Talk:Definitions of whiteness in the United States

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Muslim Americans and Zoroastrians

What does this mean? Muslim Americans and Zoroastrians

People who reported their race as the following religions Muslim, Shi'ite, Sunni or Zoroastrianism in the "Some other race" section are automatically categorized as whites in the 2000 US Census.[38]

On the census, you can check the "other race" box and write in your race (instead of just checking white, black, etc.). If you do so, and write one of the above, the US govt automatically counts you as white when compiling statistics and other similar things. Calliopejen1 20:39, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Following the reference link given there (Surveilance Epidemology and End Results. Race and Nationality Descriptions from the 2000 US Census and Bureau of Vital Statistics. 2007. May 21, 2007. [1]) gives a document which is procedures for a cancer study. It uses the US Census category names, but it says nothing about how the US Census itself categorizes race. Therefore I've removed it from the article. If you find a reference from the US Census about their own procedures, we can add that information. --JWB (talk) 21:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • in Central Asia of FSU : white means christian (mainly russians), so muslims have selfidentificationa as asians not whites (Idot (talk) 03:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Jewish people are actually middle eastern

Jewish people are a middle eastern people. Just because jewish people moved into Europe does not make them European or white. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.69.73.147 (talk) 11:17, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Their skin is white. What more do you want? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.40.35.196 (talk) 11:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Ashkenazi and Sephardi (Spain, Portugal) Jews are white, because they mixed with Europeans and Khazars. Mizrachim are Middle Eastern, so by the U.S. definition, they are white.--75.164.113.233 (talk) 06:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not all Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews have white skin. Quite a few of them are darker in pigmentation. Brad Garrett, for instance. Also, Khazar input is minimal at best. This is a good explanation: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/08/ashkenazi-jews-are-probably-not-descended-from-the-khazars/ <--Signed by evildoer187-->

Middle East and North Africa

Okay I don't know about the census stuff but I can tell you socially they're not considered white by most White Americans 70.59.1.169 (talk) 10:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arabs are not white, but caucasian. Our colour is olive-brown but can be black and in rare cases similar to white but not the same.This however is found rarely and if, usually its found among people who immigrated to the Middle East such as Tsherkess people, Armenians, Assyrians, Arameans, Greeks, Kurds and some mixed ancestry people of the Levant.Neither do this people consider themself as "Arab" nor can they be taken as "the example" for "original population of Middle East & North Afrika.Most of so called Arab Americans come from this latter groups and are Christians and they battled hard in American courts for their whiteness in order to naturalize.Now that they got " whiteness" they find they are facing more problems than blacks.Specially in post 9/11.No jobs, no housing and constantly under suspicion and given names such as sandniggers....etc. I think that says a lot.The times that we Arabs looked towards the west are over, once and for good.My dad did it in the 50's and 60's.But that is long time ago.We cannot learn much from the West. Emerging Asian countries are much more interesting:UAE, India, China, Malaysia, Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, Taiwan........the list is endless.There is fear amongst Arabs, that after being painted white, one's ancestral lands are being stolen by intruders .One is being given things such as smallpocks infected blankets and similar goodies.And eventually being put into reservations such as Gaza, Iraq and the Westbank....left to die from starvation as UN beggars.

Central Asian Turkic Republics of FSU

the following:

Definitions of whiteness in the United States: People who reported their race as the following religions Muslim, Shi'ite, Sunni or Zoroastrianism in the "Some other race" section are automatically categorized as whites in the 2000 US Census.(Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results. Race and Nationality Descriptions from the 2000 US Census and Bureau of Vital Statistics. 2007. May 21, 2007)

is quite idiotic :-( Idot (talk) 20:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • the region is traditionaly islamic, and natives has selfidentification as Asian (Russians and other cristians considered as Whites) Idot (talk) 20:14, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    PS what census tells about Hui people ? Who are almost the same as Han Chinese except religion (Idot (talk) 20:15, 22 August 2008 (UTC))[reply]

