White American
The term "White American" refers to individuals in the United States who identify as White, typically encompassing those of European, North African, or Middle Eastern descent. This demographic has historically played a significant role in shaping U.S. culture and institutions, often linked with notions of racial and ethnic supremacy. The concept of a "White race" emerged in the context of cultural dominance and discrimination, particularly against Indigenous and African American populations, and has been tied to various historical injustices, such as slavery and the implementation of Jim Crow laws.
In contemporary society, White Americans are recognized as a demographic group that is increasingly facing challenges to their previous majority status. Factors such as immigration trends and changing birth rates among different racial groups suggest that White Americans may transition to a minority status in the near future. The legacy of White American supremacy and discrimination has spurred movements for civil rights and equality, as many racial minorities continue to advocate for equal opportunities. Researchers study socio-economic disparities to promote understanding and address issues such as institutional racism, healthcare access, and education. The evolving identity of White Americans in the 21st century reflects a complex interplay of historical legacies and contemporary social dynamics.
White American
The term White American refers to Americans who identify as White, usually individuals of European, North African, or Middle Eastern descent. These individuals are sometimes called Caucasians, though this term is considered outdated and no longer used in academia.
Caucasian is repeatedly and mistakenly used synonymously with "White," but each has a distinctive meaning. Caucasian describes a biological type as anthropologists delineate people from Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Western, South, and Central Asia. Definitions of White people are fluid and facile, subject to change over the course of history.
Brief History
Slave traders, slave owners, politicians, and entrepreneurs developed the term White race as they wanted to fictionalize cultural dominance and the genocide of Indigenous Americans and African Americans. This thinking underpinned the Nazi Aryan White Master Race propaganda used to justify the Holocaust in the early 1930s.
The adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment of the US Constitution in 1865 and President Abraham Lincoln’s earlier Executive Order officially abolished American slavery. Though President Lincoln supported ending slavery, he did not fully support equality and maintained a society of racial segregation based on the notions of White racial and ethnic supremacy and scientific, religious, and moral inferiority of racial minorities. Following the Civil War, White Americans launched more than a century-long campaign to elevate and ensconce White Americans in positions of power. This was done through violence and discriminatory law enforcement at the expense of minorities.
Taxes were spent to support neighborhood infrastructure, education, business development, and political gain only in White areas to benefit White people. Pseudoscientific research and philosophical inquiries were supported to prove and justify White American superiority.
Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, White Americans in the South passed Jim Crow laws at the state and local levels, which remained in force until the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. Any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South became known as the Jim Crow laws. The term "Jim Crow" refers to a minstrel routine and came to be a derogatory epithet for African Americans as well as a designation for their segregated life.
White American supremacy became an ever-more exclusive club. Jewish Americans who were largely of European descent were an oppressed minority and not considered White Americans, which was dramatized in the film Gentleman’s Agreement (1947).
Waves of immigration into the United States from the late 1800s through the 1900s found White Americans benefiting from the labor and wealth generated by immigrants while excluding Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Jews, Irish Americans, Catholics, and other European immigrants from access to White society. Considered “caucasian” but not White American, these minorities were discriminated against, snubbed, and oppressed as second-class citizens by White Americans. This status quo was transformed as non-White Americans learned to maneuver and exploit the opportunities America provided.
White American Today
In one generation, newcomers achieved access to American institutions like public education, small business entrepreneurship, and careers in the clergy, criminal enterprises, the police, and armed forces, integrating fairly well into American society. They chipped away at the institutions supporting White America that represented superiority and stranglehold by the White American.
African Americans and other racial minorities carried on the fight against White American rule much longer. The Civil Rights movement, beginning in the 1950s, was designed to ensure equal opportunities for racial minorities.
In many ways, World Wars I and II were great equalizers. Soldiers fighting shoulder-to-shoulder protecting one another seldom had time to think of themselves as White Americans or others, but as brothers under fire. Meanwhile, Americans on the home front filled jobs in essential industries, pulling together as one nation to win the wars.
Following the Great Wars, there was plenty of prosperity for all to share, shattering the barriers to White America. Concomitantly, interfaith and interracial marriage proliferated and propagated, making the Norman Rockwell family anachronistic. All these experiences and movements accelerated by the time of the Vietnam War beginning in the 1960s and lasting a decade, coinciding with the generation of hippies, free love, flower power, and the Woodstock generation. The White American was on the road to extinction.
White American is a term still used in the twenty-first century by demographers and sociologists to expose and explain potholes in the system. For instance, the Census Bureau asks respondents if they are White, Black or African American, European American, Alaskan Native or American Indian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Asian, and other. Analysis of race status evolved from thinking of non-White U.S. culture as divergent into a means of ensuring equal opportunities and affirmative actions that will guarantee practical equal access, equal opportunities, and nondiscriminatory laws and rules.
Studies to close the disparities are undertaken in access to mental health treatment for African Americans compared to White Americans and in education and medical-care settings toward learning about the racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity of minorities. Medical researchers examine White American women seeking compelling evidence about differences in biology and behavior affecting breast cancer. Studies of White American versus Black American discrimination shed light on claimants’ political views and hope of eliminating prejudice and institutional racism.
While White Americans have historically been the majority in the U.S. population, White people began having fewer children than individuals of other races in the twenty-first century. Minority groups continue having children and non-White immigration outpaces White immigration. According to some experts, White Americans will become a minority sometime in the twenty-first century.
Bibliography
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Murray, Charles. "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010." Rep. ed., Crown Forum, 2013.
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Yancy, George, and Joe Feagin. "American Racism in the 'White Frame'." New York Times, 27 July 2015, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/american-racism-in-the-white-frame. Accessed 10 Dec. 2024.