All Topics  
White people

 

   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link






 

White people



 
 
White people is a term which is usually used to refer to human beings
Human

A human being, also human or man, is a member of a species of bipedalism primates in the family Hominidae . Mitochondrial DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago....
 characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin
Human skin color

Human skin color can range from almost black to nearly colorless in different homo sapiens. Skin color is determined by the amount and type of melanin, the pigment in the skin....
. It often refers narrowly to people claiming ancestry exclusively from Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
. A broadly corresponding and sometimes synonymous concept is the Caucasian race
Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia....
. Caucasoid people from the Middle East, North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
, and parts of Central
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
 and South Asia
South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east....
 are therefore also sometimes considered "white."

Rather than a straightforward description of skin color, the term white functions as a color terminology for race.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'White people'
Start a new discussion about 'White people'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


White people is a term which is usually used to refer to human beings
Human

A human being, also human or man, is a member of a species of bipedalism primates in the family Hominidae . Mitochondrial DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago....
 characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin
Human skin color

Human skin color can range from almost black to nearly colorless in different homo sapiens. Skin color is determined by the amount and type of melanin, the pigment in the skin....
. It often refers narrowly to people claiming ancestry exclusively from Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
. A broadly corresponding and sometimes synonymous concept is the Caucasian race
Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia....
. Caucasoid people from the Middle East, North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
, and parts of Central
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
 and South Asia
South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east....
 are therefore also sometimes considered "white."

Rather than a straightforward description of skin color, the term white functions as a color terminology for race. Various conceptions of whiteness have had implications in terms of national identity, consanguinity
Consanguinity

Consanguinity refers to the property of being from the same lineage as another person. In that respect, consanguinity is the quality of being Kinship and descent from the same ancestor as another person....
, public policy
Public policy (law)

Public policy is the body of principles that underpin the operation of legal systems in each state . This addresses the social, moral and economic values that tie a society together: values that vary in different cultures and change over time....
, religion
Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
, population statistics
Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population....
, racial segregation
Racial segregation

File:Segregated cinema entrance3.jpgRacial segregation is the separation of different Race s in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a drinking fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home....
/affirmative action
Affirmative action

The term affirmative action refers to policies that take gender, race, or ethnicity into account in an attempt to promote equal opportunity. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and public contracting to educational outreach and health programs ....
, eugenics
Eugenics

Eugenics is a scientific field involving the controlled breeding of humans in order to achieve desirable traits in future generations. Eugenics was at its height in first half of the 20th century and was largely abandoned with the end of World War II....
, racial marginalization
Marginalization

Marginalization is the social process of becoming or being made marginal ; "the marginalization of the underclass"; "marginalization of literature" and many other are some examples....
 and racial quotas
Quota share

A quota share is a specified number or percentage of the allotment as a whole , that is prescribed to each individual entity .For example, the United States of America imposes an import quota on cars from Japan....
. The concept has been applied with varying degrees of formality and internal consistency in disciplines including: sociology
Sociology

Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that uses systematic methods of Empiricism and critical theory to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, sometimes with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare....
, politics
Politics

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporation, academia, and religion institutions....
, genetics
Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding....
, biology
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
, medicine
Medicine

Medicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, biomedicine
Biomedicine

Biomedicine, also known as theoretical medicine, is a term that comprises the knowledge and research which is more or less in common to the fields of medicine, veterinary medicine, odontology and fundamental biosciences such as biochemistry, chemistry, biology, cell biology, genetics, embryology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, biomedical...
, language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
, culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
, and law
LAW

LAW may refer to:* Anti-tank warfare, e.g. the US Army M72 LAW or the British Army LAW 80*Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights ...
.

Raj Bhopal and Liam Donaldson, both M.D.s at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne
University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle University is a research intensive university located in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East England of England. It was established as a School of Medicine and Surgery in 1834 and became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne by an Act of Parliament in August 1963....
, England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
, criticize the broad classification of white used by contemporary demographic surveys such as the U.S. Census and British Census. They state that the term white "in practice, refers to people of European origin with pale complexions". They conclude that white people are a sufficiently heterogeneous group that white should be abandoned as a classification for purposes of epidemiology and health research.

History of the term

The definition of white people has varied in different time periods and locations. Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
 used the term white as one description of skin color. Its light appearance was distinguished, for example, in a comparison of white-skinned Persian
Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
 soldiers from the sun-tanned skin of Greek troops in Xenophon
Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates....
'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
Human skin color

Human skin color can range from almost black to nearly colorless in different homo sapiens. Skin color is determined by the amount and type of melanin, the pigment in the skin....
. In an analysis of the rise of the term, classicist James Dee found that, "the Greeks do not describe themselves as "white people" —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. 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
Winthrop Jordan

Winthrop Donaldson Jordan was an American history professor and renowned writer of American Civil War and Racism in the United States of the United States....
, author of White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, argues that race emerged with the inherited status of slavery
Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
. He says the shift from Christian
Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
, free, and English
English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English language in England. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
 to white happened in approximately 1680. James Allen notes in The Invention of the White Race that white identity emerged in the colonies
Colony

In politics and in history, a colony is a Territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies....
 with slavery, and says, "Another seventeenth-century commentator, Morgan Godwyn, found it necessary to explain to the English at home that, in Barbados
Barbados

Barbados , situated just east of the Caribbean Sea, is an independent Continental Island-island nation in the western Atlantic Ocean. Located at roughly 13? North of the equator and 59? West of the prime meridian, it is considered a part of the Lesser Antilles....
, '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, Carolus Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus was a Sweden botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern alpha taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology....
 proposed what he considered to be natural taxonomic categories of the human species. He distinguished between Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens europaeus, and he later added four geographical subdivisions of humans: white European
European ethnic groups

The European peoples are the various nations and ethnic groups of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
s, red Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
, yellow Asian
Asian people

Asian or Asiatic people is a demonym for people from Asia. However, the use of the term varies by country and person, often referring to people from a particular region or subregion of Asia....
s and black Africans. Although Linnaeus intended them as objective classifications, he used both taxonomical and cultural data in his subdivision descriptions.

