(Redirected from Whites)

This article is about racial classification of people. For other uses, see White (disambiguation).

White (collection: White people, White race or Whites) is a term used as a form of ethnic or racial classification of people. Though literally implying light-skinned, "White" has been used in different ways at different times and places. Like other common words for the human races, its precise definition is somewhat unclear.

A common connotation to the various definitions of "White" people, is that the term refers to people of European descent. Also generally associated with it are European culture and Western civilization or Western culture. In this sense, regions and countries that are today predominantly White include all the countries of Europe, Argentina, Australia, Brazil [1], Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Iran, European Russia, the United States, and Uruguay.

Various synonyms or near synonyms for White people or white race occur: Caucasian, European, Indo-European, Westerner, Occidental, etc.

Outside of the Western world, the inclusion and/or exclusion of other groups of people to be called White, may vary from country to country in the common parlance. The term in some nations, at various times, has a legal definition that is used by the government for various purposes, such as for a census, anti-miscegenation laws, affirmative action, quotas and so on. Legal definitions, common speech, and scientists use the term with varying degrees of differences.

1 The need for operational definitions
2 Historic use of the term in the United States
3 Use of the term outside the United States
4 Social vs. physical perceptions of White
5 Criticisms of the term
6 "White" as opposed to "Light Skinned"
7 Areas of habitation
8 See also
9 Footnotes
10 External links
11 Further reading

The need for operational definitions

Some argue that the concept of a "White person" is scientifically useless^{[citation needed]}. This does not mean that the they believe that the term is inaccurate, nor that there are no White people in the world. It means that the term cannot be defined objectively so that its application can be independently tested. They argue, like aesthetic terms such as beauty and balance, religious terms such as sin and grace, and political terms such as liberal and conservative, terms such as White and Black reflects something important in the minds of those who use them. Nevertheless, the claim that any specific individual is Black or White cannot be falsified in some absolute sense. Hence the concept has almost no scientific value unless some operational definition of how one determines that a person is white is given. For scientific purposes, more precise definitions are usually provided. For example, in the large collaborative study of the HapMap which includes Whites and Blacks among the four racial groups (the study uses the word "populations") examined, the terms used are "whites of Northern European descent residing in Utah", and Yoruba people, residing in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Because of the problem of fuzziness, precise operational definitions, rather than the common parlance, are required for scientific studies of racial differences. There is no single universally accepted biological character than gives a yes/no determination of whether a person is white or not. The operational definitions used in scientific work are not "absolute" either, but rather vary in specificity according to the purposes of the study, or of the hypotheses being tested, and are chosen partly as a matter of convenience and cost. The operations, for example, could range from how the subject answers questions about himself on a survey, to the response of a light meter held against the skin with a cut-off meter-reading specified, to which of several ancestry-informative markers are present in the genes of the individual. These may, of course, be used alone, or in combination.

A problem with the appearance definition alone is that it is routinely demonstrated in college cultural anthropology classes that "racial" appearance is partly in the eye of the beholder. The same individual seen as White by a Cuban can be seen as Black by an American. Furthermore, such perceptions change over the centuries. Appearance alone is not easy to quantify or judge with complete precision, and can, of course, be deceiving.

A problem with the self-identity definition alone is that there are often advantages and privileges among racial categories, so an individual will sometimes choose one or another as a way to improve her or his social, political or personal status. Many individuals around the world choose to self-identify as "White" in accordance with local political considerations, some even in defiance of it.

The three components (ancestry, appearance, self-identify) of the definitions of White and Black sometimes operate in an exclusionary manner for White (all must match), but in an inclusive manner for Black (one suffices).

Historic use of the term in the United States

Pre-modern usage of White may not correspond to recent concepts; for example, Europeans who traveled to Northeast Asia in the 17th century applied White to the people they encountered (see suggested readings below) —the term having then no other connotations—and indeed, even today the name of the Bai people of Yunnan, China translates as "white".

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.

By the 18th century, "White" had begun shifting in meaning and started showing signs of becoming an exclusive label. European people, including European colonists in the New World, defined the other people with reference to "White." "Black" or "brown" people came to be defined by having darker skin than a "White" person, and the same "color" came to be applied to all non-white people.

