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What is White?

W

Wheel of time

Location
USA NYC
NemoMarx said:
As far as I know, White Nat groups in the US still think Slavs aren't really white, and at least on /pol/ and stormfront there's a lot of arguments about whether non Anglos should count?
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The_Letter_K said:
I'm not sure how to explain exactly how bad of an idea I think that is, other than to suggest that you go ahead and do it, so I can use that thread as an example next time someone asks.

I can't see any way that that thread would generate anything useful or meaningful ever, let alone without immediately devolving into a shouting match featuring moderator intervention. You're welcome to try though. As it is, yes, it's definitely off topic.
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Based on the first post with the idea Slavs are not White according to some US White Nationalist groups raises the question of what is White and how do you define it? What does being White mean and how does it change by country and era.
This thread is for the discussion of what White is and how the term has evolved. Personally I don't care for it but it is the rallying point for neo-nazi and other such hate groups in america so I am curious how they define this idea of White they revere so much. For the most part this thread will about talking about how the usage of the word White has been used by various Alt-Right groups in modern day and other such organizations over the course of history.

If we are to combat and fight such hatred then you must first understand what the main principle of the enemy is so you can undermine and attack it. Be it in america or elsewhere. To be honest other then saying white is the majority in america and christian values being a part of it. I can not think of any unifying element of White that is not just not minorities are bad. Which might be the whole point but I am curious as to what White is to the Alt-Right and other such ideologies.
Now I would this thread to not be a burning dumpster fire so try to be civil and get not get heated over I admit a very unpleasant topic. If not @The_Letter_K gets his example of what not to do when making a thread at least.
 
Wheel of time said:
This thread is for the discussion of what White is and how the term has evolved. Personally I don't care for it but it is the rallying point for neo-nazi and other such hate groups in america so I am curious how they define this idea of White they revere so much. For the most part this thread will about talking about how the usage of the word White has been used by various Alt-Right groups in modern day and other such organizations over the course of history.
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Alright.

So the first thing to understand is that the history of "white" is primarily an exclusionary kind of term. You don't call yourself white in isolation, you call yourself white to set yourself apart (and above, almost always) from some other group.

For instance, Benjamin Franklin used it like this:

24. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.
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The American usage is doubly weird because we've seen it expand and change over time as new groups assimilate (Irish and Italians are my go to examples), but even from the start there's different ideas about if the French should count, if it's primarily an Anglo Saxon thing, so on.

Also, this might be a better thread for War and Peace rather than News and Politics? It's kind of sociology.
 
White = Us Upstanding People
Not-White = Those People

That is basically it, as white is not only an arbitrary category in general but is and has always been applied arbitrarily by those that believe in it whenever convenient for them to get allies or turn on them when it seemed convenient. Which makes sense as racism and fascism are really ineffective forms of societal organisation and hence always have to rely on coopting elements of other people's or societies that the official ideology deems inferior.
See Slavs these days either still being a distinct race from white Europeans or the last true holdout against Eurabia, Emil Maurice being both an "Alter Kämpfer" and a potential security risk for his jewish blood and the Racial Divisions between Creoles, Mestizos and Indigenas which is key to the Latin American identity just all being marked as "non-white" by Anglo centric racists in North America.
 
NemoMarx said:
Alright.

So the first thing to understand is that the history of "white" is primarily an exclusionary kind of term. You don't call yourself white in isolation, you call yourself white to set yourself apart (and above, almost always) from some other group.

For instance, Benjamin Franklin used it like this:



The American usage is doubly weird because we've seen it expand and change over time as new groups assimilate (Irish and Italians are my go to examples), but even from the start there's different ideas about if the French should count, if it's primarily an Anglo Saxon thing, so on.

Also, this might be a better thread for War and Peace rather than News and Politics? It's kind of sociology.
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Would you alert a Mod to move to War and Peace then please?
 
Whites were the royalists while the Reds were the non royalists, tho the Reds were mostly various forms of socialism and communism.

And, as everyone should know, the Reds beat the Whites and formed what would eventually become Soviet Russia.
 