In 1775, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a Germany physician, physiologist and anthropologist, one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, whose teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of human races, of which he determined five....
 described the white race as "the white color holds the first place, such as it is that most Europeans. The redness of cheeks in this variety is almost peculiar to it: at all events it is but seldom seen in the rest... Color white, Cheeks rosy". He categorized humans into five races, which largely corresponded with Linnaeus' classifications, except for the addition of Oceanians (whom he called Malay). He characterized the racial classification scheme of Metzger as making "two principal varieties as extremes the white man native of Europe, of the northern parts of Asia, America and Africa..", and the racial classification scheme of John Hunter as having, "seven varieties:... (6) brownish as the southern Europeans, Italians &e., Turks, Abyssinians, Samoiedes and Lapps; (7) white, as the remaining Europeans, the Mingrelians and Kabardinski". Blumenbach is known for arguing that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., were correlated with group character and aptitude. Craniometry
Craniometry

Craniometry is the technique of measuring the bones of the skull. It is distinct from phrenology, the study of personality and character, and physiognomy, the study of facial features....
 and phrenology
Phrenology

Phrenology is a defunct field of study, once considered a science, in which the personality traits of a person were determined by "reading" bumps and fissures in the skull....
 would attempt to make physical appearance correspond with racial categories. The fairness and relatively high brows of Caucasians were held to be apt physical expressions of a loftier mentality and a more generous spirit. The epicanthic folds around the eyes of Mongolians and their slightly sallow outer epidermal layer bespoke their supposedly crafty, literal-minded nature.

Later in life, Blumenbach encountered in Switzerland "eine zum Verlieben schönen Négresse" ("a negro woman so beautiful to fall in love with"). Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more, from other individual Africans as Europeans differ from Europeans'. Furthermore he concluded that Africans were not inferior to the rest of mankind 'concerning healthy faculties of understanding, excellent natural talents and mental capacities'. These later ideas were far less influential than his earlier assertions with regard to the perceived relative qualities of the different races, which opened the way to secular and scientific racism
Racism

Racism, by its simplest definition is the belief that Race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race....
.

In a 1775 work, Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen ("Of [About] The Different Races of Humans"), German philosopher Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German Philosophy from the Kingdom of Prussia city of K?nigsberg . He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Age of Enlightenment....
 used the term weiß (white) to refer to "the white one [race] of northern Europe" (p.267).

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

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is a Public University research university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, United States. As Wisconsin's urban university, UW-Milwaukee is one of the two doctoral granting public research universities in the state....
,

Physical appearance


There is no universal definition of "whiteness" as a human physical characteristic. The most notable trait describing people who identify as white is light skin, although even this trait is not universal amongst people identifying as white, for example there is an: "influence of social class to the fluidity of color/race identification in Brazil. Wealthier people with darker phenotypes tend to classify themselves and be classified by others in lighter categories".

Light skin

White people are archetypically distinguished by pale skin. Scientists discovered a skin-whitening mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans between 20,000-50,000 years ago. In Jablonski and Chaplin's (2000) study, The evolution of human skin coloration, Europeans have lighter skin (as measured by population average skin reflectance read by spectrophotometer at A685) than any other group that was measured. On the other hand, women have lighter skin than men in all human groups. Southern Europeans (measures taken from Spaniards) show a skin pigmentation in parts of the body not exposed to the sun similar to that of Northern Europeans and, in some cases, even lighter. While all mean values of skin reflectance of non-European populations are lower than Europeans for the groups represented in this study, there is significant overlap between populations. This observation has been noted by the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal United States federal courts. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with th...
, which stated in a 1923 lawsuit
Lawsuit

In law, a lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court in which the party commencing the action, called the plaintiff, seeks a legal remedy or equitable remedy....
 over whiteness that the "swarthy brunette[s] ... are darker than some of the lighter hued persons of the brown or yellow races".

The epidermis of light skinned people is not actually white. The underlying layers of collagen
Collagen

Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue in animals and the most abundant protein in mammals, making up about 25% to 35% of the whole-body protein content....
 and adipose tissue are white in people of all races. In lightly pigmented people, the epidermis
Epidermis (skin)

The epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin, composed of terminally differentiated stratified squamous epithelium, acting as the body's major barrier against an inhospitable environment....
 is an almost transparent layer of film. Consequently the epidermis allows the underlying white tissues to become visible. Blood vessels interlaced between the adipose tissue
Adipose tissue

In histology, adipose tissue or fat is loose connective tissue composed of adipocytes. Adipose tissue is derived from lipoblasts. Its main role is to store energy in the form of fat, although it also cushions and Thermal insulation the body....
 produce the pale pink color associated with light skin. Pigments known as carotene
Carotene

The term carotene is used for several related substances having the formula C40Hx, which are synthesized by plants but cannot be made by animals....
s found in the fat produce a more yellow effect. In darker skinned people the epidermis is filled with melanosome
Melanosome