Early immigrants: Germans, Irish

In the United States, the term became more exclusive, coming to refer only to those of Anglo-Saxon heritage. Benjamin Franklin's essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc." narrowly defined White to 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. In 1751, 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 principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth."¹ Despite their early perception as non-White, German immigrants came to be accepted as White in the 1820s, about the same time that they became known as "Pennsylvania Dutch."

Nineteenth-century Asian-American men were not considered White, either. Those who dated women of the White group provoked mass lynchings. Twenty were hanged in 1871 in Los Angeles, twenty-eight were killed in 1885 in Rock Springs, and thirty-one in 1887 in Hell's Canyon.⁹ Their voting rights were similarly restricted. The 1875 and 1880 modifications of the federal Naturalization Act of 1790 were meant to bar citizenship even from Asian Americans born in the U.S.—ironic, considering that the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution granted citizenship-by-birth to former slaves.

Early twentieth-century immigrants: Arabs, Berbers

Like Germans and Italians, who have been accepted as White by almost all Americans, U.S. federal agencies unanimously agree that Middle Easterners are White. EEOC regulations explicitly define White as "peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East," and the Census Bureau's decennial form offers no check-box for such a self-identity under the "race" question.

Hispanics

Main article: Hispanic

Despite differences in ancestry from one Latin American to another, North Americans tend to label all such people — from the Southwestern United States and Mexico to Central America, South America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean — as well as Spaniards, as Hispanic, often erroneously giving it a "racial" value. The term "non-Hispanic White" is used for clarity to designate members of the dominant cultures of the US. The question, however, is whether some, all, or no Hispanics are seen as White by non-Hispanic Whites.

Judging by census [intermarriage] statistics, U.S. Hispanics are in the process of becoming accepted as White. The census takers' instruction book said: "The term 'white person' shall include only persons... who have no trace of... West Indian.... 'West Indian' shall include anyone with a West Indies background, regardless of whether his antecedents were... Spanish or French Caucasians...."¹³ Yet, ever since the 1960 census instructions allowed self-labeling, ninety percent of Puerto Ricans have chosen to be census-White,¹⁴ and the Hispanic/non-Hispanic-White intermarriage rate in the U.S. is now comparable to the out-marriage rates of Irish Americans or Jewish Americans.

Still, despite such signs of acceptance, the U.S. popular definition of "White" nearly always excludes Hispanics, especially those who are discernably of mixed racial descent (mestizos and mulattos). Federal agencies differ in this regard. The EEOC explicitly defines Hispanics as a separate and distinct "ethnicity."¹⁵ On the other hand, the Census Bureau separates Hispanic self-identity from "racial" self-identity on the decennial census form. A respondent who checks the Hispanic/Latino box can, in a following question, also check any of the race categories such as White, black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American/Alaskan Native. Supporters of this policy claim that statistics on Hispanics as a group must be collected 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. The Bureau, in contrast, simply says that they are mandated to ask such questions by the U.S. Congress.

Late twentieth-century immigrants: West Indians

Growing numbers of British West Indians living in the United States also apparently seek mainstream acceptance by deliberately distancing themselves from American models of Black identity. Actress Gloria Reuben once said to an interviewer who failed to notice several hints: "Stop calling me African-American! I am not African-American; I am Jamaican-Canadian!"¹⁶ Here providing the correct national affiliation is presented as more important than references back to African origins. In Britain the phrase "African-British" is virtually unknown, along with any other "hyphenated" identity. West Indians' ongoing acculturation and minimisation of racial difference may be compared with Puerto Ricans' a generation ago.¹⁷ Like Puerto Ricans then, many British West Indians now are comfortable with their African heritage and enjoy tracing names, music, or folklore back to Wolof, Fulani, or Yoruba customs; while they simultaneously resent being mistaken for members of the U.S. Black endogamous group. Though they still highly respect their African ancestry.¹⁸