Regardless of whether it makes sense, it is a referenced practice of census-takers. See the PDF citation. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:13, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When you say Russians are considered as Whites, do you mean европейской or белой? Note for the English terms in this article, European is narrower than White, which can also include West Asian and North African under current US government definition.(talk) 21:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • coloqually белой, officially (by police) европейской (as police in FSU never use white and black in description, it use european, asian, caucasian and sometimes african and inidian) Idot (talk) 04:00, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Googling census.gov does not give any relevant hits for Hui. US Census relies primarily on self-identification for race, and tries to guess from other information such as write-in race or ancestry only if respondent has not specified one of the races in the Census race categories. --JWB (talk) 21:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rename Article

I propose the article be renamed to "United States Definition of White". Care to dis/agree?--75.164.113.233 (talk) 06:13, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

germanic, celtic and slavic?

Isn't it that the only people who are considered white are the germanic, celtic and slavic ethinic groups? And that the closer that the celtic person or slavic person comes to acting within the germanic norm the more white that a celtic or slavic person becomes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.106.206.113 (talk) 22:06, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Cleanup

Some sections got mixed up in this edit. I fixed some of it. If a regular of this article would look into the reminder. -- User:Docu

John Tehranian

"Among those not considered white at some time in American history are the Irish, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Slavs, Greeks, Welsh and many other peoples who were not English."[2]^ John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), pp. 825-827.
I've seen this cited in several articles but have not been able to get a copy of the article. Can someone who has been able to say when these determinations were made and how many people were effected by the various legal cases? The difference between one case effecting one or two people and a case effecting all Irish (for instance) for a period of 10 years would be immense. All these groups were at one time or another looked upon as inferior to English immigrants but Tehranian is the only source that says they were non-white. As such he would be considered a minor point of view and should perhaps be moved out of the first paragraph. Nitpyck (talk) 02:04, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, good point. Wikipedia is going to get killed by useless nonsense citations and garbage statistics. The English throughout history freely intermarried with Celts and Saxons, etc.

http://www.onellp.com/parts/pubs/Tehranian_Performing_Whiteness.pdf page 8 In fact the legal opinion was exactly the opposite: "...immigrants from Eastern, Southern and Middle Europe and these were received as unquestionably akin to those already here..." "the Irish ... were for years considered the Blacks of Europe" The footnote for the Irish statement is from the movie The Commitments. So not only is it a minority opinion but it is incorrect according to the cite. Nitpyck (talk) 05:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What are your thoughts on moving this section Most persons considered White today would not have been considered White at a point in U.S. history. Among those not considered white by some people at some time in American history are the Irish, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Slavs, Greeks, Welsh and many other peoples who were not English. However, legally all these groups were white.[2] out of the lede to someplace down in the body of the article. I suggest this because first: Tehranian is the main source and he has an idiosyncratic view of this issue and second: as stated it is a questionable reading of his article. Nitpyck (talk) 19:40, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

nothing about the french?

what about the huguenots and cajun people ? Cliché Online (talk) 05:35, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bar graph

The bar graph label overlaps with the paragraph text making it hard to read either of them. I don't know how to fix this. --Khajidha (talk) 13:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yemenite Jews

Article says "even though not all Israelis are of European (Ashkenazi or Sephardi) or Middle Eastern (Mizrahi, or Israeli Arabs, Druze) descent. They may be Jews of Ethiopian (Beta Israel), Yemenite (considered by some a Mizrahi subgroup) or Indian descent.". But surely Yemenites ARE of Middle Eastern descent. Shouldn't then the sentence read "even though not all Israelis are of European (Ashkenazi or Sephardi) or Middle Eastern (Mizrahi, Yemenite Jews, Israeli Arabs, Druze) descent. They may be Jews of Ethiopian (Beta Israel) or Indian descent." ? 60.225.114.230 (talk) 21:04, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Benjamin Franklin is more likely to be celtic than anglo-saxon