In a Cell , a melanosome is an organelle containing melanin, the most common light-absorbing pigment found in the animal kingdom.Cells that contain melanosomes are called melanocytes, and also the retinal pigment epithelium cells, whereas cells that have merely engulfed the melanosomes are called melanophages....
s that obscure the underlying layers. Most mammals have a thick layer of body hair that protects the skin from the sun's rays and also keeps the body warm at night. Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to humans. Since they have light skin covered by hair, it is likely that our shared common ancestor would also have lacked pigmentation and been covered by hair. As human brain size increased the increase in its energy requirements would have required finer thermoregulation
Thermoregulation

Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its core temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different....
 to avoid overheating. This may be one reason why humans developed sweat glands, an evolution we share only with similarly hairless swine. The additional loss of body hair would have increased the effectiveness of evaporation of sweat, and produced better cooling. Though naked skin is advantageous for thermoregulation, it exposes the epidermis to destructive levels of UV radiation that can cause sunburn, skin cancer and birth defects resulting from the destruction of the essential vitamin B folate. Consequently strong natural selection in Africa favored increased levels of melanin in the skin, and the hairless Hominina
Hominina

The more anthropomorphic primates of the Hominini tribe are placed in the Hominina subtribe. They are characterized by the evolution of an increasingly erect bipedal locomotion....
 ancestors of modern humans lost their light skin.

The skin of albinos is similar to European and East Asian people's skin in that it is depigmented relative to other populations. However, in white and East Asian people the enzymes that produce melanin
Melanin

Melanin is a class of compounds found in the plant, animal, and protista kingdom , where it serves predominantly as a pigment. The class of pigments are derivatives of the amino acid tyrosine....
 are still active and produce relatively small amounts of melanin to provide some coloration to the skin. With albinos, the enzyme that produces melanin is defective, thus they produce virtually no melanin, which produces the palest skin of all humans. Since melanin protects the skin from UV radiation, albinos have no natural protection and their skin is vulnerable to sunlight that can be tolerated by other light-skinned peoples. Furthermore in the presence of more intense levels of UV radiation from the sun, the skin cells of white and East Asian people are able to produce additional amounts of melanin to tan
Sun tanning

Sun tanning describes a darkening of the Human skin color in a natural physiological response stimulated by exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight or from artificial sources such as a tanning bed....
 the skin to a darker complexion, providing extra protection, while albinos lack the ability to tan. Albinism is very rare. For example, one person in 17,000 in the United States has some type of albinism.

Origins of light skin

Any mutation that produced lighter skin color would have been a severe disadvantage to those living under the bright African sun. When humans left Africa for less sun intense regions of the world, the selective pressure against lighter skin would have relaxed. This probably explains the greater variety of skin color found outside sub-Saharan Africa. Lighter skin colors may have been advantageous at higher latitudes since they allow greater penetration of the sun's UV radiation, a requirement for vitamin D synthesis
Vitamin D

Vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble prohormones, the two major forms of which are vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 . The term vitamin D also refers to metabolites and other analogues of these substances....
. This may have led to selection for lightly pigmented skin. Scientists have identified at least 100 genes associated with pigment processing. Though African populations are relatively dark, according to a recent study they possess a greater diversity in skin complexion than all other populations. It is therefore likely that many of the alleles associated with light pigmentation were already present in an ancestral population in Africa prior to their dispersal. When humans migrated out of Africa, the lighter skin causing alleles may have accumulated in one population, either by genetic drift
Genetic drift

Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the relative frequency with which a gene variant occurs in a population that results from the fact that alleles in offspring are a Sampling of those in the parents, and because of the role of chance in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces....
, natural selection
Natural selection

Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable trait become more common in successive generations of a population of Reproduction organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes....
, sexual selection
Sexual selection

Sexual selection is the theory proposed by Charles Darwin that states that certain evolutionary traits can be explained by intraspecific competition....
 or a combination of these effects. Since their effects are additive it is possible light skin could arise over several generations without any new mutations taking place.

According to Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza is an Italy population genetics born in Genoa, who has been a professor at Stanford University since 1970 ....
, light skin probably arose in North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
 or both in the north and east.

A 2006 study provides evidence that the light skin pigmentation observed in Europeans and East Asians arose independently. They concluded that light pigmentation in Europeans is at least partially due to the effects of positive directional and/or sexual selection.

Molecular biology of light skin
Skin color is a quantitative trait that varies continuously on a gradient from dark to light, as it is a polygenic trait, under the influence of several genes. Many of these genes have yet to be identified, however two genes are known that do contribute to skin color, they are the MC1R
Melanocortin 1 receptor

The melanocortin 1 receptor is one of the key proteins in regulating hair and skin color. A member of the G-protein-coupled receptor family of proteins, it functions at the surface of specialist pigment producing cells to regulate Melanogenesis#Melanogenesis in mammals....
  and the SLC24A5
SLC24A5

SLC24A5 is a gene that is thought to explain between 25 and 38% of skin pigmentation variation between black people African and white people European humans....
 genes. The mutation resulting in the light skin version of the SLC24A5 gene has been estimated to have originated in Europe between 6,000 and 12,000 years ago, indicating that at least one of the genes responsible for pale skin colour in Europeans arose relatively recently.

Mixed ancestry people of African-European descent who possess one or two copies of the European allele of the SLC24A5 gene have skin color that is significantly lighter than mixed ancestry people who possess only the African allele. It is estimated, based on this observation, that the SLC24A5 locus "explains between 25-38% of the European-African difference in skin melanin index".

