Who is "white" in America? (long and somewhat rambling)

Since “race” comes up here a lot, here is something I have been debating with friends and relatives for years.
We have largely established “race” has no scientific use - at least in the sense that all people belong to distinct and discrete races.
Having said that, one would have to live in a cave to deny that the idea of being “white” or “black” or whatever else is very important in America. But just exactly who is white?
According to old texts on anthropology, “Caucasians” basically consist of all the indigenous peoples of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia. Some even extend the boundary into the Indian subcontinent.
But I don’t think most Americans would call an Egyptian or an Iranian “white” - even if he or she is as light-skinned as Omar Sharif.
So I suppose “white” is synonymous with of “European” origin. But isn’t Europe a rather artificial construction, since the boundary between Europe and Asia has absolutely no physical basis. Was the boundary based on some sort of “racial” criteria? And I know of Lebanese-American people who are considered white (like Ralph Nader), even though they are of Arabic origin.
Also I have heard many Americans say that Spaniards aren’t white. Yet Italians and Greeks, who are mostly indistinguishable from Spaniards, are almost always considered white in America. Is this confusion between “Spanish” and “Hispanic” or do Americans think people like Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz are not white? And I have known Mexican people who look very white -green eyes, natural blond hair, and consider themselves to be “white” yet in America it seems all Mexicans are “non-whites”.
My own family background is mostly Portuguese. I’ve been told that the Portuguese are counted as “white” and the Spaniards “Hispanic” by the government- to me that is like claiming that the Germans and Dutch belong to separate “racial” categories.
And not too long ago, someone even told me that I wasn’t really “white” if I was Portuguese. I know some Portuguese people, just as some French or British people, are descended from Africans or Asians who immigrated to Portugal. But many Portuguese people I know - while not exactly “Nordic” - have green or blue eyes, pale skin, and other features that, to me, make a person “white”. I think that if a person saw me and didn’t know my background -they would say I was “white” too.
Also I know some really fringe elements in America consider the Jews to all be “non-whites”. I also hear that at one time even the Irish were not considered really white. And to make it even more confusing, if a person is even remotely part black, they are often not considered white. But, especially in places like Oklahoma or North Carolina, many white people claim all sorts of fractions of Native American ancestry. And I even know guys who are half East Asian and are considered white. I think Keanu Reeves for instance is half Chinese, but is almost always cast as a white person.
All this makes me believe that “whiteness” has less to do with “race” or even a person’s appearance, and more to do with the perceived social status of a group. I hate to think this way, but should we basically define white as anyone who would be accepted into the Ku Klux Klan or some other white racist group? I suppose they would only count people who are “Germanic” as really white. Maybe it’s just a “gut feeling” that people have when they see someone.
I know I’ve asked about 20 questions. But I think people say “white” without giving much thought to how many loopholes and ambiguities there are in that term. And I think it would be interesting to hear from people who are “mixed” (really we are all mixed aren’t we?), or come from nationalities or groups that are sort of “on the fence”, or people from other countries where people have totally different ideas about “Race” to begin with.

It depends.

  • ::: d & r ::: *
    Actually, it does “depend.” It depends on your audience, in which context, and to make what point.

Having gone to school with several Lebanese and Chaldean 2d generation immigrants and having had at least one immigrant Egyptian doctor, I have generally always included everyone in the Mediterranean basin except the Moors as “white.” On the other hand, I was corrected on this MB by someone with North African ancestors that he was not white. (I would have said he was, but whether because he had been discriminated against based on appearance or whether he rejected “white” as meaning European, I don’t know. I also did not care: I will call people what they choose to be called if the issue has to come up, at all.)

A number of White Supremacist groups refuse to accept Italians as white (although I certainly don’t know what else you’d call Sofia Loren).

Basically, the terms were invented to separate people and establish a hierarchy of quality among people, so those terms will be defined in different ways depending on what hierarchy any given person wants to establish.

My typical definition of “white” is anyone who would not generally suffer discrimination in the U.S. based on appearance (fully understanding that there are many people who will either suffer discrimination or “pass” for white when their actual ancestry “should” put them into a different category).