African Americans

Many authors have explained how each immigrant group became accepted into mainstream American society and thereby redefined as "White."¹⁹ To become accepted as White, immigrants had to learn a few vital American attitudes: tolerance of the religion and customs of others who have already been accepted as White, respect for education, acceptance of class mobility (the idea of the self-made man), and finally—like the Mississippi Chinese Americans of the Jim Crow era— ²¹

African Americans are apparently the exception to the U.S. process of acculturation, whereby each immigrant group is gradually embraced by the expanding definition of Whiteness, in a process that can take several generations and is still underway for many. Apparently, African Americans are the antithesis of Whiteness by definition. Due to the historic one drop rule in the United States, for the past century or so English-speaking Americans with any known African ancestry, no matter how slight or invisible, have often been categorized as Black. As suggested above, however, non-Anglophone Americans, such as those of Hispanic, Middle Eastern, or North African heritage are an exception, in that those who look utterly European, or occasionally even those appearing mixed, are not labeled Black even though they may acknowledge slight African ancestry.

The one-drop rule is historically recent. As mentioned above, before the 18th century the terms "black" and "White" did not designate groups. Before the Civil War, someone's "racial identity" depended on the combination of their appearance, African blood fraction, and social circle.²²

Nevertheless, that the endogamous isolation of the African-American community has lasted for centuries is confirmed by DNA admixture studies. Many recent studies in genetics and molecular anthropology have shown that there is a surprisingly small degree of genetic overlap between members of the U.S. Black endogamous group and the U.S. White endogamous group. About one-third of White Americans are found to have traces of African ancestry; they average about 2.3% African admixture. And a bit larger, but still small amount of Black Americans have some European admixture, averaging about 17 percent.²⁴

Use of the term outside the United States

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 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

Eventually, in the U.S.A, "black" came to denote African ancestry and "brown" became attributed to mixed-race Hispanics and South Asians (people of the Indian subcontinent). In Australia, on the other hand, "Black" denotes Aborigines and "Brown" came to denote South Asians and Middle Easterners/North Africans.

In contrast to the United States, where European Jews were at first explicitly seen as non-White (see the New York Times's review of Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man, above), Europeans often split Whites into two sub-groups. A common 19th-century European view categorized most White people as either Semitic or Aryan. The latter term was used as a synonym for Indo-Europeans, who were conceived of as racially separate from Semitic peoples on the grounds that the two groups had distinct linguistic histories. This was thought to imply separate ancestry, which was supposed to be visible in different cultural and physical traits. The term Aryan derived from Indo-European speaking peoples who occupied ancient Iran and the Indus valley, a fact that problematised its equation with the term "White". However, from c. 1880 some writers theorised that the earliest Aryans came from northern Europe. This led to the Nazi claim that Aryans were identical with Nordic peoples. Later 20th-century scholars were much more reluctant to assume coincidence between linguistic and genetic descent, since language can be easily passed to genetically unrelated populations.

The Americas: Euro-predominant and mixed-race people

Outside of the United States, people of undiscernable 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 Puerto Rico, 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,"²⁵ whereas "American orthodoxy is that a single drop of African blood inevitably darkens its host."²⁶ 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."²⁷ Upwardly mobility, physical appearance and lighter skin colour allow for choice of an array of intermediate "categories", as well as White. 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, it has been shown that the same individual's perceived skin tone lightens and darkens on the Brazilian census depending on the rise and fall of his or her socioeconomic success. In short, it is proven statistically that money whitens, at least in Brazil.²⁸

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 Arabs, Berbers, Persians, Mizrahi Jews, Kurds, etc. as non-White. This is despite the fact that for the purposes of statistics, all the aforementioned are always categorised as White by US government agencies and the U.S. census. Governmental categorisation does not always lead to a sense of inclusion, as these people 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 White supremacist 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, 2005 Sydney race riots).

In the American context, where 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 sometimes been based on the argument that there is a significant sub-Saharan component in their populations [6] - a long-spanning presence throughout the history of that largely contiguous region - but even more on their disparate cultural, religious, linguistic heritage and ancestral origins. 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 U.S. standards, some may also be lighter-complexioned by comparison, comparable to Southern Europeans. And although some Arabs of the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, etc.) may also be as dark as those found in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, here, many more are lighter-complexioned. A tiny percentage throughout the entire region (North Africa, Arabian Peninsula and the Levant) may even resemble Northern Europeans.