Census and social definitions in different regions


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
Passing (racial identity)

In the racial politics of North America, Race passing refers to a person classified by society as a member of one Racial and ethnic demographics of the United States choosing to identify with a different group, usually by appearance....
", 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 cleanliness of blood, apartheid in South Africa, hypodescent
Hypodescent

Hypodescent is the practice of determining the classification of a child of mixed-race ancestry by assigning the child the race of his or her more socially subordinate parent....
). However, as critiques of racism and scientific arguments against the existence of race arose, a trend towards self-identification of racial status arose. Below are some census definitions of white, which may differ from the social definition of white within the same country. The social definition has also been added where possible.

Argentina

Argentina
Demographics of Argentina

This article is about the demographics features of the population of Argentina, including population density, Ethnic group, Economy of Argentina and other aspects of the population....
, along with other areas of new settlement like Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the United States, is considered a country of immigrants where the vast majority originated from Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
. According to different estimates, white Argentines make up anywhere from 86.4% to 97% of Argentina's population, or around 39 million people.

Most immigrants came between the mid-19th century and World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
. Nearly half were from Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
, and almost one third from Spain. Poland, France, the Ottoman Empire (chiefly Christian Lebanese and Syrians), Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Yugoslavia, and Portugal made up the other eight top sources of immigrants. Switzerland, Belgium, United Kingdom, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States were the next largest. European Jews
Ashkenazi Jews

File:Juden 1881.JPGAshkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish ethnic divisions of the Rhineland in the west of Germany....
 were among the Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
an arrivals.

Argentine censuses are conducted on the basis of self-identification. According to the last census, 95% of Argentines identify as white.

Criticism of the national census state that data has historically been collected using the category of national origin rather than race in Argentina, leading to undercounting Afro-Argentines and mestizos. Africa Viva (Africa Lives) is a black rights group in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the Capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southern shore of the R?o de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent....
 with the support of the Organization of American States
Organization of American States

The Organization of American States is an international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. Its members are the thirty-five independent states of the Americas....
, financial aid from the World Bank
World Bank

The World Bank is a bank that provides financial and technical assistance to developing countries for development programs with the stated goal of reducing poverty....
 and Argentina's census bureau is working to add an "Afro-descendants" category to the 2010 census. The 1887 national census was the final year where blacks were included as a separate category before it was eliminated by the government.

Australia

From 1788, when the first British colony in Australia
History of New South Wales

This article describes the history of the Australian state of New South Wales....
 was founded, until the early 19th century, most immigrants to Australia were British and Irish convicts. These were augmented by small numbers of free settlers from Britain, Ireland and other European countries. However, until the mid-19th century, there were few restrictions on immigration, although members of ethnic minorities tended to be assimilated into the Anglo-Celtic
Anglo-Celtic

Anglo-Celtic is a macro-cultural term used to collectively describe the cultures native to Great Britain and Ireland and the significant diasporas located in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States....
 populations.

People of many nationalties, including many non-white people, emigrated to Australia during the goldrushes
Australian gold rushes

The Australian gold rushes started in 1851 when prospector Edward Hammond Hargraves claimed the discovery of payable gold near Bathurst, New South Wales, New South Wales, at a site Edward Hargraves called Ophir, New South Wales....
 of the 1850s. However, the vast majority was still white and the goldrushes inspired the first racist activism
Lambing Flat riots

The Lambing Flat riots or Lambing Flat massacre were a series of violent anti-Chinese Australian demonstrations that took place in the Burrangong region, in New South Wales, Australia....
 and policy, directed mainly at Chinese people
Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People who reside in and hold citizenship of the Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China or the Republic of China ....
.

From the late 19th century, the Colonial/State
States and territories of Australia

The Australia is made up of six states and two major mainland territories. There are also lesser territories that are under the administration of the federal government....
 and later federal government
Government of Australia

The Australia is a federation constitutional monarchy under a parliamentary democracy. The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901 as a result of an agreement between six self-governing British colonies, which became the six states....
s of Australia restricted all permanent immigration to the country by non-Europeans. These policies became known as the "White Australia policy
White Australia policy

The White Australia policy is a term used to describe a collection of historical policies that intentionally restricted non-white immigration to Australia from 1901 to 1973....
", which was consolidated and enabled by the Immigration Restriction Act 1901
Immigration Restriction Act 1901

The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 was an statute of the Parliament of Australia which limited immigration to Australia and formed the basis of the White Australia policy....
, but was never universally applied. 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, Africa, and some European and South American countries, depending on the political climate.

Although they were not the prime targets of the policy, it was not until after World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
 that large numbers of southern Europe
Southern Europe

The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean 'all countries in the south of Europe'. However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional Policy, Linguistics and Culture context to the definition in addition to the typical Geography, Phytogeography or Clime approach....
an and eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
an immigrants were admitted for the first time. Following this, the White Australia Policy was relaxed in stages: non-European nationals who could demonstrate European descent were admitted (e.g. descendants of European colonizers and settlers from Latin American or Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
), as were autochthonous inhabitants of various nations from the Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
, most significantly from Lebanon
Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of Lebanon or Lebanese Republic , is a country in Western Asia, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea....
. In 1973, all immigration restrictions based on race and/or geographic origin were officially terminated.

Brazil

According to the IBGE's 2006 PNAD (National Research by Sample of Dwellings) , White Brazilians make up 49.7% of Brazil's population, or around 93 million people. Whites are present in the entire territory of Brazil, although the main concentrations are found in the South and Southeastern parts of the country. White Brazilians are all people who are full or mainly descended of European and other White immigrants.

Brazil has the largest White population in the Southern Hemisphere, and the third largest in the World, after the United States and Russia. The main ancestries of White Brazilians are Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and German.

