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The term "white people" (also "whites" or "white race") has been defined as "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" and "to a human group having light-colored skin, especially of European ancestry."

The term white people functions as a color terminology for race; one that emerged from a racialized, European historical context.


History of the term

The definition of white people has varied in different time periods and locations. Any definition has implications for areas as diverse as national identity, consanguinity, public policy, religion, population statistics, racial segregation, affirmative action, eugenics, racial marginalization and racial quotas. The term has been applied with varying degrees of formality and consistency in many disciplines. Such disciplines include sociology, political science, genetics, biology, medicine, biomedicine, human languages, cultural analysis, and legal analysis.

Ancient Greece and Rome used the term white as one description of skin color. Its light appearance was distinguished, for example, in a comparison of white-skinned Persian soldiers from the sun-tanned skin of Greek troops in Xenophon's Agesilaus. One early use of the term appears in the Amherst Papyri, which were scrolls written in ancient Ptolemaic Greek. It contained the use of black and white in reference to human skin color. In an analysis of the rise of the term, classicist James Dee found that, "the Greeks and Romans do not describe themselves as "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. Although differences in skin color between southern Europeans and Moors were nearly nonexistent and on occasion, religious conversion was described figuratively as a change in skin color.

The term white race or white people entered dictionaries of the major European languages in the 1600s. Winthrop Jordan, author of Black Over White, argues that race emerged with the inherited status of slavery. He says the shift from Christian, free, and English to white happened in approximately 1680. Theodore W. Allen notes in The Invention of the White Race that white identity emerged in the colonies with slavery, and says that "seventeenth-century commentator, Morgan Godwyn, found it necessary to explain to the English at home that, in Barbados, 'white' was 'the general name for Europeans." White quickly became a legal category, encoded in a variety of laws and conferring different status. Immanuel Kant used the term "white" as a racial group in "About The Different Races of Men" - 1775.

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

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

Physical appearance

Although there is no single universal definition of whiteness, some traits that are associated with Europeans are associated with whites. The most notable trait describing people who identify as white is light skin. Many people from East Asia have light skin comparable with Europeans, however in normal discourse they are not referred to as white. Hence to distinguish whites from East Asians other facial features are considered in particular eye shape. People who are white lack epicanthic folds. Other physical features sometimes associated with white people include a variety of hair and eye colors.


Light Skin

Further information: Human skin color and SLC24A5

White people are archetypically distinguished by lighter skin, and in general, Europeans have lighter skin (as measured by population average skin reflectance read by spectrophotometer) than other ethnic groups. While all mean values of skin reflectance of non-European populations are lower than Europeans, some European and non-European populations overlap in lightness of skin, as noted by the Supreme Court of the United States, which stated in a 1923 lawsuit over whiteness that the "swarthy brunette ... are darker than some of the lighter hued persons of the brown or yellow races" .

Humans have pigment cells, which contain pigment granules called melanosomes. In people of European descent, the melanosomes are fewer, smaller, and lighter than those from people of African ancestry, while the melanosomes of East Asians show intermediate properties.

Origins of light skin

Light skin is not unique to human populations, in fact it is the default state of most mammals. However many animals 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, scientist believe that the common ancestor humans share with the chimpanzee would have been the same. As human evolution progressed, dark skinned hominids may have been sexually attractive. This is because dark skin would have enabled the hominids to have less body hair and still be protected from the sun. Less body hair would have also been desirable since it reduces the nuisance of body lice. Consequently the evolution of dark skin may have been a necessary prerequisite for for the loss of body hair. As evidence of this the scholars cite the MC1R gene which is one of a number of genes associated with skin color.

In African populations the gene is constrained with almost no variation indicating that it was under strong selection. The version of the gene in Chimpanzees and Europeans is more polymorphic. Since hominids would have been barely clothed or naked, any mutation that produced lighter skin color would have been a severe disadvantage to the hominids living under the hot African sun. When humans left Africa 50,000 years ago for less sun intensive regions of the world, this gene would have been free to vary, contributing to lighter skin colors of many non-African populations.

Another study in 2006 study, lighter pigmentation observed in Europeans and East Asians is at least partially due to independent genetic mutations in at least three loci. They concluded that light pigmentation in Europeans is at least partially due to the effects of positive directional and/or sexual selection. According to the study, the results also suggest that Europeans and East Asians have evolved light skin independently and via distinct genetic mechanisms. One gene that has been identified is SLC24A5. Africans and Asians have one version of the gene whereas Europeans have a version that differs by one base pair. Mixed race individuals of Afro-European descent with this version of gene had skin color that was 25-38% lighter than mixed race individuals without the gene based on the melanin index. The light-skin-causing mutation at the gene SLC24A5 explains between 25 and 38% of the European-African difference in skin melanin index.

