Talk:White people

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Contents 1 Here's an idea: let's write an article about White People! 2 Money Whitens In Brazil Is Not 100% Accurate 3 Picture?? 3.1 Sample of a generation of the gallery 3.2 Why Is Bjork Included In The White Gallery ? 4 Jossi 5 lead image 6 INTERESTING ADDITION: ANCESTRY AND WHITE PEOPLE 7 How do you solve a problem like Hayden5650? 8 Page protection HELP 9 No pictures 10 AUSTRALIA 11 ARGENTINA 12 This article needs pictures 13 Numbers and Demographics 14 Re organization 15 The great white illuision 16 Caucasian redirect 17 Chile 18 LOL 19 Images in the article 20 New Consensus on Images 21 controversy and citation in opening 22 neutrality 23 There is ONE opinion for no image 24 Intro definitions

[edit] Here's an idea: let's write an article about White People!

There is a real body of literature that is explicitly about "white people" so there will be no doubt about appropriateness of sources or NOR, these works direcly address the subject of this artilce. Yet this article doesn't cite these sources! Let's write a great article by doing great research.

Perhaps the single most important reader

• Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic;

Both are law professors and it is published by Temple University Press, so it is quite reputable. As an edited volume it contains essays by a plethora of authors and thus represents a wide range if views - helpful for complying with NPOV, and all in one easy source. I think this is generally considered the best collection of diverse essays. But to help you guys out some more, here are some other books directly relevant to this article:

• Allen, Theodore The Invention of the White Race
• Babb, Valerie. Whiteness Visible: The Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature and Culture (Valerie Babb is a professor of English at the University of Georgia)
• Bonnett, Alastair. White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives (Alistair onnet is a Reader of Geography in the University of Newcastle-upon-Thyne)
• Brodkin, Karen. How Jews Became White Folks: and What that says about Race in America (Karen Brodkin is a professor of Anthropology at UCLA)
• Dyer, Richard. White (Richard Dyer used to be in Media Studies at the University of Warwick)
• Hale, Grace Elizabeth. Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (Elizabeth Hale a professor of History at U. Virginia (and her book is very well-regarded, often assigned in college classes))
• Haney-Lopez, Ian. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (Ian Haney Lopez is a professor of Law at UC Berkeley)
• Hill, Mike, ed. Whiteness: A Critical Reader (Michale Hill is a professor of Social Policy at U. of Brighton)
• Hollinger, David. Post-Ethnic America (David Hollinger is a professor of History at UC Berkeley)
• Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White (Ignatiev is a professor of Critical Studies at the Massachussetts College of Art and a Fellow at Harvard university; this book is one of the foundational texts in Whiteness studies and is very widely cited)
• Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Matthew Frye Jacobson is Chair of the American Studies Program at Yale)
• Kincheloe, Joe, ed. White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (Joe Kincheloe is a professor of Education at McGill (and there is a Wikipedia article about him!))
• Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (George Lipsitz is a professor of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara)
• McCarthy, Cameron and Warren Crichlow, eds. Race, Identity, and Representation in Education (Warren Crichlow is a professor of education at York University)
• Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
• Thomas, K. Nakayama, Judith N. Martin (editors): Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity (Thomas Nakayama and Judith Martin are professors of Communication at Arizona State U)
• O'Donnell, James and Christine Clark, eds. Becoming and Unbecoming White: Owning and Disowning a Racial Identity (James O'Donnell is an associate professor of Education at New Mexico State U.)
• Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s (Michale Omi is an associate professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley; Howard Winant is a Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Barbara)
• Rasmussen, Birgit Brander, et al., eds., The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness (Birgit Brander Rasmussen is a professor of Chicano Studies at U. Wisconsin-Madison)
• Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (David R. Roediger is a professor of History at U. Illinois Champaigne-Urbana (his book is another classic, it is assigned in LOTS of college courses),
• Rogin, Michael Paul. Black Face, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Melting Pot (Michale Paul Rogin passed away but was a professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley)
• Saxton, Alexander. The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Alexander Saxton is a professor of History at UCLA)

This is only a partial sampling of the amount written by scholars on the concept of "White people" - there is much more than the very length of the list reveals just how inadequate this article is, how much it is leaving out. Now, some of the above books are absolue classics. But for more cutting-edge research, your best bet is journals (it takes less time to write and publish a journal article than to write and publish a book, so rejecnt journal articles are more likely to be "state of the art." Of course, journal articles are also shorter which is a mixed blessing: obviously, they take less time to read, but they are much more focused. Still, good articles review the literature and thus provide handy summaries of the range of views. They can also provide great little case-studies that illustrate specific aspects of the concept "White people."