That’s interesting…because there have been so many stories about “racial profiling” of Middle Eastern people lately.
Where I live there are a few Armenian and Lebanese-Americans. For the most part they are successful, often business owners or professionals. They are very well established on the most part. They would probably be considered “white” by most people. Yet when images of Middle Easterners become more negative - they are seen as non-white. Perhaps Christian Arabs, Armenians, or Chaldeans are seen as “white” and Muslims aren’t…which is ridiculous.
Also I’ve never heard of Italians being considered “non-white” by American society. Even though some Italian-Americans (John Turturro comes to mind) are pretty dark for for being “white” people.
And I am not exactly sure what a “Moor” is…I know they invaded Spain and Portugal - but they were a mixture of Arabs, Berbers, Jews, and so on.
Anyway it shouldn’t matter - but it does to so many people.

Not by American society as a whole, by a number of White Supremecists. The “Aryan” proponents sometimes distinguish between “white” Italians of Milan and the Po valley and “non-white” Southern Italians (which is why I picked Sofia Loren who comes from the South).

The Moors have long been considered “non-white” (e.g., Shakespeare’s Othello) and I excluded them from the general Mediterranean “white” groups simply by following convention. To me they are simply people (who may or may not face discrimination in the U.S. based on appearance).

You are entirely correct on this.

Hello TommnDebb.
Please identify which “White Supremacist” group identifies Italians as nonwhite.
Also you claim your definition of “white” in the U.S. are those who would not suffer (racial) discrimination based on appearance.
Are you trying to suggest that Whites alone can (racially) discriminate?
Are you trying to suggest that Whites have not suffered under government sanctioned racial discrimination?
Are you trying to suggest that Blacks and Hispanics cannot be racist?

Also, the Moors were Semitic people.No, that term doesnt just apply to Jewish people in the middle east. Arabs,Egyptians and other counries in the middle East are classified as Semitic.

Ah yes, a true Great Debate. Already we’re getting into every collateral debate on the social effects of race there is…
Anyway, before this gets really hot & heavy, allow me to throw this in: even the lightest person with “African” looking features, things like tightly curled hair in combination with skin at least a little tanned, etc., will be considered black by a majority of people both black and white. The only explanation that I could come up with that made any sense is that this serves as a social stigma: you come from the class of people who were once slaves.
If there’s any South African posters, let us know: I’ve heard tell that a person like I’ve described would be considered mixed-race in South Africa, as opposed to black. Is this true?

Infidel I don’t think Tom of tomndebb was saying “only” whites can be racist. I think he was saying that he define “white” by what isn’t discriminated against by other whites as being “non-white”. Maybe I am misreading what he said.

** Pantom ** I understand that in most of the rest of the world, people who are “light skinned” and mixed black and white are put in a separate category from darker “blacks” (West Indies, South Africa, Brazil, and so on).

OK everyone, all together now: “Race is a social and cultural construct”.

“Whiteness”, as the OP surmises, is indeed directly related to the “perceived social status of a group”. It is and has historically been a highly contingent category, changing with time and between regions, even within the boundaries of a nation like the United States.

There is a fascinating book by Neil Foley called The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, which looks at the Texas shatterbelt in the period 1890 to 1940. Foley examines the way in which the concept of “whiteness” helps to explain the shifting social and economic fortunes of blacks, Mexicans, and poor whites in Texas. By using a cultural construction of whiteness, agricultural landlords were able to “code” these groups in ways that served the interests of capital, and at the same time allowed agricultural employers to reconcile their racist beliefs with their desire for a cheap and docile labor force. Socialist and labor leaders also relied on the cultural concept of whiteness, using the language of white supremacy while also ridiculing poor whites for being less “manly” in defense of their rights than Mexicans. And the various ethnic/racial groups also internalized some of this critique, especially the poor whites themselves, who measured their cultural position by reference to their place on the agricultural ladder of success, their closeness to a yeoman farmer ideal. It is worth noting that Whiteness was not simply an imposed category, and nor was it deployed as consciously by these historical figures as it is by Foley.

