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"Whites" redirects here. For other uses, see White (disambiguation).
It has been suggested that Caucasian race be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2007.

The term "White people" (also "whites", or "white race") has been defined as "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" and "to a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry." The term has been applied with varying degrees of formality and consistency in many disciplines. Such disciplines include sociology, political science, genetics, biology, medicine, biomedicine, human languages, cultural analysis, and legal analysis.

The definition of White people has varied in different time periods and locations. Any definition has implications for areas as diverse as national identity, consanguinity, public policy, religion, population statistics, racial segregation, affirmative action, eugenics, racial marginalization and racial quotas. Even though the natural sciences have been used in the past to justify disparate treatments based on racial background, some consider race today as largely a sociological construct, the definition of which is subject to change as society evolves.

History of the term

Ancient Greece and Rome used white (lenkon in Greek; alba in Latin) as one description of skin color. Its light appearance was distinguished, for example, in a comparison of white-skinned Persian soldiers from the sun-tanned skin of Greek troops in Xenophon's Agesilaus. One early use of the term appears in the Amherst Papyri, which were scrolls written in ancient Ptolemaic Greek. It contained the use of black and white in reference to human skin color. In an analysis of the rise of the term, classicist James Dee found that, "the Greeks and Romans do not describe themselves as lenkon genos or albi homines—or as anything else because they had no regular word in their color vocabulary for themselves—and we can see that the concept of a distinct 'white race' was not present in the ancient world."


Assignment of positive and negative connotations of white and black date to the classical period in a number of European languages, but these differences were not applied to skin color per se. although differences in skin color between southern Europeans and Moors were nearly nonexistent and on occasion, religious conversion was described figuratively as a change in skin color.

The term white race or white people entered dictionaries of the major European languages in the 1600s. Winthrop Jordan, author of Black Over White, argues that race emerged with the inherited status of slavery. He says the shift from Christian, free, and English to white happened in approximately 1680. Theodore W. Allen notes in The Invention of the White Race that white identity emerged in the colonies with slavery, and says that "seventeenth-century commentator, Morgan Godwyn, found it necessary to explain to the English at home that, in Barbados, 'white' was 'the general name for Europeans." White quickly became a legal category, encoded in a variety of laws and conferring different status.

In 1758, Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist Carolus Linnaeus divided humankind into four, main races or subspecies loosely based on geographic distribution: Homo sapiens europaeus, the white race; asiaticus, the yellow race; americanus, the red race; and afer (for Africa), the black race, assigning attributes to each of his four categories.

In 1775, Johann Blumenbach categorized humans into five races, which largely corresponded with Linnaeus' classifications, except for the addition of Oceanians (whom he called Malay). Immanuel Kant used the term weiß (white) in Von den verschiedenen Rassen den Menschen (About The Different Races of Men - 1775).

According to Gregory Jay, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,

Before the age of exploration, group differences were largely based on language, religion, and geography. ...the European had always reacted a bit hysterically to the differences of skin color and facial structure between themselves and the populations encountered in Africa, Asia, and the Americas (see, for example, Shakespeare's dramatization of racial conflict in Othello and The Tempest). Beginning in the 1500s, Europeans began to develop what became known as "scientific racism," the attempt to construct a biological rather than cultural definition of race ... Whiteness, then, emerged as what we now call a "pan-ethnic" category, as a way of merging a variety of European ethnic populations into a single "race"...

Within , a variety of research positions have been staked out regarding the importance and classification of race, with most 19th century positions assuming that races existed, and offering a variety of definitions of white people. Many such definitions, such as those of Earnest Hooton and Carleton S. Coon, classified Middle Easterns, Arabs and Jews, of defined as a "Mediterranean Subrace" as white. However, by the mid-20th century, following the work of Franz Boas and W.E.B. DuBois, a position of the nonexistence of biological equality had reached something approaching a consensus, as symbolized by the UNESCO statement on race in 1950, which included the text: "“Race is less a biological fact than a social myth and as a myth it has in recent years taken a heavy toll in human lives and suffering."

Some scientists think that "much of this discussion does not derive from an objective scientific perspective" and "from both an objective and scientific (genetic and epidemiologic) perspective there is great validity in racial/ethnic self-categorizations, both from the research and public policy points of view." and argue for the use of white people/race category in biomedicine (See: Race in biomedicine)

Social and physical perceptions of white

See also: Race, Social interpretations of race, Race and multilocus allele clusters, and Race (historical definitions)

Definitions of white have changed over the years, including the official definitions used in many countries, such as the United States and Brazil. Some defied official regulations through the phenomenon of "passing", many of them becoming white people, either temporarily or permanently. Through the mid- to late 20th century, numerous countries had formal legal standards or procedures defining racial categories (see Limpieza de sangre, Apartheid in South Africa, hypodescent). However, as critiques of racism, scientific arguments against the existence of race, and international prohibitions on state racial discrimination arose, a trend towards self-identification of racial status arose.