• American Anthropologist (Hartigan's article in 1997 is a god starting point)
• American Ethnologist
• Cultural Anthropology
• Current Anthropology
• American Journal of Sociology
• American Sociological Review
• British Journal of Sociology
• Journal of Historical Sociology
• Comparative Studies in Society and History
• Critical Inquiry
• Representations
• Public Culture

Any major library will have subscriptions to at least a few of these journals. In hard-copies, one could look at the index at the back of any given volume; if one has J-Stor or another electronic version of the journal once can do a boolean search. It woul dnot take long to search for "Whiteness," "White+Race" and "White+Ethnicity." You will not come up with an overhwlming number of articles, but what you do come up with will represent the best scholarship (these are all top-ranked peer-reviewed journals; the authors of the articles did all the complex hard work, we just need to benefit from their labor). You will also come up with book reviews and if the review is positive, it is probably worth reading the book. In the end, you will know a lot more about White people (which presumably is what you want, if this article interests you) and you will be able to improve this article by ensuring it complies with NPOV and by ensuring that you are not violating NOR. Like I said (I think!) above - good luck! No article in Wikipedia is ever perfect - after all, by its very Wiki nature, all articles are perpetual works in progress. But obviously this article can be much, much better. That's pretty exciting! Slrubenstein | Talk 13:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Money Whitens In Brazil Is Not 100% Accurate

I will use Pele for example, I do not know a single Brazilian who considers him to be White just because he is part of the upperclass. He is still seen as a Black man here in Brazil.

Maybe, but let's avoid OR, one good source on the complexities of race is Donna Goldstein's new book on race and gender in Brazil. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:53, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture??

I haven't looked back in the archives of the talk page, or the history of the article, but I'm shocked that there's not a picture of a white person in the article. --Piroteknix 01:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe because it is arbitrary, and subject to POV? :) Jeeny 01:41, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

No, it isn't arbitrary; just because there are gray areas at the margins of a category doesn't mean the entire definition or classification is arbitrary or that it is in dispute. Everyone recognizes Winston Churchill or Angela Merkel as examples of white people (in opposition to characterizations of them as black, for instance). You can problematize any category you like if you try hard enough, but that doesn't make every such characterization useless. W.M. O'Quinlan 19:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The article "Black people" has four pictures of people from four different African countries. White people is an extremely broad category with quite a few people (famous or otherwise) in the demographic. We could make this article's picture mirror the picture on "Black people," using pictures of people who descend from European countries, or ever just ripping pictures from "French people," "Welsh people," etc. That does sound a bit arbitrary, but we could use some kind of system to pick. --Piroteknix 21:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah, but what system? However it's done, it will either exclude an ethnicity or group that some consider white, and will likely complain about, or include people that others consider not white, and will even more likely complain about. The only way to win is to deny the battle. SamBC(talk) 22:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

There was just such a battle at Black People and after some time a pretty good compromise has been reached. Look at the bottom of the page. Why not do something like that here? futurebird 23:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

There was a major controversy over a picture gallery here several months ago. It was finally moved to European people and then ultimately deleted. Several of us fought to keep it, but there was not enough support and too many people trying to populate the gallery with celebrity favorites etc. --Kevin Murray 04:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that there should be no gallery of representative whites.----^DarkTea© 08:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sample of a generation of the gallery

Among the goals was to demonstrate the diversity within the definition "White People," and to show examples of the various ethnic groups.

These are photos of Europeans with links to articles on the ethnic group which they represent.