The author also makes an interesting observation about the differing ideas of whiteness in different parts of the US. In much of the southern United States, both before and after the Civil War, whiteness was defined fairly simply as an absence of blackness. So, in Alabama or Georgia, a Mexican or Spanish person was often thought of as white simply by virtue of not being African-American. But in the more diverse regions of the south-west, including Texas, the definition of whiteness was not so clear-cut. The large numbers of Hispanics and their role in the economy changed the dynamics and led to a more multi-layered and fluid definition of whiteness.

tomndebb wrote:

and Infidel retorted:

Well, i don’t think that this is what tomndebb was implying at all. The issue here is that, as the dominant group, “whites” have traditionally been in the position to benefit most from discrimination in the United States. I’m not sure this is the place to start an argument over the merits of affirmative action (maybe you can start another thread, to which i would be happy to contribute?) The fact remains that the primacy that the human species gives to visual information has tended to mean that racial categorizing has often relied on obvious outward appearances.

The problem with this, of course, is that racial categorization is nowdays often defined by highly personal criteria. For example, if someone looks “white” but considers themselves “black”, we tend to accept that this sort of self-identification is a valid way to place yourself in American society. Similar issues arise with the native American population. The fact that race is a culturally constructed category with not much (actually, as far as i know, nothing) in the way of biological justification, means that this type of self-definition is as valid a category as any.

Issues of “blood” also crop up here. There was a time when anyone with any “black blood” was considered to be black (is this still a way of doing things? I’m not sure). But “black blood” is no different in its chemical makeup from “white blood”, and the term actually tends to refer to the extent to which someone can trace a “black” person in their genealogy.

With these caveats in mind, i think that tomndebb’s rule of thumb is as valid and as useful as any other, especially if we are trying to understand the way whiteness is constructed in the US. This in no way implies that “whites” are the only ones who discriminate, or that "blacks and “hispanics” cannot be racist. But these issues need to be examined in the context of existing societal conditions, and the fact remains that “whites” still hold most positions of power in the United States and, affirmative action notwithstanding, are still generally in a position to benefit from discrimination to a greater extent than other groups. Look at the city where i live as an example. Baltimore is predominantly “black”, yet the mayor, the police chief, the Maryland governor, and many other high office-holders in the city are “white”.

Infidel also asks for evidence that certain groups consider Italians “nonwhite”. I don’t know about the Aryan groups that tomndebb allude to, but i can give an historical example from my home country of Australia. In the period after WWII, Australia actively sought immigrants to help populate a fairly empty country and do the work that needed to be done in constructing roads, dams, etc. in the post-war period. I’m not sure if the term “nonwhite” was ever used to refer to Italians, but i do know that it was official government policy to give first priority to immigrants from northern and western Europe (the Baltic states, the UK), and that the “swarthy” men and women from the Mediterranean (especially Italians and Greeks) were seen as less desirable immigrants because it was felt that they would not fit as well into Australia’s existing racial and ethnic mix.

Even when i was in school in the 1980s, Italians and Greeks, as well as Lebanese and Turks, were still commonly abused and called “wogs” and “dagos” and “eyeties”. This lessened somewhat as Australia received increasing numbers of immigrants from Asia, and the Asians began to draw the bulk of the abuse; in fact, many Mediterranean Europeans would join in racial discrimination against Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants in order to prove their credentials as good “white” Australians. There are considerable historical parallels in the United States. (And i haven’t even gone into the issue of Australia’s horrendous treatment of its indigenous population).

One last anecdote that people might find amusing. Barbara Fields tells of an American journalist who

Now, Fields concedes that the story could well be apocryphal, but even if it is, it still demonstrates quite clearly the way in which we tend to view “whiteness” as the baseline category against which all others are judged. It can be a little offputting to have the tables turned, as they are in this story. The way of constructing race as described here is no less valid than the opposite way. Percentage of “white blood” and percentage of “black blood” are no different, biologically speaking.

Also, as scholar Margaret Ferguson points out, there are other conventions that we often are not aware of. For example, she says that:

Again, there is no more reason for saying that the dark-skinned baby of a white woman is “black” than there is for saying that the light-skinned baby of a black woman is “white”.

I’ve rambled on a bit here, and i probably haven’t answered too many questions. But i think that some of these examples might at least help people to sort the issue out a little more clearly in their own minds.

And by the way, i identify myself as “white” (English mother, Hungarian father, born in Canada, brought up in Australia), and i have tried not to attempt in this post to speak for “non-white” people. I make no claim to know how they feel nor how they define themselves as individuals.

