White people (racial classification)

White people is an invented racial classification that usually refers to people of European ancestry. Race itself is a political or social construction developed to advance the idea that people of some parts of the world—Europeans, for example—are superior to individuals from other regions—most often Africa and Asia. Race is distinct from ethnicity, which was an early way of distinguishing people from different parts of the world. Ethnicity refers to cultural practices, such as language and customs, typically emerging from a region. Ethnicity predates nationality, which is a legal status based on nothing more than political borders and often includes people of many ethnic backgrounds. Examples of ethnicity include Anglos and Saxons, who are associated with England; Basque, one of the ethnic groups associated with Spain; and Maōri, Indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand.

The classification of White people as a race has a long history, although the term White people dates only to the early seventeenth century. Some individuals have produced scholarship in their efforts to prove their ideas about race and the superiority of one race over another. Others have perverted the legitimate research of scientists such as Charles Darwin to support their beliefs. However, science does not support the notions of "White," nor any other racial classification. All humans share the same 99.9 percent of identical genes. In the United States, based on politics or social concerns, some groups now considered "White," such as Irish and Italians, were denied the rights and privileges afforded to other White people. Society and government simply refused them the classification that would confer the most benefits on them. While all humans are of a single race, in many societies, people have a racial identity. However, they may not be aware that others have assigned one or more identity to them; and the race with which they identify may not align with the racial identity others assign them.

Background

Race is believed to be a more modern idea. Scholars believe ancient Greeks and Romans discriminated against others based on ethnicity and cultural practices, but not because of the color of people’s skin. The Greek philosopher Aristotle espoused environmental determinism, or the notion that the climate and geography in which a people live permanently determined their qualities and potential, or lack thereof. He felt that the effects of the environment were cemented in people after just a few generations. For example, ancient Greeks and Romans believed that Egyptians and Ethiopians had darker skin and curly hair because earlier generations had been singed by the sun, and these physical characteristics became permanent. Aristotle wrote that people of colder climates, in particular European nations, were lacking in intelligence and skill, but had plenty of spirit. People of Asia, he believed, lacked spirit but were skilled and intelligent. Situated between the two, in what Aristotle and his culture believed was the ideal location, were the Greeks, who he reported were endowed with intelligence, skill, and spirit, qualities that allowed them to both ensure their own freedom and rule over other peoples. When the Romans came to power and established and expanded the Roman Empire, they adopted these ideas of superiority for themselves. Some researchers believe the social prejudices and stereotypes of the ancient world represent prototypes of racism, also called proto-racism, which are thought to be the roots of the racism evident in works of Western literature beginning around the sixteenth century.

The Roman Empire began to decline in the second century CE, just as Christianity began to grow in influence across Europe and much of the Western world. While Roman Catholicism was the dominant religious force for many centuries, the Protestant Reformation began to change the religious landscape in Europe in the sixteenth century. Christian leaders debated whether Africans and the Indigenous peoples of the New World had souls, and even questioned whether they were human. After the Catholic Church declared that Africans and Indigenous peoples did have souls, members of Catholic colonies were forbidden to kill enslaved people without just cause. Protestant denominations came to the same conclusion, and as more enslaved people were converted to Christianity, the issue of slavery began to divide Christians.

The nineteenth century was known as a time of scientific study and advancement, as well as increasing colonization in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific. In England, multiple ethnographic and anthropological societies were founded in the early 1800s. At that time, a number of European scholars were questioning the effects of races that encountered one another. Although the workings of bacteria, germs, and viruses were not understood, Europeans and Americans of European heritage noticed that when explorers visited some new lands, the Indigenous populations were often decimated, and sometimes even eradicated. Without an understanding of disease and infection, they did not understand that the mass number of deaths from disease in such lands was caused by the Indigenous people’s lack of immunity.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, included his theories about natural selection, which argues that the weak die and the strong survive and evolve. Many social scientists and philosophers took these well-researched ideas and used them to justify existing racism and even genocide. They believed that Indigenous peoples were dying and disappearing because they were weaker, and the laws of nature were at play. They did not see how Indigenous peoples were affected by the seizure of their lands, which took away their means of survival, nor recognize the impact diseases from Europe had on other populations when they were exposed to them.

Many self-proclaimed scholars developed classification systems based on stereotypes of cultural differences and characteristics. For example, in 1850, Frederick Farrar lectured on his division of races comprising three groups. While he classified European, Aryan, and Semitic peoples as “civilized,” he labeled Chinese people “semi-civilized” and called everyone else “savage.” Work such as this led to the early-twentieth-century ideology of eugenics, the idea that the human race can be improved through selective reproduction. Widespread support in the United States for the eugenics movement led to laws outlawing interracial marriage, many of which lasted until late in the twentieth century. Nazi Germany drew upon eugenics to explain and justify its own policies of discrimination and extermination. Notions of Whiteness and Blackness also heavily influenced England’s colonial expansion in Africa, Australia, India, New Zealand, and other parts of the world.

Overview

The first known reference to White people is found in the 1613 play The Triumphs of Truth by English playwright Thomas Middleton. The term is in a line uttered by an African king who remarks on the surprised expressions he sees on the faces of “these White people.” Theodore W. Allen, author of The Invention of the White Race (1994), reinforces this fact in his work when he notes that the first Africans reached the colony of Virginia in 1619, when colonial records did not record Europeans as White, only calling them English. When the colonists had children who were born in North America, these members of society were also known as English. A reference to colonists describing them as White first appears in a 1691 law, by which time it had become important to them to identify Europeans and their descendants as White.