Estro said:
Whites were the royalists while the Reds were the non royalists, tho the Reds were mostly various forms of socialism and communism.

And, as everyone should know, the Reds beat the Whites and formed what would eventually become Soviet Russia.
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Grimnir said:
The color of unmarked paper.
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White is a colour associated with the creation of 1/1 human soldier tokens, Angels, Enchantments as well as hard board sweeps and targeted exile removal.
While a pretty neat colour on its own I personally prefer mixing it with Blue to be a controlling asshole.
 
NemoMarx said:
Alright.

So the first thing to understand is that the history of "white" is primarily an exclusionary kind of term. You don't call yourself white in isolation, you call yourself white to set yourself apart (and above, almost always) from some other group.
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JBO said:
White = Us Upstanding People
Not-White = Those People

That is basically it, as white is not only an arbitrary category in general but is and has always been applied arbitrarily by those that believe in it whenever convenient for them to get allies or turn on them when it seemed convenient. Which makes sense as racism and fascism are really ineffective forms of societal organisation and hence always have to rely on coopting elements of other people's or societies that the official ideology deems inferior.
See Slavs these days either still being a distinct race from white Europeans or the last true holdout against Eurabia, Emil Maurice being both an "Alter Kämpfer" and a potential security risk for his jewish blood and the Racial Divisions between Creoles, Mestizos and Indigenas which is key to the Latin American identity just all being marked as "non-white" by Anglo centric racists in North America.
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To put it another way, what you're basically asking isn't "What is White?" so much as "What isn't White?" because "Whiteness" is by its nature exclusionary.

Phrased even more differently, and perhaps a bit too aggressively, the question you're basically asking is; "Who dies in the Nazi Apocalypse?" The question answers itself with few moments of thought. People who are different. The trouble with that, aside from it being morally repugnant and just generally awful, is that as you reduce the number of people and opinions, what counts as "irreconcilable differences" or "murder-worthy offenses" in the eyes of murder-happy fascists will naturally change so that they can continue being murder-happy fascists.

Smaller and smaller groups of "the majority" turning on even smaller and even smaller groups of "the minority", until you're left with an unsustainable population or until the people who were irrational enough to perpetrate these acts in the first place magically come to their senses.

It seems obvious to me, then, that "What is White?" isn't a useful question. Even if you're lucky enough to count now, the definition isn't actually a defense against a murderer who wants you dead, and doesn't seem to be helpful in any other context either.

(Yes, yes, I'm contributing to a thread I believe won't accomplish anything. Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's pretty much just because I was tagged in the OP and that makes me feel important.)
 
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The_Letter_K said:
To put it another way, what you're basically asking isn't "What is White?" so much as "What isn't White?" because "Whiteness" is by its nature exclusionary.

Phrased even more differently, and perhaps a bit too aggressively, the question you're basically asking is; "Who dies in the Nazi Apocalypse?" The question answers itself with few moments of thought. People who are different. The trouble with that, aside from it being morally repugnant and just generally awful, is that as you reduce the number of people and opinions, what counts as "irreconcilable differences" or "murder-worthy offenses" in the eyes of murder-happy fascists will naturally change so that they can continue being murder-happy fascists.

Smaller and smaller groups of "the majority" turning on even smaller and even smaller groups of "the minority", until you're left with an unsustainable population or until the people who were irrational enough to perpetrate these acts in the first place magically come to their senses.

It seems obvious to me, then, that "What is White?" isn't a useful question. Even if you're lucky enough to count now, the definition isn't actually a defense against a murderer who wants you dead, and doesn't seem to be helpful in any other context either.
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Going with the Nazis and now Neo-Nazis how do the Slavs not count as White? What is the logic faulty and self conforming as it is that leads to this conclusion.
 
"Whiteness" is a cultural construct that emerges from the scientific racism of the early modern era and is perpetuated by modern racism. It is the pseudo-scientific inheritor of cultural bigotry of European "Christendom". The emergence of race from the varieties of human phenotype is a lot like the emergence of gender from biological sex. It takes a broad continuum of accidental features, attempts to derive discrete, essential categories from them and then import a bunch of unrelated cultural values into them and treat the resulting mess as an essential, objective truth.

