Is “expanding definition of whiteness” a real thing?
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  Is “expanding definition of whiteness” a real thing?
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TheReckoning
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« on: April 04, 2023, 07:44:42 PM »

I’ve often heard of the phenomenon of “expanding definition of whiteness”- meaning that overtime, the exact groups that are considered “white” has been growing. For example, some people claim that originally in the USA, only WASPs were considered white, and them overtime more and more groups were brought into the “white” fold- Italians, Irish, Slavs, Catholics, Jews, etc. And therefore, it can be assumed that who is considered “white” will continue to grow in the future.

To be honest, I’m not very knowledgeable on this, but I’m not sure if this supposed phenomenon is real. For one, were people like Italians, Irish, and Poles, ever actually not considered “white” in the United States? I understand they may have still faced discrimination, but was that for not being “white”? For example, would a marriage between an Italian and an English person have been considered an “interracial marriage”?

Secondly, it seems like in recent times, certain groups have been identifying as “white” less, not more. For example, in the 2010 census, over 50% of Hispanic and Latino Americans identified as “white”, while in 2020, only around 20% did. This implies that people on the fringes of “white” or “person of color” are becoming more likely to identify with the latter, not the other way around.

Finally, I stumbled upon an article today about the ethnic identity of Arab Christians linked below. According to the study, published sometime in the 2010s, 68% of Arab Christians older than 50 thought of themselves as white, while only 47% of those under the age of 50 thought of themselves as white. This implies that the more recently one has developed their ethnic identity, the more likely they are to think of themselves as non-white, indicating the the definition of white is arguably shrinking. Also, the Arab Christians most likely to identify as non-white were “activists and academics”, typically thought of as people who are “forward thinking”, indicating that they have a more “modern” view of race.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14755610.2017.1402797

TL;DR Historically, I’m not sure if “white” was actually limited only to WASPs. In more recent years, Latinos and Arabs- groups on the fringes of being white- seem less likely to identify as white than they would have in recent decades. This casts doubt on the whole “expanding definition of whiteness” to me.
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Damocles
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« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2023, 07:49:57 PM »

Why, yes. You’ve got white, pearl, eggshell, ivory, snow, ice, cream, milk, albumen, talcum, chalk, calcium, sodium, and others. Surely all of those shades fit the larger white family.
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2023, 07:56:43 PM »

The Irish, Italians and Poles were never considered non-white.  Distinctions were made between Anglo-Saxons or Nordic races and others - but it was never stated these were the only whites or Europeans AFAIK.  The "ethnic whites" always ranked above Asians, for example and obviously had major advantages that Black Americans lacked.

By the turn of the 20th century, Irish were already seen as part of the northwest European mainstream group though, as southern and eastern European immigration increased.  And after WWII the discrimination against white ethnics and Jews broke down.  
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Bismarck
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« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2023, 08:44:40 PM »

I think the focus on the word “whiteness” misses the point. It’s more about who is considered in the mainstream of American society, and that has definitely expanded. Asians and Hispanics will fall into this eventually as long as the democrats aren’t successful with their racial balkanization project. It’s isn’t that Vietnamese or Mexican people will stop being Mexican or korean, but that it won’t be a meaningful category that excludes people from the mainstream. Plus most people with Asian or Hispanic ancestry in the future will also have non Hispanic white ancestry. Just like with Italians or polish or Irish intermarriage will lessen the separateness of these groups. 
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Stranger in a strange land
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« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2023, 08:40:57 AM »

The Irish, Italians and Poles were never considered non-white.  Distinctions were made between Anglo-Saxons or Nordic races and others - but it was never stated these were the only whites or Europeans AFAIK.  The "ethnic whites" always ranked above Asians, for example and obviously had major advantages that Black Americans lacked.

