John Buchan’s books (he of The 39 Steps) are filled with such statements; the highest compliment one character can pay to another is “You’re a white man!”. To modern ears this is a peculiar and rather nasty phrasing, but a hundred years ago in Britain being an upper-class white British man was considered the epitome of human existence.
That said, that the world has moved on enough to make these expressions obsolete is something to celebrate.
Coincidentally, “free, white, and 21” is used by a Chandler in The Little Sister. Mavis Weld, an actress says it.
[QUOTE=Mavis Weld to Phillip Marlowe]
I’m free, white, and twenty-one. I’ve seen all the approaches there are. I think I have. If I can’t scare you, lick you, or seduce you, what the hell can I buy you with?
[/QUOTE]
This. I’ve heard it used mostly when someone felt they were showing tolerance toward other races, but were really expressing their racism.
Person 1 - Even though that chick was Mexican, I still banged her.
Person 2 - Well :rolleyes: …that was mighty white of you.
It is astonishing to me how many adults don’t understand this.
Indeed:
[QUOTE=S. M. Stirling]
There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is “idiot”.
[/quote]
Mark Twain used the idea, if not the exact phrase, in “Roughing It”, which was autobiographical non-fiction (though probably not entirely factual either). That’s one of his earliest works and he displays racism fairly common for the time, in stark contrast to later works where he’s obviously abandoned the racism of his upbringing and peers. In context, his use of the phrase is obviously racial. It’s in his voice, speaking for himself as the narrator of his experiences out West in his early 20’s.
Shakespeare has one character say of Othello that he’s more fair than black. Same idea, definitely racial.
For the exhaustive treatment, Melville’s chapter in Moby Dick, “The Whiteness of the Whale” explains that our use of colors to signify moralality is based on convention and not embued in nature. That’s an easy lesson for people today (so much so that, reading it as a youth, I didn’t get what his point was: I figured there had to be something other than the obvious.) But not so for his generation, many of whom thought that the light and dark relation to good and evil was more like an act of God or force of nature. From that perspective, it’s almost meaningless to say whether a phrase like “white of you” is racist versus something else.
Shakespeare has both Othello, and the Prince of Morocco I mentioned from Merchant of Venice - black people are “just like real people”. Of course, in his day, the Moors were a civilization of comparative equality, that had only recently been driven out of Spain, that almost conquered all of Spain and some of France, and other middle eastern types were banging on the gates of Vienna from the east… The people of Shakespeare’s time just applied the general xenophobia of their time, rather than the New World perception of Africans as some sort of subhumans imported as property to do the jobs white people did not care to do. For Shakespeare, marrying a Moor seems no more horrible than their womenfolk marrying a slithey Frenchman or Spaniard.
Heck, even in The Merchant of Venice where Shylock is supposed to be the bad guy, he has a scene where he basically says “you mock me up and down the Rialto, one of you Christian boys steals my daughter and my money, then you come to me for a loan and you wonder why I hate you and want to get even?”
Fascinatingly progressive for its time.
There comes to mind an exchange in the final novel of the alternative-history series by Harry Turtledove which begins with the Confederacy wining the Civil War, and successfully seceding, in 1862. Fast-forward through eleven books to 1945, with the United States of America recently victorious over the Confederate States of America, after the umpteenth war between the two over eighty-some years. USA forces are occupying the entire Confederacy, whose late mad dictator has implemented and mostly completed a Nazi-type “Final Solution” vis-a-vis his country’s black population. The United States occupiers are hated by almost all white Confederates; the country’s few blacks left alive, are reckoned allies of the US.
Character A, in the US army of occupation, has a big favour done for him by his commanding officer. Character A expresses his heartfelt thanks, including saying, “That’s white of you”. "[He] listened to what came out of his mouth without thought. He shook his head. ‘There’s an expression we have to lose.’
‘Boy, you said it,’ " the commanding officer replies.
It’s always good to remember that the non-racist origins of an expression does not necessarily mean it’s acceptable today.
This is true. Some folks get in trouble for using “renege”. 
Of course, if “that was white of you” is ookey, one has to wonder why very, very few people bat an eye at black/white magic or black/white hat (for hackers and/or your favorite old western heroes).
ETA: That sounded snippier than I intended. It’s a legitimate question not a :dubious: gotcha.
Really? You notice that throughout the Harry Potter novels magic used for evil is called dark magic or the dark arts. There’s no doubt in my mind that 50 years ago, she’d have just called it black magic.
Yeah, but “black magic” is still common. Just off the top of my head there’s black/white mage from Final Fantasy. While black mages aren’t “evil”, black magic is destructive and white magic restorative. I’ve seen plenty of silly B movies with witches and stuff practicing black magic or having black spellbooks, dressing in black, and generally having black motifs.
I’ve also heard maybe one person in my entire life complain about it. I don’t think most people consider it an issue. I’d personally call it “dark magic”, but not for racial reasons, I just think “black magic” sounds silly.
Language is adaptable enough and our records are complete enough that I feel no compunction to ‘save’ words or phrases from archaism. If I don’t feel like doling out etymological lessons with my speech, then I simply use a different way to express my feelings.
Turtledove must have received a speeding ticket in Georgia at some point.
Fair enough.
The claim (with evidence) is not that any use of the word white is racist. It is that the particular phrase “that is (mighty) white of you” had racial origins. Looking at the actual citations, it is pretty clear that the phrase was not used to indicate that the color white had good associations, but that the person addressed was being compared favorably contrasted against a person who was not of Northwestern European stock. Note how often the companion phrase uses the expression “white man.” The phrase is not connected to “white soul” or “white heart” and it is generally contrasted against a person (depending on date and location) who would not be deemed “white.”
Those who are trying to argue for a non-racial/ethnic source, can you provide any similar use of white in a phrase? (Not a generic use of white as a favorable adjective, but a specific praise of a person as being white that did not have a racial context?)
Finished that book, now I’m reading Farewell My Lovely. Marlowe refers to people as Negroes, while the asshole cops call them “shines”. Don’t recall ever hearing that pejorative term.
I think I only heard or read it in Chandler.
Perhaps it is Californian.
My Father and another engineer from the Little Rock, AR NBC affiliate drove to California for videotape school in the late 60’s or early 70’s. A gas station attendant somewhere in Nevada or California chided them for the SOuthern treatment of African Americans, and concluded with, “But these G-d damn Mexicans!”
He’s kind-of fair, though: he has the South win the wars of 1861 - 2 and 1881 - 2. It’s only from his time-line’s equivalent of World War 1 (USA and CSA on opposite sides in same) that the balance shifts.