Gordon Brown 2005 IMF close.jpg Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is Scottish	Russian athlete Anna Kournikova	Polish athelete Katarzyna Skowronska	Greek singer Elli Kokkinou
Welsh performer Tom Jones	Chechen singer Makka Sagaipova	Turkish athelete Fatih Tekke	Basque politician Juan José Ibarretxe
Georgian singer Sopho Khalvashi	Irish actor Colin Farrell	Italian actress Monica Bellucci	French politician Ségolène Royal
Vaclav havel.jpg Czech politician Vaclav Havel This image is a candidate for speedy deletion. It may be deleted after Sunday, 18 November 2007.	Finnish President Tarja Halonen.	German Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Ketterle	Sami people are indigenous to Lapland.
Hungarian composer, Bela Bartok	BjorkDebut.jpg Icelandic singer, Björk	Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso

I fail to see why this is controversial. It should be in the article. Maybe with fewer images. It could also use some americans. (wow, never thought I'd type that, most of the time there are too many americans.) futurebird 13:28, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• There was an effort to demonstrate ethnic characteristics from regions where white people had migrated long ago, without reinforcing stereotypes. Populations in America, Australia, and South Africa represent more recent migrations. The number of people included grew to try to cover all the bases. --Kevin Murray 14:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
• Some people at WP oppose any galleries in articles and prefer to see them at Commons linked from the article. --Kevin Murray 14:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Classifications such as "white" are social constructs, they vary depending on the society in which the label is used. 150 years ago Jewish people in the USA would not have been considered "white", neither would Irish people. So who or what a "white person" is depends on context, both current cultural context and historical context. There has been some attempt in the past to equate "white people" with European people, or people of European descent, but of course many people who are of European descent are not considered "white" in some parts of the world. I remember a smilar dispute on the black people article where some editors contended that only people of African descent were black people. Another problem is the near synonymous usage of Caucasian and "white" in North America, something that does not exist in Europe. One of the problems is the contention that "white people" are a "race", but there is precious little evidence that the term "white" has the sort of "racial" classification that say Caucasian has. I remain unconvinced about the usefulness or validity of a gallery. There's no such thing as a "typical" person, whatever description is used, most variation is at the local level and not the "racial" level. What is a "typical" white person? I don't think anyone can answer this question. Alun 16:48, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Wobble, I respect you opinion, but maybe a gallery could be a way to show diversity? Just a thought... futurebird 16:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

My problem with this suggestion is my problem with the gallery - white people are white in a given context and the gallery takes photos out of context. Now, perhaps in some countries the context is so stable that there is wide agreement as to who is white, and everyone who people think is white actually self-idnetify as white. I know this was not the case in the US at certain times in history, nor is it the case in many other countries. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Look, part of the problem with this issue is that people keep trying to stipulate what should or shouldn't be included in the article on the basis of conclusions that the article itself doesn't reflect or hasn't reached. Unless we were going to include pictures of people who are considered white and who it is that considers them so, then there probably is no place for a picture gallery. I should add though, that I am a bit confused as to the extent to which the English language Wikipedia is supposed to reflect obscure disagreements among Brazilians or 16th century colonists over how to apply the term whiteness. Personally, I don't see how such ideas are any more relevant to this article than prehistoric man's ideas about "dogness" are to the dog article (astute observers will note that the "dog" article editors haven't hesitated to put up a picture of just one animal that at least most people agree is a dog). W.M. O'Quinlan 19:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, English-language wikipedia doesn't actually just cover things from an English-speaking point of view - that would be systemic bias. It obviously happens unintentionally and naturally, but we're supposed to work against it, not for it. As to comparing 16th century ideas to prehistoric ideas, the factor discriminating between them is that one is historic, and the other is prehistoric; that is, we have no way whatsoever of knowing about one, whereas we have historical documents and historical analyses for the other. SamBC(talk) 20:31, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

You're right about the distinction between history and prehistory, but that is not really what I was getting at (I just happened to pick a poor analog for that example; any historical period would do, and I think you'd find that there isn't this obsession with trying to reconcile definitions across time). In the case of avoiding systemic bias, I understand that to a point, but I think the examples used to counteract perceived bias are often very selective and are given disproportionate weight and significance in their respective articles. So I'm not suggesting that there is no place for them whatsoever, but they shouldn't be given more authority than they're due. W.M. O'Quinlan 22:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

i like the collage so far good ,but it lacks more white diversity,i would like to see some north africans such as zindene zadane who is not really french but a north african berber,and also the current miss egypt ehsan hatem would be some good famous people to add the pictures also more middle easterners i see you only have one there from turkey.how about some iranians or north indians--Mikmik2953 (talk) 05:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why Is Bjork Included In The White Gallery ?