Since the majority of english people are descendents of celtic people franklin is more likely to be celtic. I removed the unsourced assertion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.103.174.178 (talk) 20:05, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure which universe you are in where most English do not have Anglo-Saxon roots. DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:58, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Important New Reference

People interested in this subject would do well to read Nell Irvin Painter's "The History of White People" (2010). It is too briefly addressed in Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_White_People 98.114.26.114 (talk) 16:40, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Missing ethnic groups

I was fascinated to learn that German and Finnish Americans were ever considered anything but white, but I think some of the more obvious groups are missing. Like Germans and Finns, we see the Irish as obviously white today, but it wasn't always so. See, for example, How the Irish Became White. This New York Times article suggests the Irish were always seen as white, but suggests they were seen as "inferior white races" along with Jews, Italians, and Greeks. Jews have good coverage in the article already, but Greeks and Italians don't. Some of this might be better treated at Race and ethnicity in the United States. Either way, it's worth some discussion that whiteness has never been monolithic. --BDD (talk) 16:18, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Another NYT book review worth considering: [2] I found particularly interesting "While Jews and Italians were nonwhite in the East, they had long been white in San Francisco, where the racial 'inferiors' were the Chinese." How geography affected definitions of whiteness is also worth exploring. --BDD (talk) 16:25, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Jewish material

I came across this article via Google yesterday when researching the argument of Jewish people being white, and I quickly looked in the edit history (as I always do for Wikipedia articles because I know the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on here), and I saw that Rjensen had removed Jewish material (see here and here). Although I understand removing some of that material due to poor sourcing or similar, some of it should also be retained. We should keep the WP:Preserve policy in mind for the poorly sourced and/or poorly crafted material. Also, although Wikipedia cautions against relying solely or mostly on WP:Primary sources, it does not ban primary sources. Anyway, whether or not Jewish people should be classified as white is a topic of discussion in some solid sources (including media sources, such as this 2016 "Are Jews White?" source, from The Atlantic); so this aspect should be covered in this article. It's also very relevant recently due to white supremacist/white nationalist discussions currently going on. Today, I saw that The Human Trumpet Solo reverted Rjensen (see here and here). I wasn't going to revert, but I was going to address the deletions on this talk page. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:10, 17 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

the source = anonymous newsletter of the Asiatic Exclusion League 1910 is a white supremacy hate group that in 1910 worked to exclude all Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc. Trusting it for laws of Congress does not meet Wiki's reliable sources criteria. No reliable secondary sources supports its strange claims. Rjensen (talk) 01:58, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Wiki only uses RELIABLE sources. Wiki rule WP:QUESTIONABLE Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or that rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable for citing contentious claims about third parties, which includes claims against institutions, persons living or dead, as well as more ill-defined entities. The proper uses of a questionable source are very limited. an anonymous newsletter from a white supremacy hate group hits all the warning signs when dealing with Jews (= "third party" in the wiki rule) Rjensen (talk) 02:25, 18 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]

If there are questionable sources included, an effort should be made to either find additional sources or revise the existing material in accordance with what is available. Blanking the entire section and removing all mention of Jews is not productive.The Human Trumpet Solo (talk) 03:31, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If there are questionable sources we delete them. False attacks on Jews are not productive especially when based on white supremacy hate groups. Rjensen (talk) 07:16, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Rjensen, I understand deleting questionable sources, but you are deleting valid content as well. Look at this deletion. Some of that is supported by acceptable academic sources. This 2008 "The price of whiteness : Jews, race, and American identity" source, from Princeton University Press, for example, is quoted in the reference as stating, "Much has changed since 1945, when Jews still worried that their Jewishness might keep them from being accepted as full members of white society. Today, many Jews fear that their thorough implication in that society may sever some of their strongest ties to Jewishness."
I'm going to drop a line about this matter at WP:Anthropology, WP:Ethnic groups, WP:United States, WP:Law, WP:History, Wikipedia:WikiProject Culture, WP:Politics and WP:Religion. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:48, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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