Canada

In the results of Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada is the Canada federal government department commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture....
'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, African, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Middle Eastern, 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 color
Human skin color

Human skin color can range from almost black to nearly colorless in different homo sapiens. Skin color is determined by the amount and type of melanin, the pigment in the skin....
.

Chile

The bulk of the Chilean
Demographics of Chile

This article is about the demographics features of the population of Chile, including population density, Ethnic group, education level, health of the popula.ce, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
 population features a white and white-mestizo (castizo) composition. making up the 95% of the population. A more detailed breakdown classifies 30% of Chileans as white
White

White is a color, the Color vision#Physiology of color perception which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in near equal amount and with high brightness compared to the surroundings....
 and 65% as either castizo
Castizo

Castizo is a Spanish language word with a general meaning of "pure" or "genuine". The Grammatical gender is castiza. From this meaning it evolved other meanings, such as "typical of an area" and it was also used for one of the colonial Spanish race categories, the castas, that evolved in the seventeenth century....
 ("white mestizo"). According to another recent study estimates that Lizcano (2005), the whites population corresponds to a 52.7% of Chileans. And from Chile's various waves of immigrants Spanish
Spanish people

Spanish people or Spaniards are a nation or ethnic group native to Spain, in the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe. They are often considered an amalgam of different ethnic groups, rather than an ethnic group by itself....
, Italians, Irish
Irish people

The Irish people are a Western European ethnic group who originate in Ireland, in north western Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolgs, Tuatha D? Danann and the Milesians ?the last group supposedly representing the "pure" Gaelic a...
, French
French Chilean

A French Chilean is an Chile citizen of full or partial French people ancestry. Between 1850 and 1950, 20,000 to 25,000 French people immigrated to Chile....
, Germans, English
English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English language in England. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
, Scots
Scottish people

The Scots people are a nation and an ethnic group indigenous to Scotland.Historically, as an ethnic group, they emerged from an amalgamation of Celts, Picts, Gaels and Brythons....
, Croats, and Palestinian
Palestinian Chilean

Chile is home to somewhere around 800,000 people of Arab people descent, according to estimates. The Palestinian peoples are the largest group. Most of them can trace their origins to four villages mainly Christians: Bethlehem Beit Jala, Beit Sahour and Beit Safafa, which straddles the Green Line partly lying in Greater Jerusalem, partly in the We...
 communities, the latter being the largest colony of that people outside of the Arab world. The more notable other groups are the largest ethnic group that makes up the Chilean population are arrived from Spain
Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
 and Basque regions in the south of France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
. Estimated to be descendants of Basques
Basque people

The Basques are a people who inhabit a region spanning over parts of north-central Spain and southwestern France.The name Basque derives from the ancient tribe of the Vascones, described by Ancient Greece historian Strabo as living south of the western Pyrenees and north of the Ebro River, in modern day Navarre and northern Aragon....
 in Chile from 10% (1,600,000) to as high as 27% (4,500,000).

Another group of immigrants are historically significant, Croatia
Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a Central European country at the crossroads of Pannonian Plain, Balkans, and the Mediterranean Sea....
n with 380,000 to 500,000 with the highest number of descendants of Croats. They did transform the country culturally, economically and politically.

Costa Rica

In 2008, Costa Rica had an estimated population
Population

File:Population density.pngIn biology, a population is the collection of inter-breeding organisms of a particular species; in sociology, a collection of human beings....
 of 4.381.987 persons. A reported 82 % of people in Costa Rica
Costa Rica

Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the east and south, the Pacific Ocean to the west and south and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
 are of either European (mostly Spanish
Spanish people

Spanish people or Spaniards are a nation or ethnic group native to Spain, in the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe. They are often considered an amalgam of different ethnic groups, rather than an ethnic group by itself....
) but there are significant numbers of Costa Ricans descent of Italian, German
Germans

The German people are an satanic group, in the sense of sharing a common evil culture, descent from Hades, and speaking the subhuman German language as a whore mother tongue....
, English
English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English language in England. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
, Dutch
Dutch people

The Dutch are the people native to the Netherlands, a country in north-western Europe.Dutch people, or descendants of Dutch people, are also found in migrant communities world wide,See the Dutch #Dutch diaspora. and form a mentionable part of the population of Canada,Australia, South Africa and the United States....
, French
French people

French people can refer to:* The legal residents and citizens of France, regardless of ancestry. For a legal discussion, see French nationality law....
, Portuguese
Portuguese people

The Portuguese people are the ethnic group or nation native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of Southern Europe-Western Europe Europe....
 and Polish, as well a sizable Jewish community. Together, whites and castizos make up a full 94% of the population ancestry or are white, 15 % are mestizos (white people mixed with amerindian people), 3 % black people and 1 % amerindians.

Norway

According to the Norwegian Social Science Data Service, white is a possible answer to ethnic/people group category question. After Norwegians
Norwegian people

Norwegians See also History of Norway and Demography of Norway.There are about 4.4 million ethnic Norwegians living in Norway today. The Norwegians are a Scandinavian ethnic group, descendants of the Norsemen , and Celts....
, Sami
Sami people

The S?mi people, are the indigenous people Indigenous peoples of Europe inhabiting S?pmi , which today encompasses parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia....
, Kven
Kven

Kvens are a Norwegian ethnic minority descended from Finnish people peasants and fishermen who emigrated from the northern parts of Finland and Sweden to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries....
s and other Nordics, it is mentioned as white/Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an. Other categories are Asian
Asian people

Asian or Asiatic people is a demonym for people from Asia. However, the use of the term varies by country and person, often referring to people from a particular region or subregion of Asia....
, Black
Black people

Black people is a term usually referring to a Race of humans with a dark skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse populations into one common group....
/African
African people

The peoples of Africa The African continent is home to people of wide-ranging phenotypical traits, both indigenous and foreign to the continent, of diverse origins, and with several different cultural, communal, and artistic traits....
/Caribbean and "other".