By the turn of the 20th century, Irish were already seen as part of the northwest European mainstream group though, as southern and eastern European immigration increased.  And after WWII the discrimination against white ethnics and Jews broke down.  
Legally this was true in the sense that Irish, Italians, Poles, etc. could always become citizens, vote, hold public office, and couldn't be enslaved. Despite what your racist facebook uncle might tell you, "Irish slavery" wasn't a real thing, at least not in the New World, and the photos that he posts which supposedly "prove" this are just poor people, not slaves. However, "ethnic whites" weren't considered white socially for quite some time. When this happened varied for different groups, but by the post-WWII era there was little perceived difference between different white ethnic groups. 
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FEMA Camp Administrator
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« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2023, 09:17:11 AM »

TheReckoning, you bring up some interesting examples. These findings may simply be meaningless in a real world context, or they may point to the unwinding of the idea of a cohesive American identity.

In the case of Arab-Americans, I don't think that the impact of 9/11 can be understated. I remember an interview where a Lebanese-American described finding out after the terrorist attacks that he "wasn't white". For Hispanics it might relate to their substantial size (of such heft that it could make efforts at forced assimilation difficult in practical if not political terms), as well as the attention that size (and the implied cultural changes) brings. In both cases, the ideal of becoming a "default American" (read: white) has been tarnished, and there are socio-political boons to be had by being a discrete community.
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Skill and Chance
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« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2023, 10:56:55 AM »
« Edited: April 05, 2023, 03:23:32 PM by Skill and Chance »

In the 2020's, there are strong incentives to emphasize any ethnically diverse aspect of your background when filling out a government/institutional form.  In the 1920's, there were even stronger incentives to suppress it.  This isn't hard to see.

In 1920, you are more likely to get "No, really, we're just generic American Christians with better art" as the official statement and in 2020, you are more likely get "Yes, we are a proud immigrant family and we bring a unique cultural perspective to American society" as the official statement from someone with the same cultural background and voting patterns in both cases.
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« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2023, 06:18:34 PM »

The Irish, Italians and Poles were never considered non-white.  Distinctions were made between Anglo-Saxons or Nordic races and others - but it was never stated these were the only whites or Europeans AFAIK.  The "ethnic whites" always ranked above Asians, for example and obviously had major advantages that Black Americans lacked.
Legally this was true in the sense that Irish, Italians, Poles, etc. could always become citizens, vote, hold public office, and couldn't be enslaved. Despite what your racist facebook uncle might tell you, "Irish slavery" wasn't a real thing, at least not in the New World, and the photos that he posts which supposedly "prove" this are just poor people, not slaves. However, "ethnic whites" weren't considered white socially for quite some time. When this happened varied for different groups, but by the post-WWII era there was little perceived difference between different white ethnic groups.  

Historically it was, back when immigration from parts of the world south of the Sahara and east of the Dasht e-Lut + Urals was legally restricted. Doesn't make much sense to frame the emerging majority "mainstream" culture/in-group as "white" now that those restrictions are no longer in place, and there has been more geographic and cultural diversity among newer immigrant waves.

I'm skeptical that intermarriage will lessen the social separateness of certain non-white groups such as Latinos and Asians (whether Subcontinental or otherwise) to the extent that Bismarck is suggesting. Nor do I see any reason to believe that they or the fraction of their descendants who are mixed race will be considered more "culturally mainstream" than the ADOS community is today.

That being said- lingering social separateness doesn't have the electoral implications certain people here might think it does.
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kcguy
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« Reply #8 on: April 07, 2023, 10:51:33 PM »

Here are some stories I have in the back of my memory.  I don't know if they're true or not.

- In the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin was worried about Pennsylvania being overrun by Germans, whom he believed to be incapable of assimilation.

- As late as the early 19th century, there were places in America where Catholics paid extra taxes.  (Maryland in particular is the place stuck in my head.)  There was a long-term mindset among Englishman that Catholics' first allegiance was to a foreign potentate, the Pope, and that mindset dated back to at least the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

- In 1890's New Orleans, a Black man was arrested for miscenegation with an Italian woman.  The judge threw out the case.  Although the judge found Italians to be legally White, he thought it might not be obvious and that the defendant had made an honest mistake.