The use of White regarding many people of European origin was further solidified in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the work of Friedrich Blumenbach. The German anthropologist divided the human species into five races, which he created based on physical characteristics—most notably the shape of the skull—and to which he attributed colors: the Mongolian, or "Yellow race;" the Native American, or "Red race;" the Malayan, or "Brown race;" the Ethiopian, or "Black race;" and the Caucasian, or "White race." He arrived at the latter by examining the people of Georgia, in the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas. Blumenbach thought the skulls of Georgians were ideal, and best represented the White race. He believed that humans must have originated in the region, and chose to name his European-origin human group for the Caucasus Mountain range of Georgia’s northern border. Although Blumenbach created racial categories and placed people in them, he fought against his colleagues who claimed that some races were superior to others.

Although the ideas about race espoused by Blumenbach and others have long been discredited, the term Caucasian is entrenched in American law and government. Legislation about marriage is one example, but its use is widespread and inconsistent. For example, many government forms ask for personal information, including one’s race. The US Census has always recorded racial data, but has been forced to evolve many times over the years. For example, the first census in 1790 recorded Americans in only a few race/ethnicity categories: free White males, free White females, all other free persons, and enslaved people. Any individual whose ancestry was mixed was not counted as White, because the designation of White bestowed a number of freedoms and legal benefits on an individual. An exception was the 1930 Census counting of Native Americans, who were to be listed as White if members of the community where they lived regarded them as White. US Census forms for decades included Caucasian as a race choice, although in modern times the US Census Bureau notes that it views race and ethnicity as separate and distinct notions, and forms instead ask people to choose the social group with which they most closely identify.

Since the 2000 Census, Americans have been able to choose more than one race. In 2010, nine million (2.9 percent) of respondents chose more than one racial category, indicating their status as multiracial individuals. The four largest of these were White-American Indian, White-Asian, White-Black, and White-some other race. A decade later, in 2020, 10.2 percent of the American population reported more than one race on the census, totaling 33.8 million people. The census continued to evolve to become more inclusive and less discriminatory, changing its approach to identifying ethnicities and racial identities in 2024. Adding write-in options and including categories that better reflect the diverse population, such as Middle Eastern, North African, or Caribbean, allows for a more accurate collection of census data.This information helps inform policy decisions and highlight racial disparities wherever they may exist.

Following the American Civil War and into the twentieth century, the United States was forced to reconsider officially recognized group categories. The shuffling of ethnic groups greatly affected the course of the nation for decades to come. Because the White group was afforded the highest social status, arguments raged over who was to be included and, just as significant, who was not. Politics and alleged scientific data were among these considerations, as were discussions of assimilation. Some believed Jim Crow laws limiting the freedoms of African Americans should also apply to Mexican Americans. Many viewed South Asian and Pacific-rim Asian individuals in terms of how American they were, which, in turn, affected the group in which they would be included. In addition, for decades the Census, categorized many individuals based on the percentage of their ancestry that was White.

Identity as a White person has often been a matter of custom or perception. This is especially true in cases when individuals or groups have been designated as honorary White people. The term originated in South Africa during Apartheid, and was used to describe some part-White and non-White groups. The title was, at times, granted to Black individuals, as in 1973, when Guyanese-born novelist and diplomat, E.R. Braithwaite, was granted a visa to visit South Africa after the ban on his books was lifted. Braithwaite, author of To Sir, With Love (1959), was named an honorary White person throughout his six-week trip. Although the White establishment continued to treat him as inferior, his status granted him freedoms other Black South Africans were denied.

Bibliography

"About the Topic of Race." Census, 1 Mar. 2022, www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Hodson, Gordon. “Race as a Social Construction.” Psychology Today, 5 Dec. 2016, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201612/race-social-construction. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

McGirt, Ellen. “What It Means to Be White.” Fortune, 23 Apr. 2019, fortune.com/2019/04/23/what-it-means-to-be-white. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Moses, Yolanda. “Why Do We Keep Using the Word ‘Caucasian’?” Sapiens, 1 Feb. 2017, www.sapiens.org/column/race/caucasian-terminology-origin. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

“Race and Racial Identity.” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/race-and-racial-identity. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Schneider, Mike. "US Changes How It Categorizes People by Race and Ethnicity. It’s the First Revision in 27 Years." AP News, 28 Mar 2024, apnews.com/article/race-ethnicity-census-bureau-hispanics-0b2c325b683efd95e8e8e24235654abd. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Simon, Ed. “How ‘White People’ Were Invented by a Playwright in 1613.” Aeon, 2017, aeon.co/ideas/how-white-people-were-invented-by-a-playwright-in-1613. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Soniak, Matt. “Why Are White People Called Caucasian?” Mental Floss, 19 Apr. 2013, www.mentalfloss.com/article/50202/why-are-white-people-called-caucasian. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

“What Census Calls Us.” Pew Research Center, 6 Feb. 2020, www.pewresearch.org/interactives/what-census-calls-us. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Zack, Naomi, editor. “Social Construction and Racial Identities.” The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, Feb. 2017, www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190236953.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190236953-part-7. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.