Talk:White Americans

comment

(Personal attack removed) Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.233.174.154 (talk) 02:05, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I find this article quite offensive and clearly crafted to conform to the so-called "progressive" objective of redefining "white" and "caucasian" to apply to the smallest possible segment of the American population.

There are also some statements which can be easily disproven, especially those which declare that Mexicans, Italians, Spaniards, etc.. have historically been considered "non-white". Just because these groups have been discriminated against as ethnicities doesn't mean that they are or were considered "non-white". The only objective test of this alleged history would be the miscegenation laws. We know that Mexican-Americans were legally white because we have court cases in California where Mexican-Americans were prosecuted for marrying or fornication with Blacks. There are no cases of a WASP being prosecuted for marrying an Italian, indeed Italians are found amongst and intermarried with the oldest families in Virginia. The same is true of the Irish. While perhaps socially disfavored in some places, you will find Irish colonials and immigrants intermarried with America's oldest colonial families. - David Hearne , genealogist — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.35.161.100 (talk) 20:52, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Add your comments to the bottom of the talk page and sign your posts with four tildes from now on, and forever. Got it? Good. 24.144.14.84 (talk) 01:38, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Pictures

How are the pictures in the infobox chosen? It seems like there should be more Hispanics and Arabs to show that they are considered White Americans.108.211.37.125 (talk) 04:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Issues

Some comments on this article:

• It's interesting that there's not a strict parallel between "White American", which is treated by Wikipedia as distinct from "European American", and "Black American", which redirects to African American. Presumably the reason for this is a recently more expansive interpretation of "White", which includes Arab Americans and others whose ancestors might originate from beyond Western Europe. If this is the reason for distinguishing "White" from "European" Americans, the above commenter seems well justified in asking where are the pictures of Arab Americans.
• The page on African Americans contains a good deal of historical information about that group, even though they have not always been generally referred to as "African Americans". This article contains no information at all about "White Americans", as though they had descended on Turtle Islands from Europe via Outer Space in the year 2000—just in time for the census. Although there are plausible justification for treating the history of "European Americans" in a separate article, this article should contain historical information about, at minimum, the legal status assigned to "White people" in various places and times within the United States. Perhaps (not sure) the most conspicuous example of an official "White" legal status would be during the Jim Crow era in the American South.
• The "Income and educational attainment" section is quite problematic. An obvious problem is that the text offers (seemingly unsourced) single causalities for sweeping demographic features. Consider the following statements:

• "The median income per household member was also the highest, since White Americans had the smallest households of any racial demographic in the nation."
• "However, due to Whites' majority status, 48% of Americans living in poverty are white."

• Another problem with the "Income" section is the lack of historical context for white affluence in the U.S.
• White supremacy is not linked anywhere on the page. This is an egregious omission, since "white supremacy" describes the social structure of the U.S. from at minimum 1776–1968, and maybe after depending on who you ask. Almost everybody agrees that "white supremacy" is a belief system actively held by some White Americans. White privilege should also be linked.
• Too much of the article is spent re-hashing "definitions of whiteness", given that a main article for this topic already exists and readers can be directed there.
• There's hardly any information at all here about White American Culture. In fact White American Culture simply redirects to the Culture section of this article. "European American culture" goes nowhere. This is insanely lopsided, given the huge article on African-American culture and similar articles on other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. 'There is no single White culture' is a ridiculous cop-out when similar generalizations have been made about the extremely diverse cultures of other groups. The current four-paragraph exegesis of a single book is completely inadequate.

OK, that's it for now. What do other folks think? This page clearly needs an overhaul. peace, * groupuscule (talk) * 13:07, 11 July 2013 (UTC) *