- For most of the 19th century, having Native American ancestry would have been something to keep hidden.  As the nation became flooded with immigrants at the turn of the century, having Native American ancestry suddenly became proof that you were a native-born American and "belonged" here.  The rise of fraternal organizations stressing old-line ancestry, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, came about at the same time and from similar motivations.


In the modern day, it feels to me like "Whiteness" is expanding to include African-Americans.  The strongest dividing line again seems to be between established American ethnicities and recent immigrants, and African-Americans clearly belong to the former, in a way that Salvadorans or Pakistanis may not.
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TheReckoning
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« Reply #9 on: April 08, 2023, 11:35:31 AM »

Here are some stories I have in the back of my memory.  I don't know if they're true or not.

- In the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin was worried about Pennsylvania being overrun by Germans, whom he believed to be incapable of assimilation.

- As late as the early 19th century, there were places in America where Catholics paid extra taxes.  (Maryland in particular is the place stuck in my head.)  There was a long-term mindset among Englishman that Catholics' first allegiance was to a foreign potentate, the Pope, and that mindset dated back to at least the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

- In 1890's New Orleans, a Black man was arrested for miscenegation with an Italian woman.  The judge threw out the case.  Although the judge found Italians to be legally White, he thought it might not be obvious and that the defendant had made an honest mistake.

- For most of the 19th century, having Native American ancestry would have been something to keep hidden.  As the nation became flooded with immigrants at the turn of the century, having Native American ancestry suddenly became proof that you were a native-born American and "belonged" here.  The rise of fraternal organizations stressing old-line ancestry, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, came about at the same time and from similar motivations.


In the modern day, it feels to me like "Whiteness" is expanding to include African-Americans.  The strongest dividing line again seems to be between established American ethnicities and recent immigrants, and African-Americans clearly belong to the former, in a way that Salvadorans or Pakistanis may not.

Lmao. Summer of the 2020 completely proves this false.
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« Reply #10 on: April 08, 2023, 12:14:36 PM »

In the modern day, it feels to me like "Whiteness" is expanding to include African-Americans.  The strongest dividing line again seems to be between established American ethnicities and recent immigrants, and African-Americans clearly belong to the former, in a way that Salvadorans or Pakistanis may not.

Lmao. Summer of the 2020 completely proves this false.

It's true if you think of "whiteness" as "the American cultural mainstream", and really has been long before BLM became a thing.
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TheReckoning
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« Reply #11 on: April 08, 2023, 02:17:55 PM »

In the modern day, it feels to me like "Whiteness" is expanding to include African-Americans.  The strongest dividing line again seems to be between established American ethnicities and recent immigrants, and African-Americans clearly belong to the former, in a way that Salvadorans or Pakistanis may not.

Lmao. Summer of the 2020 completely proves this false.

It's true if you think of "whiteness" as "the American cultural mainstream", and really has been long before BLM became a thing.

But that’s… not how race is viewed here? Race is way more complex than “cultural mainstream”, lmao.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #12 on: April 08, 2023, 02:48:58 PM »
« Edited: April 08, 2023, 02:52:50 PM by Хahar 🤔 »

In the modern day, it feels to me like "Whiteness" is expanding to include African-Americans.  The strongest dividing line again seems to be between established American ethnicities and recent immigrants, and African-Americans clearly belong to the former, in a way that Salvadorans or Pakistanis may not.

Lmao. Summer of the 2020 completely proves this false.

It's true if you think of "whiteness" as "the American cultural mainstream", and really has been long before BLM became a thing.

That would be an unspeakably stupid definition and it wouldn't be an accurate statement even then. Sitcoms and television commercials had more black people in them forty-five years ago than they do now.