Australia

From the late 19th century through 1973, the Government of Australia restricted all permanent immigration to the country by non-Europeans under the White Australia policy, which was enabled by the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, but not formally codified. Immigration inspectors were empowered to ask immigrants to take dictation from any European language as a test for admittance, a test used in practice to exclude people from Asia, South America, Europe and Africa depending on the political climate. Under the policy, large numbers of Portuguese, Italian, Greek, South Slavic, German, Dutch and Polish immigrants were admitted following World War II, assimilating into the country's Anglo-Celtic population. Immigration is no longer restricted to white/European people.

Brazil

Main article: White Brazilian

Brazil's definition of whiteness is premised on racial mixture rather than hypodescent, producing a range of historical categories for race. As a term, white is more broadly applied than in North America.

Recent censuses in Brazil are conducted on the basis of self-identification. In the 2000 census, 53% of Brazilians (approximately 90 million people in 2000; around 100 million as of 2006) were white and 39% pardo or multiracial Brazilians. White is applied as a term to people of European, Jewish and Arab descent. The census shows a trend of fewer Brazilians of African descent (blacks and pardos) identifying as white people as their social status increases.

Canada

In the results of Statistics Canada's 2001 Canadian Census, white is one category in the population groups data variable, derived from data collected in question 19 (the results of this question are also used to derive the visible minority groups variable).

In the 1995 Employment Equity Act, '"members of visible minorities" means persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour'. In the 2001 Census, persons who marked-in Chinese, South Asian, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Japanese or Korean were included in the visible minority population. A separate census question on "cultural or ethnic origin" (question 17) does not refer to skin colour.

Norway

According to the Norwegian Social Science Data Service, white is a possible answer to ethnic/people group category question. After Norwegians, Sami, Kvens and other Nordics, it is mentioned as white/European. Other categories are Asian, Black/African/Caribbean and "other". Statistics Norway considers the Asian category to include Turkish people.

United Kingdom and Ireland

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. The category White Other includes all white people not from the British Isles. In the UK white usually refers only to people of European origin.

The term Black Irish does not refer to people with black skin, but instead to hair colour and eye colour. The term White Irish is not used in the UK in contrast with Black Irish; it refers to the ethnically Irish immigrant population in Britain. British surnames such as White, Whitlock, Whited and Whitehead also trace their origins to blonde or white hair colour.

United States

Main article: White American

David R. Roediger argues that the construction of the white race in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slaveowners from slaves. By the 18th century, white had become well established as a racial term. Among those not considered white at some time in American history are the Irish, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Slavs, Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples. In Oklahoma, state laws identified Native Americans as white people during Jim Crow-era segregation. The U.S. Census currently defines "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation also categorizes "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce.

North African and Middle Easterners, however, are usually not included within the general structural concepts of white American society. The U.S. Census classification of North African and Middle Eastern Americans as white is largely done in a legal context. Various other countries account for them in non-white categories. In the United States, common non-governmental, colloquial and social understandings of "white" differ from the country's official government definition by excluding Muslims even if they otherwise look white.

Laws dating from 17th century colonial America that defined children excluded children of at least one black parent from the status of being white. Early legal standards did so by defining the race of a child based on a mother's race while banning interracial marriage, while later laws defined all people of some African ancestry as black, under the principle of hypodescent. These laws ensured that the children of slaves were available as labor to their parent's master and furthered racist standards of white women's "purity" under threat from black sexual "contamination." Some 19th century categorization schemes defined people with one black parent (the other white) as mulatto, with one black grandparent as quadroon and with one black great grandparent as octoroon. The latter categories remained within an overall black or African-American category. Some members of these categories passed temporarily or permanently as white.

Conversely, late 19th and 20th century interracial unions between Europeans and Native Americans were handled in the opposite way. Natives were seen as people without a future to be assimilated into a larger American culture. Tribal membership was frequently defined according to so-called blood quantum standards, so that "mixed race" children were eventually excluded. This led to the classification of increasing numbers of people with Native ancestry as white, a trend that has been reversed in the census figures of recent decades which show increasing self-identification as Native American.