Furthermore, while many South Asians are also anthropologically caucasoid —and recognized as such by the United States Supreme Court—not only are they also excluded from the popular definition of "White", but US government agencies further categorise them as "Asians", be they Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians or Indian Jews. (See also: Race in the US Census). Even outside the American context, this trend of excluding caucasoid South Asians is almost universal, as is the disregarding of 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", please see United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.

Whiteness and White nationalism

Main article: White nationalism

The strictest definition held by most White nationalist groups around the world - whether White separatists or White supremacists - 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 much more limited than the official government definition. "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 peoples are excluded, such as Jews and Balkan Muslims (Albanians, Bosniaks, Macedonian Torbesh, Bulgarian Pomaks, and Serbian Goranis). Despite this "Whiteness" method used by White nationalists, as with many other racially-minded groups, the definitions still vary greatly.

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. Growing numbers of White nationalist 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, northern Spanish and the northern Italian region especially is proportionally large. This is demonstrated in the written requirements for membership in White nationalist 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

Ultimately, whether any individual considers any other individual as White (or not) often comes down to whether the person "looks White." As mentioned above (in The Epistemological Challenge), physical appearance (whether someone "looks White") is subjective. Physical appearance is often cited as the reason for categorizing entire nations as non-White. For instance, many residents of Arab countries have enough black African ancestry to "look non-White" to most Americans, especially in the Eastern Province and Tihamah of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, southern Iraq, southern Egypt, and above all Sudan. On the other hand, some individuals of these same populations may "look White", especially in the northern Levant, northern Iraq, and some parts of the Atlas Mountains. Finally, many people of other cultures (Britons, Spaniards, Latin Americans) who also see specific Middle Eastern individuals as clearly White (or not) often disagree with the U.S. perception in any particular case.

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. As mentioned above, 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 but leaning towards "White". Many Americans today see Jews as physically non-White; although again judging by the census, most do not. Complicating this is that most Ashkenazi Jews more closely physically resemble other Europeans than they do other peoples of the Middle East, while the reverse tends to be true regarding Sephardic Jews (however, over 90% of the US Jewish population is Ashkenazi). Finally, Chinese Americans are listed as non-White on the census given that they are Orientals. Still, in Jim Crow Mississippi, Chinese-American children were allowed to attend non-Black schools and universities, rather than forced to attend segregated Black schools.

The differences between social and physical definitions of White can 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 a 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. Still later, when inclusion of some sections of other groups became useful, the term White has been played down as divisive, and emphasis has shifted to other signifiers like educated, professional, and modern.

The current social climate in the West (primarily in the United States) seeks to be nearly all-inclusive, which is an about-face from the social considerations of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This has prompted other groups, especially black people, to recognize this as being similar to the "one drop rule", except it causes large numbers of mixed race people to be labeled as White instead of Black.

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 White people, with White people classifying themselves as White and non-White people being classified as "colored" by White people. The ability of White people to DECIDE who is a white person was due to their greater power than non-White people. Non-White people had to ask who is white. White people did not need to ask because they had the power to decide who was a White person.

"White" as opposed to "Light Skinned"

There is considerable controversy as to the difference between "light skinned" as opposed to "White". The term "White" is a misnomer, as almost all people (regardless of race) have a skin color which is some shade of brown. It has been noted that the mixed descendants of light-skinned Arabs (like Ralph Nader) and certain racially mixed individuals (like Keanu Reeves) have been fully accepted as White by most Americans. Although acceptance as White by fair-skinned individuals 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 terms white and light-skinned are often used interchangeably.

The uniquely 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 European 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.

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 certain Southern and Eastern groups 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".

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. Brazil is roughly half White and half Black and mulatto, although Brazilian Whites tend to have more African admixture than their counterparts in the United States. Furthermore, South Asians and blacks each are about half the population of Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname, while Haiti, Jamaica, and most small English-speaking Caribbean island nations are almost exclusively black African.