Anyway, no, the definition of whiteness has not expanded. The only way to believe that it has is if you think that white people definitionally cannot experience ethnic prejudice from other white people, which is also stupid. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, naturalization in the United States was limited by law to white and black people, which is to say that it is very easy to understand which people were viewed as white at the time. Italians, Jews, and Arabs all naturalized in enormous numbers because they were white. That they weren't allowed into country clubs doesn't change that. Indians and Chinese were not considered white then (see U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind and U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark) just as they are not now.

If anything, the definition of whiteness has contracted over time. One example is the planned "Middle Eastern" category on the Census, which would formalize the notion that Arabs, a group that has always legally and culturally been white in this country, are now non-white.

I know that Hispanic is not a race on the US Census, but even white Hispanics nowadays are often regarded as non-white. Dolf Luque of Havana had a long and successful career pitching in the major leagues between 1914 and 1935, a period of time when organized baseball was white-only. As I understand it, reference was occasionally made in the American press to his patrician Spanish ancestry, but because he looked white there was no serious anxiety about his whiteness. Mike Gonzalez, also of Havana, caught in the major leagues between 1912 and 1932 and later became manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. This would not have happened if his whiteness had been in question.

Asians will not "become white" over time because there is no evidence of this process ever having happened in this country's history. Those that intermarry with whites may have white descendants, but only if those descendants are sufficiently white-looking that they lack obvious Asian ancestry.
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TheReckoning
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« Reply #13 on: April 08, 2023, 03:37:15 PM »

In the modern day, it feels to me like "Whiteness" is expanding to include African-Americans.  The strongest dividing line again seems to be between established American ethnicities and recent immigrants, and African-Americans clearly belong to the former, in a way that Salvadorans or Pakistanis may not.

Lmao. Summer of the 2020 completely proves this false.

It's true if you think of "whiteness" as "the American cultural mainstream", and really has been long before BLM became a thing.

That would be an unspeakably stupid definition and it wouldn't be an accurate statement even then. Sitcoms and television commercials had more black people in them forty-five years ago than they do now.


Is that really the case? Is it because black people have become less prominent relative to Asians/Latinos?
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TheReckoning
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« Reply #14 on: April 20, 2023, 04:46:09 PM »

TheReckoning, you bring up some interesting examples. These findings may simply be meaningless in a real world context, or they may point to the unwinding of the idea of a cohesive American identity.


What do you mean by this?
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Hope For A New Era
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« Reply #15 on: April 22, 2023, 01:05:23 PM »

Sort of, but it appears that way because of a misconception.

The American racial divide is not white/nonwhite, it's nonblack/black.
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #16 on: May 05, 2023, 09:51:40 PM »

I wonder what happened in the early 2000s that made a lot of Muslims or people from the Middle East feel like they weren't being treated like "regular" Americans by society...
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David Hume
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« Reply #17 on: May 09, 2023, 12:50:37 AM »

I think the focus on the word “whiteness” misses the point. It’s more about who is considered in the mainstream of American society, and that has definitely expanded. Asians and Hispanics will fall into this eventually as long as the democrats aren’t successful with their racial balkanization project. It’s isn’t that Vietnamese or Mexican people will stop being Mexican or korean, but that it won’t be a meaningful category that excludes people from the mainstream. Plus most people with Asian or Hispanic ancestry in the future will also have non Hispanic white ancestry. Just like with Italians or polish or Irish intermarriage will lessen the separateness of these groups. 
Asians are already classified with white by some "progressive" school boards for "diversity" purpose.
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TheReckoning
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« Reply #18 on: May 27, 2023, 11:08:30 PM »

Sort of, but it appears that way because of a misconception.

The American racial divide is not white/nonwhite, it's nonblack/black.

So what do you think of the other poster saying that “Whiteness” is expanding to include African Americans, while Latinos and Asians may be the ones feeling most out of the mainstream?
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Hope For A New Era
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« Reply #19 on: May 30, 2023, 08:35:29 AM »

Sort of, but it appears that way because of a misconception.

The American racial divide is not white/nonwhite, it's nonblack/black.

So what do you think of the other poster saying that “Whiteness” is expanding to include African Americans, while Latinos and Asians may be the ones feeling most out of the mainstream?