When me and my friends first saw her we said she looked like a mixed race Euroasian. None of us thought she looked White and I am sure most people in general will confuse her for being part Asian because of her Asian shaped eyes and jet black oriental like hair. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BrazilianGuido (talk • contribs)

I think this just supports my previous comment. Everyone thinks they know what a "white" person looks like, but in actual fact the overwhelming majority of variation is within group and not between group. Coupled with the differences of perception of who or what a "white" person is that are learned from cultural experience, and therefore vary dramatically from culture to culture, we get a very different perception of what a "white" person looks like from people from different parts of the world. So Björk shouldn't be included because she doesn't "look white" to some editors, but presumably she obviously is "white" to other editors, after all she comes from Iceland, which was colonised very recently from Norway and Ireland? In the past some editors here have tried to only include people with light hair and skin and blue eyes, and some have objected to the inclusion of Mediterranean people because they are "too dark", yet others have claimed that people from the Near East are not European and so not "white", while others contend that they are "white" because they are Caucasian. I think this goes to the heart of the problem, everyone thinks that their cultural perception of "white" is the correct one and think that the perceptions of other editors who come from different parts of the world, and therefore have different ideas about what "white" means are just plain wrong. Alun 05:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I knew this was going to happen. Next will be Tom Jones...because he has a tan. Deja vu? Pfft!. Jeeny 06:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Amen??? ;)--Ramdrake 12:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Amen? People like Björk are, not surprisingly, the exception rather than the rule to something like "whiteness" (or more broadly, race). Take any category you think you know and there will be some sample member of that category that looks a little like another category's member; it isn't exclusive to human beings. On a separate note, it only makes it look even more like you're grasping at straws when you try to convince others on such a shady, tenuous basis as this. (Oh yeah, and sock-puppetry doesn't fool anyone.) W.M. O'Quinlan 14:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but would you mind being more specific with your accusations, and substantiating them? SamBC(talk) 16:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

WM, could you please clarify a couple of things. Who's argument is "clutching at straws" in your opinion? You do not direct your comment at any particular editor. I see no evidence that Björk is somehow an "exception", she is just a normal Icelandic person. Björk may have a relatively uncommon hair colour for an Icelandic person, but that is not the same as being exceptional, for example about 80% of Icelandic people have light coloured hair, which means that 1 in 5 have dark hair, hardly exceptional. And who are you accusing of sockpuppetry? It's very difficult to know who you are addressing when you make obscure remarks on one of these talk pages. Please try to be more explicit. Cheers. Alun 17:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion, but I was saying "Amen" to Alun's comment, mostly, and also in part to Jeeny's. While Björk may not look white, she is indeniably of a particular ethnic group (Icelandic)usually regarded as "white", thus one shouldn't discount her for looking the way she looks.--Ramdrake 17:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If we are talking about biological groups, the notion of "an exception to the rule" has been unscientific since Darwin, for whom groups have no reality other than statistical and the "exceptions" are at least if not more important than the norm or ideal type. If we are talking about social groups - which I think we must be, in this article - we need two empirical data: how does Bjork self-identify, and what do "white people" consider "typical?" Knowing Bjork as well as I do I have no idea how she would answer the first question or if she would even care to. As for the second questions, while I think that while there may in fact be a number of different answers to the question (Himmler, Garrison Keiler, and DW Griffith may all have had ideas - and their ideas may well be different, and also are we sure that their ideas were shared by most people? I take this question seriously, seriously enough to suppose that there are answers and seriously enough to state right now that I will not guess what they are or make them up. Let's see what reliable, appropriate, verifiable sources say.) Slrubenstein | Talk 17:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the vagaries. I was referring BrazilianGuido's comment as sock-puppetry because it sounds to me like nothing more than Wobble or Jeeny's attempt at including a comment that neither one wanted to seem directly responsible for (because it srikes me as being that absurd). If I am wrong, then I apologize, but the wording and timing of that comment seems very odd to me, especially in light of the fact that BrazilianGuido is a very new username with few contributions and thus looks to me like someone's sock-puppet.