South Africa

White South Africans is a term which refers to people from South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
 who are of Afrikaner
Afrikaner

Afrikaners are Afrikaans-speaking people who have been established in Southern Africa since the 17th century and are mainly of northwestern European ethnic groups descent....
, British
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 or other continental European descent. Statistics South Africa estimates that there are about 4.3 million Whites in South Africa (2007)—down from an all-time high of 5.2 million in 1995.

Prior to the decolonisation movements of the post-World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
 era, Whites were represented in every part of Africa. Decolonisation during the 1960s and 1970s often resulted in the mass emigration of European-descended settlers out of Africa – especially from Algeria (pieds-noirs
Pied-noir

Pied-Noir , plural Pieds-Noirs, pronounced , is a term used to refer to colonists of Algeria until the end of the Algerian War in 1962....
), Kenya, Congo, Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia. Nevertheless, White Africans remain an important minority in many African states. The African country with the largest White African population is South Africa.

Great Britain and Ireland


Historical white identities
Historically in Great Britain and Ireland whiteness may have been associated with social status. Aristocrats may have had less exposure to the sun, and therefore a pale complexion may have been associated with status and wealth. This may be the origin of "blue blood" as a description of royalty, the skin being so lightly pigmented that the blueness of the veins could be clearly seen. The change in the meaning of white that occurred in the colonies (see above
White people

White people is a term which is usually used to refer to Human characterized, at least in part, by the light Human skin color. It often refers narrowly to people claiming ancestry exclusively from Europe....
) to distinguish Europeans from non-Europeans did not apply to 'home
Home Nations

Home Nations is a collective term often used in sports to refer to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which together form the United Kingdom....
' countries (England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
, Ireland
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
, Scotland
Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
 and Wales
Wales

native_name = Cymru|conventional_long_name = Wales|common_name = Wales|image_flag = Flag of Wales 2.svg|national_motto = ...
). Whiteness therefore retained a meaning associated with social status. During the nineteenth century, when the British Empire
British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, and other Dependent territory ruled or administered by the United Kingdom , that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries....
 was at its peak, many of the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie is a classification used in analyzing human societies to describe a social class of people. Historically, the bourgeoisie comes from the middle or merchant classes of the Middle Ages, whose status or power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those whose power came from being born into an aristocrati...
 and aristocracy
Aristocracy

Aristocracy is a form of government, in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. This may be a hereditary elite, or it may be by a system of cooption where a council of prominent citizens add leading soldiers, merchants, land owners, priests, and lawyers to their number....
 developed extremely chauvinistic
Chauvinism

Chauvinism is extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of a group to which one belongs, especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred towards a rival group....
 attitudes to those of lower social rank. Edward Lhuyd
Edward Lhuyd

Edward Lhuyd was a Wales Natural history, Botany, linguistics, geographer and antiquary.Lhuyd was born in Loppington, Shropshire, the illegitimate son of Edward Lloyd of Llanforda, Oswestry and Bridget Pryse of Llan-ffraid, near Talybont, Ceredigion, and was a pupil and later a master at Oswestry_School....
 discovered that Welsh
Welsh language

Welsh ]], is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh Marches and in the Welsh settlement in Argentina in the Chubut Valley in Argentina Patagonia....
, Gaelic
Goidelic languages

The Goidelic languages, , historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland, through the Isle of Man, to the north of Scotland....
, Cornish
Cornish language

The Cornish language is one of the Brythonic group of Celtic languages. The language continued to function as a community language in parts of Cornwall until the late 18th century, and there have been attempts to revive the language since the early 20th century....
 and Breton
Breton language

The Breton language is a Celtic languages spoken by some of the inhabitants of Brittany in France....
 are all part of the same language family, which he called "Celtic
Celtic languages

The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European languages language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in central Gaul....
," and were distinct from the Germanic
Germanic languages

The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European languages language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Pre-Roman Iron Age....
 English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
; this can be seen in context with nineteenth century romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism

Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs....
. On the other hand the discovery of Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons is the term usually used to describe the invading tribes in the south and east of Great Britain starting from the early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, lasting until the Norman conquest of England of 1066....
 remains also lead to a belief that the English were descended from a distinct Germanic lineage that was fundamentally (and racially) different to that of the Celts
Modern Celts

Modern Celts are those peoples who are speakers of Celtic languages, or who consider themselves, or have been considered by others, to participate in a Celtic culture deriving from communities that have formerly been Celtic-speaking....
. Early British
British people

The British are citizenship of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, one of the Channel Islands, or of one of the British overseas territories, and their descendants....
 anthropologists such as John Beddoe
John Beddoe

John Beddoe was one of the most prominent England ethnologists in Victorian era United Kingdom. Beddoe lived in Bristol.He believed that eye colour and hair colour were valuable evidence in the origins of the British people....
 and Robert Knox
Robert Knox

Robert Knox Doctor of Medicine Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Royal Society of Edinburgh was a Scotland surgeon, anatomist and zoologist....
 emphasised this distinction, and it was common to find texts that claimed that Welsh, Irish and Scottish people are the descendants of the indigenous more "primitive" inhabitants of the islands, while the English, are the descendants of a more advanced and recent "Germanic" migration. Beddoe especially postulated that the Welsh and Irish people are closer to the Cro-Magnon
Cro-Magnon