Unfortunately, like gender, that doesn't mean it "isn't real". It has an active life in our cultural psyche, both because we still accept it as a real entity in our cultural discourse, and because the damage done by it in the past has left real differences between groups, both in their material welfare, and their social standing. So even if we had a "colorblind" society now (and we don't), we'd still need to take seriously the lingering harm done racial minorities in the past.
 
White is whatever group you happen to be a part of that can nominally claim to be european. Non white is everyone else, including non europeans, and other europeans.
 
Wheel of time said:
Going with the Nazis and now Neo-Nazis how do the Slavs not count as White? What is the logic faulty and self conforming as it is that leads to this conclusion.
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Slavs are Asian, I think is the logic. That they are pale skinned doens't really matter, and there's some flimsy phrenology about their noses or their IQ scores or their crime rate that probably can be pointed to.

It probably goes back to the eastern front thing, really, but it's not like any of this needs to be that consistent. Russia can be allies and friends one moment and bitter eternal enemies the next, that's the magic of fascism.
 
mesonoxian said:
"Whiteness" is a cultural construct that emerges from the scientific racism of the early modern era and is perpetuated by modern racism. It is the pseudo-scientific inheritor of cultural bigotry of European "Christendom". The emergence of race from the varieties of human phenotype is a lot like the emergence of gender from biological sex. It takes a broad continuum of accidental features, attempts to derive discrete, essential categories from them and then import a bunch of unrelated cultural values into them and treat the resulting mess as an essential, objective truth.

Unfortunately, like gender, that doesn't mean it "isn't real". It has an active life in our cultural psyche, both because we still accept it as a real entity in our cultural discourse, and because the damage done by it in the past has left real differences between groups, both in their material welfare, and their social standing. So even if we had a "colorblind" society now (and we don't), we'd still need to take seriously the lingering harm done racial minorities in the past.
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This. Whiteness in the US has always been a moving target; we've seen certain ethnic groups added and taken away based on nothing more than changing cultural mores. Within living memory Italians and Irish weren't considered "white" until all of a sudden they were, while certain Middle Eastern/Near Eastern groups were considered white (mostly Turks and Persians) until they weren't. Meanwhile, the American Jewish community exists in this weird quantum state where they're "white" but also distinctly not-white, and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.
 
Jews are easy to grasp in relation to whiteness. If being white would be helpful, Jews are nonwhite. If being white would be bad, Jews are white. See? Easy.
 
Coates had an interesting thing about this? One, he always referred to white people in the book I read as "people who think they are white" which is perhaps are useful lens for it, and two, he made the comparison that in the united states, both White and Black are kind of identities forged from the atlantic crossing, at least originally. The Journey over, and the distance from Europe and Africa and the history, helped to meld national identities into racial identities, and there's some argument that this was the first time, or at least a mostly unique thing?

For a lot of European history "white" was a mostly useless term because it really mattered more that those damn French were going to war with you, or the Irish were obviously peasant stock, or etc. Skin color wasn't seen as that significant. But in coming to America, people had the more obvious Other figures of the native americans and then slaves and that combined with social pressure to form ingroups from some of the early colonial struggles may have done a lot to create modern American whiteness.

Disclaimer: I'm paraphrasing from memory and it's been a while since I read between the world, so I might be getting examples and phrasings off here.
 
In casual use, I go by skin tone and it's not a very strict standard and probably biased by the standards of the large multicultural city I live in. Hispanic and many middle-eastern populations "look" "white" to me. A lot depends on who I'm talking with at the time, since it changes what will clearly communicate my meaning. Primarily a descriptive term, though I acknowledge it isn't without consequences.

The idea that there's some intrinsic "Whiteness" beyond a superficial and incidental physical feature needs to die.

Estro said:
Whites were the royalists while the Reds were the non royalists, tho the Reds were mostly various forms of socialism and communism.

And, as everyone should know, the Reds beat the Whites and formed what would eventually become Soviet Russia.
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This really confused me when I was a kid and my best friend's pretty old Austrian dad would rant about how evil the Whites were. Really confused.
 