I consider that line of argument (that is, the mentioning of how Bjork doesn't look white) as "grasping at straws" because it attempts to induce very strong conclusions (namely, that "whiteness" is nothing more than a form of social consensus) from a very limited and personal experience (e.g. a glance at a thumbnail on an internet webpage). When I say that she is an "exception to the rule" I mean that for a firm majority of people, it is not difficult to identify their ancestry. It's true, Bjork does look like she could have some Asian ancestry, but one is in no position to conclude on that basis that the category "race" has no real biological foundation. Pick any category of nature that you like, and you'll find that not every instance seems to agree with the given set of conditions (for instance, there are two species of chimpanzee which humans cannot even differentiate by appearance, but it doesn't follow from this that the differences must therefore be culturally or socially defined). W.M. O'Quinlan 23:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

What hapenned to AGF.Muntuwandi 00:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, i would like to act in good faith but frankly it is hard to think that WMO knows what he is talking about here. "For a firm majority of people" - well, definitely not life scientists or social scientists. Let me take you at good faith and accept you are referring to someone - who? Please provide a reliable and verifiable source. That race is a biologically meaningless category is the consensus among evolutionary scientists. Your (WMO) last sentence is simply a non-sequitor, it does not bear on the topic of this article, it does not bear on discussions of race or ethnicity, and it does not bear on this thread. Let's just drop this silly thread and get back to the business of working on the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:54, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

No, you're wrong about evolutionary scientists having reached a consensus on the issue; cultural anthropologists perhaps have, but there are plenty of evolutionary scientists and other academics who think there are meaningful distinctions between the races (and you needn't look far to find them publishing to this effect; take, for instance, Mainstream Science on Intelligence). I don't know why this should be so controversial, but what I said before about the "firm majority" was simply that anyone can fairly easily and accurately tell where another person's ancestors came from geographically just by looking at them; thus, unlike Bjork, most people (that is, the "firm majority") aren't ambiguous in this respect. I don't need to cite anything for this, it is practically a tautology; we couldn't have "socially constructed" these ideas about race if it weren't true that most people could classify others in this way.

My analogy to the chimpanzees is hardly a non-sequitur, and it does bear heavily on the issue at hand. Try to follow: Wobble and others are arguing that because Bjork cannot be placed into one taxonomic category (namely, whiteness) on the basis of her appearance, there is therefore no reason to think that said category is meaningful in a biological, taxonomic way. So if we assume this to be true, then we should apply the same criteria to other taxonomic considerations (for instance, chimpanzees). Thus, if we take some given chimpanzee and try to categorize him taxonomically (e.g. correctly identify his species (there are two species of chimps)) on the basis of his physical appearance, we will find that we cannot, because there aren't any visible distinctions to be made. Therefore, using Wobble's logic, we are to deduce that there is no meaningful taxonomic distinction to be offered among chimpanzees, just as we deduced about human beings with regard to race. However, as it turns out, we know that this is not true, because in fact there are at least two distinct species of chimpanzees and they cannot even interbreed. Naturally, I am not arguing that human races are by any means the same as species, but if we couldn't get at the right conclusion about chimpanzee taxonomy using Wobble's logic, then why should we think the same logic tells us something true about human beings and their taxonomy? I hope I haven't confused things further, but I too would like to move off of this topic because I don't think helps the article much. Cheers. W.M. O'Quinlan 04:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