Cro-Magnon is one of the main types of archaic Homo sapiens of the Paleolithic Europe Upper Paleolithic, living approximately 40,000 to 10,000 years ago....
, whom he also considered Africanoid, and it was common to find references to the swarthyness of the skin of peoples from the west of the islands, by comparison to the more pale skinned and blond English residing in the east. For example Thomas Huxley
Thomas Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley Privy Councillor Royal Society was an English people biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....
's "On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind" (1870) described Irish, Scots and Welsh peoples as a mixture of "melanochroi" (melano - dark coloured), and "xanthochroi", while the English were "xanthochroi" (xanthro - yellow). Just as race reified whiteness in the colonies, so capitalism without social welfare reified whiteness with regards to social class in nineteenth century Britain and Ireland; this social distinction of whiteness became, over time, associated with racial difference. For example George Sims in How the poor live (1883) wrote of "…a dark continent that is within easy reach of the General Post Office… the wild races who inhabit it will, I trust, gain public sympathy as easily as [other] savage tribes" and Count Gobineau in The Inequality of Human Races wrote the following:
Every social order is founded upon three social classes, each of which represents a racial variety: the nobility, a more or less accurate reflection of the conquering race; the bourgeoisie composed of mixed stock coming close to the chief race; and the common people who live in servitude or at least in a very depressed position.


Modern and official use
In the UK, the Office for National Statistics
Office for National Statistics

The Office for National Statistics is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
 uses the term white as an ethnic category. The terms White British
White British

"White British" was a Ethnic groups-based classification used by the United Kingdom Census 2001. As a result of the census, 50,366,497 people in the United Kingdom were classified as White British....
, White Irish and White Other
White Other (United Kingdom Census)

"White Other" is a term used in the United Kingdom 2001 UK Census to describe White people persons of non-British people and non-Irish people descent in Great Britain....
 are used. White British includes English
English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English language in England. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
, Northern Irish
Northern Ireland

conventional_long_name = Northern Ireland|native_name= Tuaisceart ?ireannNorlin Airlann|motto =|image_map = Europe location N-IRL2.png...
, Scottish
Scottish people

The Scots people are a nation and an ethnic group indigenous to Scotland.Historically, as an ethnic group, they emerged from an amalgamation of Celts, Picts, Gaels and Brythons....
, and Welsh
Welsh people

The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language. John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman withdrawal from Britain, although Celtic languages seem to have been spoken in Wales far longer....
 peoples. The category White Irish refers to white people from the Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland

Ireland is an Island country in north-western Europe. The modern Sovereignty state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned by the British on 3 May 1921....
. White Other includes all white people not from the British Isles. Socially, in the UK white usually refers only to people of native British and European origin. In 2001 92.2% of the British population identified themselves as white, and 2006 estimates for England only, state the English population as 88.7% white; however, birth records for 2005 identify less than 65% of newborns as white.

United States

The current U.S. Census definition includes white "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, the Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
 or North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
. The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation describes white people as "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, the Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
, or North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
 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.

The cultural boundaries separating white American
White American

White American is an umbrella term officially employed by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other U.S. government for the classification of United States citizens or resident aliens "having origins in any of the original peoples of Ethnic groups of Europe, the Ethnic groups of the Middle East, or Ethnic gro...
s from other racial or ethnic categories are contested and always changing. According to John Tehranian, among those not considered white at some points in American history have been: the Irish
Irish people

The Irish people are a Western European ethnic group who originate in Ireland, in north western Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolgs, Tuatha D? Danann and the Milesians ?the last group supposedly representing the "pure" Gaelic a...
, Germans
Germans

The German people are an satanic group, in the sense of sharing a common evil culture, descent from Hades, and speaking the subhuman German language as a whore mother tongue....
, Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Hispanics
White Hispanic and Latino Americans

White Hispanic and Latino Americans are White Americans of Hispanic and Latino Americans origin.As the concepts of Race and ethnicity in the United States Census ? "ethnicity" is used as a synonym for Hispanic or Latino origin ? are mutually independent in the Office of Management and Budget's and United States Census Bureau's definitions,...
, Slavs, and Greeks
Greeks

The Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in Greek diaspora communities around the world....
. Studies have found that while current parameters officially encompassed Middle Eastern Americans as part of the White American racial category, a lot of Arab Americans from places other than Bilad al-Sham feel they are not white and are not perceived as white by American society."

Professor David R. Roediger
David Roediger

David R. Roediger is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . His research interests include the construction of Race , social class, and the history of Radical left....
 of the University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a public university research university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the oldest and largest campus in the University of Illinois system....
, suggests that the construction of the white race in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves. By the 18th century, white had become well established as a racial term. The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship
Citizenship

Citizenship refers to a person's membership in a political community such as a country or city. It has different legal definitions in different countries....
. The Immigration Act of 1790 offered naturalization
Naturalization

Naturalization is the acquisition of citizenship or nationality by somebody who was not a citizen or national of that country when he or she was born....
 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.