In the US context, White is all about splitting up the people at the bottom of the heap to avoid them seeking to trouble those at the top.
 
I am going to echo a bunch of the other people here as to how whiteness is a bit of amorphess concept used to establish in groups but I think I will go a step further because I think that beyond the idea of whiteness as a people we also have a idea of whiteness as a set of beliefs or concepts. You don't have to talk to avowed white nationalist to hear someone advocate and defend "western values" which carries this idea that things like: Freedom, equality, logic, science, democracy, medicine, art etc are things uniquely tied to white European identity. Such sentiments are often given in the context of painting non Europeans as ignorant violent superstitious people who need to become more like us in order to get rid of their backwards ways.
 
NemoMarx said:
Alright.

So the first thing to understand is that the history of "white" is primarily an exclusionary kind of term. You don't call yourself white in isolation, you call yourself white to set yourself apart (and above, almost always) from some other group.

For instance, Benjamin Franklin used it like this:



The American usage is doubly weird because we've seen it expand and change over time as new groups assimilate (Irish and Italians are my go to examples), but even from the start there's different ideas about if the French should count, if it's primarily an Anglo Saxon thing, so on.

Also, this might be a better thread for War and Peace rather than News and Politics? It's kind of sociology.
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The use of the word Red in all caps is confusing to me. On the one hand the only Red I can think of in the context of race as Ben talks about are the Indians/Native Americans but that seems absurd as he talks about them as the Tawny like the Asian so is it some kind of play on words of the colors of the flag? If so why not any mention of a capital Blue? A minor nitpick that just bugged me.
 
Wheel of time said:
The use of the word Red in all caps is confusing to me. On the one hand the only Red I can think of in the context of race as Ben talks about are the Indians/Native Americans but that seems absurd as he talks about them as the Tawny like the Asian so is it some kind of play on words of the colors of the flag? If so why not any mention of a capital Blue? A minor nitpick that just bugged me.
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The English flag is white and red. He might also be referring to red hair, or that ruddy complexion some white people get.
 
Wheel of time said:
The use of the word Red in all caps is confusing to me. On the one hand the only Red I can think of in the context of race as Ben talks about are the Indians/Native Americans but that seems absurd as he talks about them as the Tawny like the Asian so is it some kind of play on words of the colors of the flag? If so why not any mention of a capital Blue? A minor nitpick that just bugged me.
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"Redskins", so yeah, I'm pretty sure he's implying the natives are better than the swarthy Germans. I don't know if there's any logic behind that, but Franklin was kind of personally offended at the Germans trying to move into Pennsylvania at the time (anecdotally, I believe he was upset they wouldn't read his paper, and were printing their own german language one instead or something?)

Article:
They behave, however, submissively enough at present to the Civil Government which I wish they may continue to do: For I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in droves, and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties; Few of their children in the Country learn English; they import many Books from Germany; and of the six printing houses in the Province, two are entirely German, two half German half English, and but two entirely English; They have one German News-paper, and one half German. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch and English; the Signs in our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German: They begin of late to make all their Bonds and other legal Writings in their own Language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our Courts, where the German Business so encreases that there is continual need of Interpreters; and I suppose in a few years they will be also necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say; In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.

It's actually a very modern kind of anti immigrant thing, really. Reads like people convinced Britain is falling under Sharia law. So he was probably focusing on them specifically, in the rest of the letter, and at least not being as bad to the native americans (right then).

So this is actually a decent demonstration that as much as White basically means "not Other" a lot of the time, this does allow for the equivalent of allies of convenience. Slavs might be White right now, at least compared to the Xes immigrating in, and that doesn't have to imply anything about later, or maybe they're "close enough" or get a nicer name or something. It's the same psychology regardless of which ethnicities are getting which hats at the time.
 
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On point that Coates made is that he doesn't think America will become a Majority-Minority country. Instead, it's likely that the definition of 'White' will probably expand to include at least a subset of Latin-americans and probably Asians as well.
 
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