There are significant minorities of European-descended populations in the various mestizo-majority 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

As quoted in Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968), 102, 143. See also [7].
Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America, 1st ed. (Middletown CT, 1986), 88. As quoted in Jonathan W. Warren and France Winddance Twine, "White Americans, the New Minority?," Journal of Black Studies, 28 (no. 2, 1997), 200-18, 203; David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991), 133.
As quoted in Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, 2 vols. (London, 1994), 1:29.
H.L Gates, Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (New York, 1992), 49.
Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens GA, 1995), 6.
As quoted in Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley, 1990).
Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man (New York, 1911).
Lothrop Stoddard, as quoted in Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, 1998), 184.
Harry H. L. Kitano and Roger Daniels, Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1995), 24.
James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (Cambridge MA, 1971); Warren (1997), 200-18, 209-11.
See Employer Information Report EEO-1 and Standard Form 100, Appendix § 4, Race/Ethnic Identification, 1 Empl. Prac. Guide (CCH) § 1881, (1981), 1625.
For a comprehensive list of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that repeatedly reversed prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions (back and forth many times) regarding whether or not Afganis, Syrians, Asian Indians, and Arabians are White, see "Appendix A" of Ian F. Haney-Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University, 1996).
Stetson Kennedy, Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was (Boca Raton FL, 1990), 47-49.
Clara E. Rodriguez, "Challenging Racial Hegemony: Puerto Ricans in the United States," in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick NJ, 1994), 131-45.
Oddly (in a linguistic sense), the regulation states that the distinct Hispanic "race" comprises, "All persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race". [Underline is the author's.]
One might ask whether Ms. Reuben's scolding does not reflect a desire to deconstruct the U.S. color line, rather than to distance herself from the Black community. It is, of course, impossible to know Ms. Reuben's innermost motives. But the literature of West Indian resistance to being involuntarily assigned to the Black endogamous group by American society (especially by members of the U.S. Black endogamous group) is vast. See, for example, Stephen A. Woodbury, Culture, Human Capital, and the Earnings of West Indian Blacks, (1993); Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (New York, 1999); Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York, 1981), 219; or Malcolm Gladwell, "Black Like Them," The New Yorker, April 29 1996. The interpretation presented above makes Ms. Reuben's statement unexceptional. The alternative (that she wants to defy the U.S. social system, rather than position herself advantageously within it) would be anomalous. There is also the issue of whether there is an objection by a Canadian being lumped in with "Americans."
One might also wonder whether this suggests or implies that West Indians are currently following the same trajectory as the earlier Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Jews, and so forth, who achieved acceptance into the U.S. White endogamous group. That is precisely what the evidence study suggests. Finally, one might ask: "Why have other ethnic groups (Germans, Irish, Italians, Slavs, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, and Puerto Ricans) achieved or begun to achieve acceptance as White, but native-born members of the Black endogamous group have not achieved acceptance into the White endogamous group?" This is a mystery. There is, of course, no physical trait that would prevent it. After all, it is a cliché among forensic anthropologists that the only way to tell if an unidentified corpse is Hispanic, rather than Black with lots of European genetic admixture, is to search the pockets for a shopping list written in Spanish.
See Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York, 1981), 219. Incidentally, not all those of B.W.I. lineage reject the Black label. Jamaican-descended General Colin Powell, for example, identifies himself as Black.
See, for example: Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America (New Brunswick NJ, 1998); Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York, 1995); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, 1998); Ian F. Haney-Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York, 1996).
The best overall survey of such evidence is Jonathan W. Warren and France Winddance Twine, "White Americans, the New Minority?," Journal of Black Studies, 28 (no. 2, 1997), 200-18.
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.
Although abstracts of most such peer-reviewed studies can be found in pubmed, a current index to recent admixture studies, along with full-text links, is available at: Various admixture studies.
Edward E. Telles (2002). Race in Another America : The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, p. 1. ISBN 0691118663.
Eugene Robinson (1999). Coal to Cream : A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race, p. 26–27. ISBN 0684857227.
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.
George Reid Andrews (1992). "Racial Inequality in Brazil and the United States: A Statistical Comparison". Journal of Social History 26 (2): 229-63.

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

White (people)

used whites metal detectors

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