Some scholars suggest Europeans may have retained their dark skin until as early as 13,000 years ago. This is based on Magdelanian cave art in which the painters depict hunters as darker than the animals hunted. Other circumstantial evidence is that fossils of early Europeans show adaptations to hot tropical environments. The Cro-Magnon skeletal remains have long limbs, narrow bodies, and short trunks like the Nilotic populations such as the Maasai. Modern Europeans have evolved shorter limbs, longer trunks and wider bodies, adaptations for cold weather.

Hair Color

Light hair distribution map
of indigenous populations according to
anthropologist
Peter Frost


1-19%
light color hair no light color hair 20-49%
light color hair 50-79%
light colored
hair 80%+
light
colored hair Main article: Hair color

Although there is considerable variety in the hair color of whites, most white people have brown hair or dark hair. This hair color is similar to other peoples of the world such as Africans, Asians and Native Americans .

Blonde

Main article: Blonde

Many Europeans have lighter hair colors most notably Blonde hair. Though not very common outside Europe, lighter hair colors are not unique to Europeans. Blond hair is notable among the dark skinned populations of Melanesia, the Indegenous populations of Australia. Furthermore often as people of all races age, some hair strands become depigmented, producing gray hair. From a taxonomic perspective, lighter hair colors cannot be used as a distinguishing characteristic of white people.

Red Hair

Main article: Red hair

Red hair (also referred to as auburn, ginger, or titian) is a hair color that varies from a deep red through to bright copper. It is characterized by high levels of the reddish pigment pheomelanin and relatively low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin. People with red hair are often referred to as redheads. Red hair is generally associated with Europeans, however similar hair colors are found amongst the populations of Oceania and Black Jamaicans.

Eye Color

Main article: Eye color

People of European descent generally have lighter eyes and a diversity of eye color; however, most Europenas have brown eyes consistent with other populations. Between 60 and 70% of the Norwegian population have blue eyes.

Social and physical perceptions of white

Main article: Whiteness studies See also: Caucasian race, Race, Social interpretations of race, and Race (historical definitions)

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

Australia

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

Brazil

Main article: White Brazilian

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

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

Canada

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

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

Norway

According to the Norwegian Social Science Data Service, white is a possible answer to ethnic/people group category question. After Norwegians, Sami, Kvens and other Nordics, it is mentioned as White/European.

United Kingdom

In the UK, the Office for National Statistics uses the term White as an ethnic category. The terms White British, White Irish and White Other are used. White British includes Welsh, English and Scottish peoples, as well as residents of Northern Ireland who identify as British. The category White Other includes all white people not from the British Isles. In the UK white usually refers only to people of native British and European origin.

United States

Main article: White American

The U.S. Census currently defines "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation also categorizes "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce.

The cultural boundaries separating White Americans from other racial or ethnic categories are contested and always changing. Among those not considered White at some time in American history have been the Irish, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Slavs, Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples.

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

Gallery

The following people represent diverse examples of the term: "White People" as described in this article.