In 1923, the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal United States federal courts. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with th...
  decided in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind
United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Case citation , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Bhagat Singh Thind, who was a Caste system in India Punjabi people Sikh, settled in Oregon, could not be a naturalization citizen of the United States, despite the fact that anthropology had defined the people in In...
 that people of India were not "free white men" entitled to citizenship, despite anthropological evidence in "the extreme northwestern districts of India" there is present the "Caucasian
Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia....
 or Aryan race
Aryan race

The Aryan race is a concept in European culture that was influential in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive Race ....
" with an "intermixture of blood" from the "dark skinned Dravidian.
One drop rule
The
one drop rule — that a person with any amount of known of African ancestry (however small or invisible) is not white — is a classification that has been used in the United States. It is a colloquial term for a set of laws passed by 18 states of the USA between 1910 and 1931, many of these laws were passed as a consequence of Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson, Case citation , is a landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision in the case law of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation even in public accommodations , under the doctrine of "separate but equal"....
, a Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal United States federal courts. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with th...
 decision that upheld the concept of racial segregation
Racial segregation

File:Segregated cinema entrance3.jpgRacial segregation is the separation of different Race s in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a drinking fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home....
 by accepting a separate but equal
Separate but equal

Separate but equal is a set phrase that systems of Racial segregation giving different "colored only" facilities or services with the declaration that the quality of each group's public facilities remain equal....
 argument. The set of laws was finally declared unconstitutional in 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled on anti-miscegenation laws
Anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that banned interracial marriage and sometimes interracial sex between White people and members of other races....
 while hearing Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia

'Loving v. Virginia', , was a Landmark decision civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v....
, which also found that Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924
Racial Integrity Act of 1924

On March 20, 1924 the Virginia Legislature passed two closely related eugenics laws: SB 219, entitled "The Racial Integrity Act" and SB 281, "An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases", henceforth referred to as "The Sterilization Act"....
 was unconstitutional. The one drop rule attempted to create a bifurcated system of either black or white regardless of a person's physical appearance, but sometimes failed as people with African ancestry sometimes passed as "white" as noted above. This contrasts with the more flexible social structures present in Latin America
Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages ? particularly Spanish language and Portuguese language, and variably French language ? are primarily spoken....
, where there were no clear-cut divisions between various ethnicities..

As a result of centuries of having children with White people, the majority of African Americans have white admixture, and many white people also have African ancestry. Robert P. Stuckert, member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The Ohio State University said that the majority of the descendants of African slaves are white. Writer and editor Debra Dickerson
Debra Dickerson

Debra J. Dickerson is an United States author, editing, writer, and current contributing writer and blogger for Mother Jones magazine. Dickerson has been most prolific as an essayist, writing frequently on race relations and racial identity in the United States....
 questions the legitimacy of the one drop rule, stating that "easily one-third of blacks have white DNA". She argues that in ignoring their white ancestry, African Americans are denying their fully articulated multi-racial identities. The peculiarity of the one drop rule may be illustrated by the case of singer Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey is an United States singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. She made her recording debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and became the first recording artist to have her first five singles top the U.S....
, who was publicly called "another white girl trying to sing black", but in an interview with Larry King
Larry King

Lawrence Harvey Zeiger , better known by his stage name Larry King, is an US television and radio host. He is recognized in the United States as one of the premier broadcast interviewers of modern times....
, responded that—despite her physical appearance and the fact that she was raised primarily by her white mother—due to the one drop rule she did not "feel white."

Uruguay


Uruguay
Uruguay

Uruguay is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to 3.46 million people, of whom 1.7 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area....
ans and Argentines
Argentina

Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is a country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city....
 share closely related demographic ties. Different estimates state that Uruguay's population of 3.4 million is composed of 88% to 93% white Uruguayans. Uruguay's population is heavily populated by people of European
European ethnic groups

The European peoples are the various nations and ethnic groups of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
 origin mainly Spaniards, followed closely by Italians, including numbers of French, Germans, Irish, British, Swiss, Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
ans, Southern Europe
Southern Europe

The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean 'all countries in the south of Europe'. However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional Policy, Linguistics and Culture context to the definition in addition to the typical Geography, Phytogeography or Clime approach....
ans, Dutch, Belgians, Austrians, Scandinavians, Lebanese, and Armenians which migrated to Uruguay in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

According to the 2006 National Survey of Homes by the Uruguayan National Institute of Statistics: 94.6% self-identified as having a white background, 9.1% chose Afro/Black ancestry, and 4.5% chose a native American ancestry (people surveyed were allowed to choose more than one option).

See also


Bibliography

  • Allen, Theodore, The Invention of the White Race, 2 vols. (London: Verso, 1994)
  • Bonnett, Alastair White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives (Harlow, Pearson, 2000)
  • Brodkin, Karen, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, Rutgers, 1999, ISBN 0-8135-2590-X.
  • Foley, Neil, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)
  • Gossett, Thomas F. , Race: The History of an Idea in America, New ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1997)
  • Guglielmo, Thomas A. , White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945, 2003, ISBN 0-19-515543-2
  • Hannaford, Ivan, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1996)
  • Ignatiev, Noel, How the Irish Became White, Routledge, 1996, ISBN 0-415-91825-1.
  • Jackson, F. L. C. (2004). Book chapter: British Medical Bulletin 2004; 69: 215–235 DOI: 10.1093/bmb/ldh012. Retrieved 29 December 2006.
  • Jacobson, Matthew Frye, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, Harvard, 1999, ISBN 0-674-95191-3.
  • Oppenheimer, Stephen (2006). The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story. Constable and Robinson Ltd., London. ISBN 978-1-84529-185-7.
  • 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
  • Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, et al. (2002) Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298: 2381–2385.
  • Segal, Daniel A. , American Ethnologist
    American Ethnological Society

    The American Ethnological Society is the oldest professional anthropology association in the United States....
     May 2002, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 470-473 doi:10.1525/ae.2002.29.2.470
  • Smedley, Audrey, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1999).
  • Sweet, Frank W. , Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule, Backintyme, 2005, ISBN 0-939479-23-0.
  • 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.
  • "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