map is more misleading than informative. The article is fine without it. CAVincent (talk) 04:28, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 November 2024

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In the 'Republic of Ireland' subsection, change the word 'ideontified' to 'identified' Eisenstein Integer (talk) 10:43, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

• Done. Thanks for catching that. CAVincent (talk) 12:11, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Large population tables

This is regarding these edits, which I have reverted.

There are a lot of major problems here. Some of which are similar to what has already been discussed at #Questionable map above.

One problem is that this table would combine many wildly different sources with wildly different methodologies and definitions of 'white people' and present them all as being directly comparable.

Another major issue is that many of these sources are not reliable. Sources need to be WP:RS, and other Misplaced Pages articles are not reliable sources, per WP:CIRC.

Finally, combining these statistics at all is a form of original research. We use sources to form conclusions, not editors. Please do not restore this table until consensus has changed. Grayfell (talk) 21:33, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

@Domen von Wielkopolska: Hello. This is the place to discuss these edits. Nothing about Joshua Project's website indicates that it has a positive reputation for accuracy, fact-checking, or peer review. Further, the site doesn't consistently use the term 'white', so any interpretation of this source for this article would be original research. But again, it doesn't appear to be a reliable source in general. Grayfell (talk) 21:39, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, the term 'white' is defined by this article itself ('White people') as 'those of mostly European ancestry'. So I just summed up the numbers of all native European ethnic groups listed in each Joshua Project country article. Anyway, how about I just restore the table for European countries as this table doesn't use Joshua Project among its sources (it is based on census counts and official estimates)? Of course I will use reliable sources directly instead of linking to other Misplaced Pages articles (per the WP:CIRC policy). Domen von Wielkopolska (talk) 21:59, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

But I do think that the Joshua Project website is accurate and reliable for the purpose that it serves, namely: counting ethnic groups. I noticed only one obvious inaccuracy when researching their data, the number of White Australians in Papua New Guinea. But it looks just like an error in adding one extra zero (it should be 13,900 instead of 139,000). This source confirms that they are "over 10,000": https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/papua-new-guinea/australia-papua-new-guinea-engagement . Domen von Wielkopolska (talk) 22:32, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

No, do not restore any part of this table until consensus is reached. As I said there are a lot of problems.

The Joshua project is not a reliable source in general, but it's also not reliable for whether or not any ethnic group is 'white' enough to be counted. Nothing is reliable for that, because it's impossible to do that in an impartial, objective way.

That's the deeper issue with these kinds of charts and maps. The article mentions "mostly European ancestry" but how much qualifies as "mostly" and who's doing the counting? As the article explains in the same paragraph, "the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, ethnicity and point of view." If there are any reliable sources which specifically collect global data on the 'white race', those sources would be using a specific definition of 'white race' that applies to all countries and all cultures and can also be tested in some way. Such a definition doesn't exist, and this fundamental problem is much, much more difficult than it might seem at first glance.

A paragraph in the lead says this: "Contemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a unified, distinguishable "White race" as a social construct with no scientific basis."

The article directly says "this has no scientific basis", so to cobble together many different sources which all draw from different contexts, points-of-view, nationalities, ethnicities, etc. is original research, and it's also a fringe issue.

To put it another way, attempting to apply hard data to something which lacks a scientific basis is pseudoscience. Grayfell (talk) 01:49, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Okay. What I'm counting is actually the percentage of predominantly (80%+) native European-descended people, which is only colloquially known as "white people". But since there is no article about native Europeans worldwide, I wanted to add this data to this article. I define native European as descended from populations which inhabited Europe at least 1000 years ago. Domen von Wielkopolska (talk) 04:27, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

As I said, that is original research. Misplaced Pages doesn't publish original research.

Your definition of 'white people' is your own, but it's not easily falsifiable. But even it were usable, defining who is and is not European, what percentage of anyone's ancestry is what, how long a population has been in Europe, etc., and after all that, trying to count those people in consistent way... It's a very, very complicated task that involves a lot more than just poring over online government census records.

Regardless, again, Misplaced Pages isn't the place to publish that research no matter how its conducted. Grayfell (talk) 05:10, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

"I define native European as descended from populations which inhabited Europe at least 1000 years ago" is very clearly original research. Misplaced Pages should only report what reliable sources tell us, and not rely on editors' own definitions. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Throwing in another two cents, "attempting to apply hard data to something which lacks a scientific basis is pseudoscience" nicely and succinctly sums up one of several presumably irresolvable problems with attempting to add these tables. These tables are, at best, both WP:OR and WP:FRINGE. They don't belong in the article. CAVincent (talk) 06:01, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I do agree that it is probably WP:OR but I disagree that it is WP:FRINGE because my definition of "white people" is pretty much the mainstream definition. Anyway, as I said my purpose was to count people of predominantly native European descent, and there is no article on Misplaced Pages which is about this topic, which is the reason why I came here to the "White people" article. But I now agree that these tables don't belong here, you guys have convinced me. Instead, I've published my research about this topic (population size of people of native European descent worldwide) on Academia.edu and on ResearchGate. I guess we can now archive this discussion. Domen von Wielkopolska (talk) 22:31, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

You are mistaken. Your definition is not the mainstream definition, nor even a mainstream definition. The lead of the article already explains some of the problems with such definitions. As I said before, creating a falsifiable definition of white people is much, much more difficult than it might seem at first glance. Grayfell (talk) 22:11, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

As for Joshua Project, it is already used as a source in other Misplaced Pages articles, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/Zambo#cite_note-1 Domen von Wielkopolska (talk) 21:42, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

It turns out this has already been discussed many times on Misplaced Pages. See WP:JOSHUAPROJECT. Grayfell (talk) 22:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

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