See also

Footnotes

  1. White, from Merriam-Webster online.
  2. White, from the Compact Oxford English Dictionary.
  3. "Referring to races by colors, such as White, Black, and Brown, tends to obscure the fact that skin color and race are not the same." Frank F. Montalvo, "Surviving Race: Skin Color and the Socialization and Acculturation of Latinas," Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 13:3, 2004.
  4. For extensive discussion on skin color as a metaphor for race (and not just in encounter with Japan), see Rotem Kowner, "Skin as a Metaphor: Early European Racial Views on Japan, 1548–1853," Ethnohistory 51.4 (2004) 751-778. See also, Christine Ward Gailey Politics, Colonialism and the Mutable Color of South Pacific Peoples," Transforming Anthropology 5.1&2 (1994). On historical antecedents during the European medieval period, see James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 162ff.
  5. ^ Gregory Jay, , 1998. Cite error: The named reference "GJay" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  6. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 162.
  7. Alan Cameron, Black and White: A Note on Ancient Nicknames, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 119, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 113-117
  8. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 163.
  9. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 164.
  10. James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White,'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), p. 164.
  11. Winthrop D. Jordan, The White Man's Burden, (condensed version of Black Over White), 1974, p. 52.
  12. James Allen (1994). The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control. Verso. ISBN 086091660X.
  13. Jablonski NG, Chaplin G. 2000. The evolution of skin coloration, p. 19.
  14. American Anthropological Association, "The Human Spectrum", Race: Are we so different? website.
  15. John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), p. 827.
  16. Fish gene sheds light on human skin color variation
  17. Why humans and their fur parted ways
  18. Heather L. Norton, Rick A. Kittles, Esteban Parra, Paul McKeigue, Xianyun Mao, Keith Cheng, Victor A. Canfield, Daniel G. Bradley, Brian McEvoy and Mark D. Shriver (December 11, 2006) Genetic Evidence for the Convergent Evolution of Light Skin in Europeans and East Asians Oxford Journals
  19. Lamason RL, Mohideen MA, Mest JR, Wong AC, Norton HL, Aros MC, Jurynec MJ, Mao X, Humphreville VR, Humbert JE, Sinha S, Moore JL, Jagadeeswaran P, Zhao W, Ning G, Makalowska I, McKeigue PM, O'donnell D, Kittles R, Parra EJ, Mangini NJ, Grunwald DJ, Shriver MD, Canfield VA, Cheng KC (2005). "SLC24A5, a putative cation exchanger, affects pigmentation in zebrafish and humans". Science. 310 (5755): 1782–6. PMID 16357253.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin, Washington Post
  21. Paleo etiology of skin tone
  22. Climate can sculpt bodies too
  23. Phenotypic Expression of Melanocortin-1 Receptor Mutations in Black Jamaicans
  24. Frudakis T, Thomas M, Gaskin Z, Venkateswarlu K, Chandra KS, Ginjupalli S, Gunturi S, Natrajan S, Ponnuswamy VK, Ponnuswamy KN. Sequences associated with human iris pigmentation." Genetics. 2003 Dec;165(4):2071-83. PMID 14704187.
  25. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-225478/Norway
  26. Adams, J.Q. (2001). Dealing with Diversity. Chicago, IL: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. 0-7872-8145-X. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  27. Immigration Restriction Act 1901
  28. Stephen Castles, "The Australian Model of Immigration and Multiculturalism: Is It Applicable to Europe?," International Migration Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, Special Issue: The New Europe and International Migration. (Summer, 1992), pp. 549-567.
  29. Gregory Rodriguez, "Brazil Separates Into Black and White," LA Times, September 3, 2006. Note that the figures belie the title.
  30. "Groups" in Statistics Canada, Sample 20001 Census form. Statistics Canada, 2001 Census Visible Minority and Population Group User Guide
  31. Human Resources and Social Development Canada,
  32. Census 2001: 2B (Long Form)
  33. http://www.nsd.uib.no/data/ny_individ/norStudy/norVariable.cfm?norVarID=7989
  34. Identity, Ethnicity and Identity, National Statistics online. Retrieved 03 November 2006.
  35. Census 2001 - Ethnicity and religion in England and Wales, Ethnicity and religion. Retrieved 03 November 2001.
  36. Kissoon, Priya. King's College of London. Asylum Seekers: National Problem or National Solution. 2005. November 7, 2006.
  37. http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-4.pdf The White Population: 2000]}}, Census 2000 Brief C2KBR/01-4, U.S. Census Bureau, August 2001.
  38. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/handbook/ucrhandbook04.pdf Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook]}}, U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. P. 97 (2004)
  39. John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), pp. 825-827.
  40. Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 186; Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York, 1998).
  41. John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), pp. 817-848.

Bibliography

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  • Oppenheimer, Stephen (2006). The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story. Constable and Robinson Ltd., London. ISBN 978-1-84529-185-7.
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  • Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, Harvard, 1999, ISBN 0-674-95191-3.
  • Frank W. Sweet, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule, Backintyme, 2005, ISBN 0-939479-23-0.
  • Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, Routledge, 1996, ISBN 0-415-91825-1.
  • Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, Rutgers, 1999, ISBN 0-8135-2590-X.
  • Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)
  • Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, 2 vols. (London: Verso, 1994)
  • Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America, New ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1997)
  • Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1996)
  • Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1999).
  • "The United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept" A textbook/workbook for thought, speech and/or action for victims of racism (White supremacy) Neely Fuller Jr. 1984
  • Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, et al. (2002) Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298: 2381–2385.Abstract
  • Rosenberg NA, Mahajan S, Ramachandran S, Zhao C, Pritchard JK, et al. (2005) Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure. PLoS Genet 1(6): e70 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070
  • Tang, Hua., Tom Quertermous, Beatriz Rodriguez, Sharon L. R. Kardia, Xiaofeng Zhu, Andrew Brown,7 James S. Pankow,8 Michael A. Province,9 Steven C. Hunt, Eric Boerwinkle, Nicholas J. Schork, and Neil J. Risch (2005) Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275.
  • Daniel A. Segal, review of Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit American Ethnologist May 2002, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 470-473 doi:10.1525/ae.2002.29.2.470

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