The Immigration Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to "any alien, being a free white person". In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people. By 1923, courts had vindicated a "common-knowledge" standard, concluding that "scientific evidence" was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a "performance-based" standard, relating to religious practices, education, intermarriage and a community's role in the United States.

Contemporary U.S. Census

Template:2000 Race US Census map The 2000 U.S. census states that racial categories "generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria." In U.S. census documents, the designation white or Caucasian overlaps with the term Hispanic, which was introduced in the 1980 census as a category of ethnicity, separate and independent of race. In cases where individuals do not self-identify, the U.S. census parameters for race give each national origin a racial value. This groups Middle Eastern Americans and North African American together with European Americans as White Americans.

The U.S. census assumes that all unidentified Israeli Americans are white. By responding Israel in the U.S. census, a person will be categorized as white, even though not all Israelis are of European (Ashkenazi or Sephardi) or Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) descent. They may be Jews of Ethiopian (Beta Israel), Yeminite (considered by some a Mizrahi subgroup) or Indian descent; or they may be Israeli Arabs or Druze (who may or may not identify themselves as Arabs).

Genetic Studies

A recent American study indicates that self-described race or ethnicity is a near-perfect indicator of an individual's membership in one of four genetic clusters within the population. Using 326 genetic markers, Tang et al. (2005) identified four genetic clusters among 3,636 individuals sampled from 15 locations in the United States. After recruiting people in specific racial categories and excluding people who identified as other categories, they were able to correctly assign individuals to groups that correspond with their self-described race or ethnicity (white, African American, East Asian or Hispanic) for all but five individuals (an error rate of 0.14%). They concluded that "ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.". This study has however been criticized, a report released from princeton university states that critics of the study

"readily acknowledge the existence of human genetic (and obviously biological) variation but argue that the bulk of human variation is continuously distributed and, as a result, any categorization schema attempting to meaningfully partition that variation will necessarily create artificial truncations. It is for this reason, they argue, that attempts to allocate individuals into ancestry groupings based on genetic information have yielded varying results that are highly dependent on methodological design".

Tang et al. state that "From the genetic perspective, Hispanics generally represent a differential mixture of European, Native American, and African ancestry, with the proportionate mix typically depending on country of origin. Our sample was from a single location in Texas and was composed of Mexican Americans." Mexican-Americans are generally European and Native American. In genetic studies, local populations of African Americans have an estimated European admixture of 10.6% to 22.5%. A National Human Genome Research Institute study stated, "In a survey of college students who self-identified as 'white' in a northeastern U.S. university, around 30% were estimated to have less than 90% European ancestry."

The Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute, located in Bethesda, Maryland, notes that "although genetic analyses of large numbers of loci can produce estimates of the percentage of a person’s ancestors coming from various continental populations (Shriver et al. 2003; Bamshad et al. 2004), these estimates may assume a false distinctiveness of the parental populations, since human groups have exchanged mates from local to continental scales throughout history (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994; Hoerder 2002)."

Culture

See also: Western culture

Western culture or Western civilization is a term used to refer to the cultures of Europe, and to societies outside of Europe with a substantial Western European cultural or physical influence. The term which comprises the broad heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs (such as religious beliefs) and specific artifacts and technologies as shared within the Western sphere of influence. Although there is no single universal definition of white people, most people defined as whites live in such societies. Numerous white people also take part in societies with non-Western cultures.

According to a University of Minnesota study, 77% of white Americans believe "their race has a distinct culture that should be preserved."