Categorically false.
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Person Man
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« Reply #20 on: May 30, 2023, 10:41:52 AM »

I’ve often heard of the phenomenon of “expanding definition of whiteness”- meaning that overtime, the exact groups that are considered “white” has been growing. For example, some people claim that originally in the USA, only WASPs were considered white, and them overtime more and more groups were brought into the “white” fold- Italians, Irish, Slavs, Catholics, Jews, etc. And therefore, it can be assumed that who is considered “white” will continue to grow in the future.

To be honest, I’m not very knowledgeable on this, but I’m not sure if this supposed phenomenon is real. For one, were people like Italians, Irish, and Poles, ever actually not considered “white” in the United States? I understand they may have still faced discrimination, but was that for not being “white”? For example, would a marriage between an Italian and an English person have been considered an “interracial marriage”?

Secondly, it seems like in recent times, certain groups have been identifying as “white” less, not more. For example, in the 2010 census, over 50% of Hispanic and Latino Americans identified as “white”, while in 2020, only around 20% did. This implies that people on the fringes of “white” or “person of color” are becoming more likely to identify with the latter, not the other way around.

Finally, I stumbled upon an article today about the ethnic identity of Arab Christians linked below. According to the study, published sometime in the 2010s, 68% of Arab Christians older than 50 thought of themselves as white, while only 47% of those under the age of 50 thought of themselves as white. This implies that the more recently one has developed their ethnic identity, the more likely they are to think of themselves as non-white, indicating the the definition of white is arguably shrinking. Also, the Arab Christians most likely to identify as non-white were “activists and academics”, typically thought of as people who are “forward thinking”, indicating that they have a more “modern” view of race.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14755610.2017.1402797

TL;DR Historically, I’m not sure if “white” was actually limited only to WASPs. In more recent years, Latinos and Arabs- groups on the fringes of being white- seem less likely to identify as white than they would have in recent decades. This casts doubt on the whole “expanding definition of whiteness” to me.

I would like to know this "for a friend", actually. I remember asking the forum a long time ago whether or not I was "multiracial".
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Person Man
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« Reply #21 on: May 30, 2023, 10:46:13 AM »

Sort of, but it appears that way because of a misconception.

The American racial divide is not white/nonwhite, it's nonblack/black.

So what do you think of the other poster saying that “Whiteness” is expanding to include African Americans, while Latinos and Asians may be the ones feeling most out of the mainstream?

Categorically false.

This narrative could be different based on the part of country, who actually lives there, and who is controlling the narrative. For example, a ethnically diverse state where movement nationalists and traditionalists control the narrative, you better believe that the narrative a question of whether someone is black or not.
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Pres Mike
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« Reply #22 on: June 05, 2023, 06:51:24 PM »

I think it has.

I am a teacher in a suburban area, near a military base. There are a lot of children who are half white and half asian. For the most part, they are lumped with the white kids. I mean, they look pretty white. Act white. So they are considered white (until its time to apply for college scholarships hehehe).

I am starting to notice more half white half hispanic children. They also seem to be lumped with the whites.

Of course, half white half black children are considered black 100% of the time.
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TheReckoning
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« Reply #23 on: June 19, 2023, 02:26:36 AM »

I think it has.

I am a teacher in a suburban area, near a military base. There are a lot of children who are half white and half asian. For the most part, they are lumped with the white kids. I mean, they look pretty white. Act white. So they are considered white (until its time to apply for college scholarships hehehe).

I am starting to notice more half white half hispanic children. They also seem to be lumped with the whites.

Of course, half white half black children are considered black 100% of the time.

For a long time “Hispanics” were not considered anything but white in the USA- they’ve only been considered a different group since the late 20th century. That signals a contraction in the definition of “whiteness.”
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Deep Dixieland Senator, Muad'dib (OSR MSR)
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« Reply #24 on: June 19, 2023, 07:33:46 AM »

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