I’m afraid that I do not have a complete catalog of White Supremacists and their beliefs. I have encountered such people, personally, and I can find a few examples of their literature on the web. Why would you doubt that ignorant, fearful people might believe odd things? Some literature:

Stormfront

History of the White Race - 37

I have suggested none of the above. None of your inferred suggestions seem to be relevant to the topic, so if you’d like to introduce them, you might try to lay out a specific statement of your own, rather than fishing for statements from me that you can later attack.

I am well aware of which groups are generally considered Semitic. While Arabs are Semitic, Berbers are generally identified as Hamitic.
In technical terms, I will point out that the Arab conquest of North Africa met fierce resistance by the Berbers. Eventually, the Berbers were converted to Islam, and joined the Arabs in carrying that faith westward to what is now Morocco and then North to the Iberian peninsula. When the Arab-Berber Islamic thrust overwhelmed the inhabitants of what is now Morocco, it swept up both the Berber inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast and the black inhabitants of the Atlantic coast. Under the Almoravid rule, the two groups of previously separated peoples tended to intermix. To call Moors (only) “Semitic” is to deny them the much richer heritage that they actually possess. I have already acknowledge that my reference to them was simply following older conventions (that date, in English, at least as far back as Shakespeare), so I’m not sure what your point is.

Actually, I did start out by saying “race” isn’t based on anything scientific, and I wanted to see some of the “constructions” examined a bit.

That Stormfront site is pretty goofy. It seems to be lifted largely from early 20th century racialist literature, with some updates to allow for recent events.
It blames the Yugoslav conflict on "race" by dispaying a photo of a swarthy looking "Albanian" - ready to assault white Christian Serb women. yet, I don't think anyone in Yugoslavia can identify whether one is a Serb, Croat, Bosnian Muslim, or Albanian by "race". Anyway, from a historian's point of view, most of it is laughable.

I read with some interest their article “the Black Man’s Gift to Portugal”. It states:

"What you can see in Portugal today is the product of uniform, non-selective mixing of the 10 percent Negroes and 90 percent Whites into one homogeneous whole. In effect, it is a new race - a race that has stagnated in apathy and produced virtually nothing in the last 400 years. "

The contribution of this new race to civilization in terms of literature, art, music, philosophy, science, etc. has been practically nothing. Portugal today is the most backwards (sic) country in Europe. The illiteracy rate is 38 percent (in the U.S., 2.2 percent, Japan, 1.0 percent). The infant mortality rate in Portugal is 59.2 per 1000 births (in Sweden, 12.9 percent, U.S., 20.7 percent, France, 20.4 percent). The workers wages are the lowest in Western Europe, the equivalent of a little more than $2.00 a day."
*(probably 30 year old info)

If Portugal was indeed poor and backward - compared to the rest of Western Europe, it was due to years of isolationism, a statist economy, autocratic misrule, an elistist and church dominated educational system, and colonialist policies, which lasted until the 1970’s. In other words, the Portuguese regime was often the worst of the left and the right combined. Since then Portugal has come a long way and is catching up to the rest of the west, as Spain and Italy have done. And I won’t bother with a list of Portuguese authors, composers, or other figures - let me just say that for a country of less than 10 million, it has done quite a bit in the last 400 years.

I don’t know if the Portuguese are 10% black or not, since I don’t believe any country in the world, except for perhaps China, had a reliable census in the 15th and 16th centuries - much less one with a checkbox for race. I think it’s just a number pulled out of thin air. I suppose the reasoning they used was “Portugal is poor, hence it must be due to race intermixture.” And its interesting that they use the same arguments today to describe troubled Slavic and Balkan states - Yugoslavia’s wars and Romania’s deep poverty must be due to miscegenation…not more complex political and economic factors that are hard to your typical skinhead to fathom.

Sorry, I get defensive about all things Lusitanian.

Ok…here’s the truth about Portugal from the *CIA Factbook *, which I’m sure they consider Zionist propaganda of some sort.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

Infant mortality rate: 5.94 deaths/1,000 live births (2001 est.)
Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 87.4%
GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $15,800 (2000 est.)

[sup]and how do “white supremacists” explain Japan’s affluence?[/sup]

Stormfront and melvig are two of the largest web sites espousing stupidity and hatred. Stormfront is more geared toward “racial purity” (with white folks being the best of the best), but any purity is better than any mixing. melvig is more of a “let’s hate Jews” site, with some “white” and “Christian” messages thrown in.

As you note, their claims are patently ridiculous, although it is scary how many people accept this drivel as fact.