What is White?

[Captdon]

Nope, it is not sociological. It is geographical.

Many Asians are whiter than Europeans but they are still Asians.
There are dark skinned Asians that are darker than some Africans.

Race is determined by which region your ancestors came from. That is generally assumed by skin color.

You can use DNA to see what regions your ancestors came from but DNA tests are not used in society when talking about race, unless you claim to be Cherokee/Native American to get ahead in life and then get called on it.

My wife $#@!es about all the "Cherokees" there are. She has the documents to prove hers but she says very little about it. For the most part, she just $#@!es about it to me. She has never seen it make a bit of difference in her life.

[Chris]

There has always been some genetic and cultural crossovers. Just calling people White would have been an insult in European cultures.

And yes, the great melting pot that was once America has devolved into race identity politics with all Whites dumped into a singular category of privileged oppressors.

...A little more than a century ago, in his essay The Souls of White Folk, the sociologist and social critic WEB Du Bois proposed what still ranks as one of the most penetrating and durable insights about the racial identity we call white: “The discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing – a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed.”

...If you asked an Englishman in the early part of the 17th century what colour skin he had, he might very well have called it white. But the whiteness of his skin would have suggested no more suitable basis for a collective identity than the roundness of his nose or the baldness of his head. If you asked him to situate himself within the rapidly expanding borders of the known world, he would probably identify himself, first and most naturally, as an Englishman. If that category proved too narrow – if, say, he needed to describe what it was he had in common with the French and the Dutch that he did not share with Ottomans or Africans – he would almost certainly call himself a Christian instead....

The invention of whiteness

[Dr. Who]

If you ever read papers or articles on the origins of any group of people on the planet, you will see the word haplotype used repeatedly. Read enough of these papers and you will know, without a doubt, there is no such thing as race. Every human being is a combination of groupings of alleles passed on over thousands upon thousands of years and they all indicate great migrations of people from one part of the world to another, no doubt for reasons of food shortage, environmental conditions or wars. The fact that people were often locked into regions of the planet during mini ice ages, accounts for the superficial appearance of race (phenotypes), but it is no different than what happens when we breed livestock or any other animal for specific physical characteristics - if you have a static population, they will eventually start to look like one another.

The real differences between the peoples of this planet are cultural. Even among Europeans, the only real similarity between northern Europeans and southern Europeans from the Mediterranean is Christianity, otherwise, people from the Mediterranean, whether from the European continent or not, are actually more culturally similar to one another. They are also more genetically similar. The people of Great Britain or the UK are really not culturally similar to northern Europeans, despite their genetic origins, due to thousands of years of isolation.

However, the only thing that maintains culture is isolation, so as the world shrinks due to technology and travel, cultures are changing, homogenizing. They are now celebrating Halloween i.e. Trick or Treat in Europe, something they picked up from N. America. American fast food restaurants are found all over the world. So is pizza. Music is another area of cultural fusion as are movies, videogames, comic books...

[Mister D]

The invention of whiteness

After the early part of the 17th Century, Englishmen began to have contact with non-Europeans. It was precisely then that the world began to rapidly expand for Englishmen and it was precisely then that the category of Whiteness began to emerge among Englishmen. Coincidence?

In any case, the Spanish settlers of New Spain and Peru were thinking in racial categories at least as early as the 16th Century but the term mestizo ("mixed") dates from the 13th Century. Mulatto dates from the late 16th as far as I can tell.

[Mister D]

There has always been some genetic and cultural crossovers. Just calling people White would have been an insult in European cultures.

And yes, the great melting pot that was once America has devolved into race identity politics with all Whites dumped into a singular category of privileged oppressors.

It wouldn't have been so much an insult as a meaningless identity in a white world.

[Ethereal]

It doesn't mean anything to me.

[carolina73]

My wife $#@!es about all the "Cherokees" there are. She has the documents to prove hers but she says very little about it. For the most part, she just $#@!es about it to me. She has never seen it make a bit of difference in her life.

That's usually how it works. Those that want a privilege by making a claim are usually not the real thing.

[donttread]

@Chris

Race is not a biological classification, but rather a sociological one, which I think then leaves it open to some level of interpretation. Some of the most widely used race classifications list only 4-5 races worldwide, so "white" would cover a lot of groups of people - Europeans, Hispanics, Arabs, Jews, etc. That said, proposed to people around the world, I don't know that this many people would consider themselves to be white. It's a good question, and one that I can't say I truly know the answer to.

I think we seem to define race by outward color. The Russel Wilson's, Kap's, MaHommes of the world are considered black men. But they are really blends. I would note that at least IMO, mulatto women have a special kind of beauty .
Maybe the carmel blending will eventually end the race tension.
But humans will find something to hate one another over, count on that.

[Cotton1]

I don't think it's ever been defined that way. There have been 4-5 defined races for some time.

There are only two races. White/Black

I dont see an ALM movement (Asian Lives Matter)

It is blacks who have seperated from whites as opposed to the political sword of stating otherwise

[Cletus]

I don't think it's ever been defined that way. There have been 4-5 defined races for some time.

For a long time, Anthropologists used 3 racial classifications... Caucasoid, $#@!id, and Mongoloid.