See also

Footnotes

  1. White, from Merriam-Webster online.
  2. White, from the Compact Oxford English Dictionary.
  3. For extensive discussion on skin color as a metaphor for race (and not just in encounter with Japan), see Rotem Kowner, "Skin as a Metaphor: Early European Racial Views on Japan, 1548–1853," Ethnohistory 51.4 (2004) 751-778. See also, Christine Ward Gailey Politics, Colonialism and the Mutable Color of South Pacific Peoples," Transforming Anthropology 5.1&2 (1994).
  4. ^ Adams, J.Q. (2001). Dealing with Diversity. Chicago, IL: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. 0-7872-8145-X. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  5. Thompson, William (2005). Society in Focus. Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-41365-X. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  6. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 162.
  7. Alan Cameron, Black and White: A Note on Ancient Nicknames, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 119, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 113-117
  8. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 163.
  9. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 164.
  10. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 164.
  11. Winthrop D. Jordan, The White Man's Burden, (condensed version of Black Over White), 1974, p. 52.
  12. http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/allen.html
  13. Gould, Stephen J. "The Geometer of Race." Discover Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 11. November 1994. Retrieved 02-17-2007.
  14. Akintunde, Omowale. "White racism, white supremacy, white privilege, & the social construction of race: Moving from modernist to postmodernist multiculturalism." Multicultural Education, Winter, 1999. Retrieved 02-17-2007.
  15. Cite error: The named reference nature1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. Gregory Jay w , 1998.
  17. E.A. Hooton, Up from the Ape, 1946. Carleton S. Coon, The Story of the Middle East, 1958.
  19. Cite error: The named reference risch1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. Immigration Restriction Act 1901
  21. Stephen Castles, "The Australian Model of Immigration and Multiculturalism: Is It Applicable to Europe?," International Migration Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, Special Issue: The New Europe and International Migration. (Summer, 1992), pp. 549-567.
  22. Gregory Rodriguez, "Brazil Separates Into Black and White," LA Times, September 3, 2006. Note that the figures belie the title.
  23. "Groups" in Statistics Canada, Sample 20001 Census form. Statistics Canada, 2001 Census Visible Minority and Population Group User Guide
  24. Human Resources and Social Development Canada,
  25. Census 2001: 2B (Long Form)
  26. http://www.nsd.uib.no/data/ny_individ/norStudy/norVariable.cfm?norVarID=7989
  27. http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/02/01/10/innvbef_en/
  28. Identity, Ethnicity and Identity, National Statistics online. Retrieved 03 November 2006.
  29. Census 2001 - Ethnicity and religion in England and Wales, Ethnicity and religion. Retrieved 03 November 2001.
  30. Kissoon, Priya. King's College of London. Asylum Seekers: National Problem or National Solution. 2005. November 7, 2006.
  31. http://www.cre.gov.uk/diversity/ethnicity/whiteirish.html
  32. http://mizian.com.ne.kr/englishwiz/library/names/etymology_of_last_names.htm
  33. Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 186; Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York, 1998).
  34. John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), pp. 825-827.
  35. ^ Kathleen O'Toole, "Toggling Between Ethnicities," Stanford Today, November/December 1998.
  36. http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-4.pdf The White Population: 2000]}}, Census 2000 Brief C2KBR/01-4, U.S. Census Bureau, August 2001.
  37. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/handbook/ucrhandbook04.pdf Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook]}}, U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. P. 97 (2004)
  38. 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>.
  39. Winthrop Jordan, Black Over White, ch. IV, "The Fruits of Passion."
  40. John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), pp. 817-848.
  41. Questions and Answers for Census 2000 Data on Race from U.S. Census Bureau, 14 March 2001. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
  42. Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin 2000 U.S. Census Bureau
  43. http://shrn.stanford.edu/workshops/revisitingrace/Risch_confound.pdf Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies
  44. population association of america page 8
  45. Tang et al.:"Although the genetic distance analysis suggested relative proximity to the whites in our sample, the distance was still sufficient to allow for creation of a distinct genetic cluster for this group. Again, this is likely because of the large number of markers used in our analysis."
  46. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-27384/Mexico Mexico :: Ethnic composition
  47. Esteban J. Parra, Amy Marcini, Joshua Akey, Jeremy Martinson, Mark A. Batzer, Richard Cooper, Terrence Forrester, David B. Allison, Ranjan Deka, Robert E. Ferrell, Mark D. Shriver, "[http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/ParraAJHG1998.pdf Estimating African American Admixture Proportions by Use of Population- Specific Alleles]," American Journal of Human Genetics 63:1839–1851, 1998.
  48. ^ Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research
  49. NHGRI Contact Information
  50. Lee-St.John, Jeninne. Times. "The Meaning of White". 2006. accessed September 9, 2006.

Bibliography

  • Jackson, F. L. C. (2004). Book chapter: Human genetic variation and health: new assessment approaches based on ethnogenetic layering British Medical Bulletin 2004; 69: 215–235 DOI: 10.1093/bmb/ldh012. Retrieved 29 December 2006.
  • Oppenheimer, Stephen (2006). The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story. Constable and Robinson Ltd., London. ISBN 978-1-84529-185-7.
  • 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
  • Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, et al. (2002) Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298: 2381–2385.Abstract
  • Rosenberg NA, Mahajan S, Ramachandran S, Zhao C, Pritchard JK, et al. (2005) Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure. PLoS Genet 1(6): e70 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070
  • Tang, Hua., Tom Quertermous, Beatriz Rodriguez, Sharon L. R. Kardia, Xiaofeng Zhu, Andrew Brown,7 James S. Pankow,8 Michael A. Province,9 Steven C. Hunt, Eric Boerwinkle, Nicholas J. Schork, and Neil J. Risch (2005) Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275.

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