"simply that anyone can fairly easily and accurately tell where another person's ancestors came from geographically just by looking at them" - of course I agree with you: all humans have opposable thumbs and shoulders that allow us to swing our arms, and we do not have tails, so it is obvious all our ancestors come from Africa. There are other observable differences that allow me to make very good guesses (uh, lets call them probablistic statements, since we are trying to be scientific here) about what continent some of a person's ancestors come from. I want to emphasize the "continent" and "some." This is not the smae thing as race, nor is it the same as ethnic group. About the chimpanzees, you miss the point. ALL human beings are biologically distinct. It is even likely that there are phenotypic differences between identifical twins, and if you ignore identical twins which are rare there are genetic differences among all human beings. That sometimes and in some places people have selected some biological features as racial markers does not make "race" a biological reality or scientifically meaningful concept, and it certainly does not contradict the assertion, widely held, that races are social constructs. By the way, the "mainstream science" advertisement proves my point. Although the authors claim to repreent some mainstream view, in fact they are a minority, and most of the signatories of the statement are not evolutionary scientists, and indeed, they get basic concepts in evolutionary science, like heritability, flat-out wrong. An advertisement by people, most of whom are untrained dilettants when it comes to the scientific study of human evolution, is hardly a mainstream view no matter what the paid advertisement itself claims. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Remember what we are talking about though; the argument being made was that because Bjork doesn't quite look like most "whites" the category is therefore an invalid one. You and I both agree then that the biological existence of race doesn't in fact hinge on this set of conditions (we probably disagree on other parts of the discussion though). Also, I think we agree that just because there are phenotypic markers which allow most of us to infer one another's ancestries (and of course I mean more specifically than Africa--we didn't come up with the "out of Africa" hypothesis based on phenotypes, we did it based on genetics and fossils) this likewise doesn't mean that race has some biological reality to it. The true test of whether or not there is biological reality to race is of course a biological one. To human geneticists this is not a case closed; the "mainstream science" article doesn't actually prove your point. All it shows is that there are plenty of respected professionals (some of whom are evolutionary psychologists) who disagree with what you and the social scientists are saying. I am not arguing that it is the majority opinion of scholars that race does exist in a biologically meaningful way, but to suggest that there is some consensus and therefore the issue is decided is just wrong; that is not how science works. W.M. O'Quinlan 14:35, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

• • • "because" Bjork doesn't quite look like most "whites"

What do "most whites" look like? Who says Björk doesn't look like "most whites"? No individual person looks like "most whites". This is a really absurd comment and seems to be based on ignorance of the fact that the vast majority of diversity is found within group in the human species. Alun 14:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

This is what the creator of this thread topic said, not what I said. W.M. O'Quinlan (talk) 19:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• • • the category is therefore an invalid one

What "category"? I don't think any anthropologist has ever used Björk's appearance as the defining reason for the non existence of biological race. Alun 14:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

You obviously have not read the thread up to that point because no one is saying anything of the sort. W.M. O'Quinlan (talk) 19:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• • • the biological existence of race doesn't in fact hinge on this set of conditions

What set of conditions? What biological existence of "race"? This article is about "white people" and not the existence of "race". White people are not a "race", or if you are claiming they are, then you need to decide which model of "race" they are equivalent to, because all "biological race" models are based on socially constructed criteria. Alun 14:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly what we're arguing here so you can't take that on assumption. Reread the posts up to that point and try to follow along before you offer that kind of rebuttal. These are all things that either you or other people have said which I was just summarizing for clarifying an argument I made earlier. W.M. O'Quinlan (talk) 19:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I think we agree on the bigger issues. I still stand by what I wrote: first, how does Bjork identify herself, and second, what verifiable sources de we have on Whiteness? Illustrations should illustrate content (and content that complies with the core content policies) and not just be thrown in because we have a fair-use photo. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Bjork's phenotype is easily within Eurasian range which is why she does not strike me as the poster girl for Whiteness. Even the racial anthropology forums that I have posted in have many members who have classified her as not looking fully White/Caucasoid and see traces of Mongoloid in her features like the shape of her eyes which are too slanted this indicating some Mongoloid admixture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BrazilianGuido (talk • contribs) 05:28, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Which just goes to show what a lot of absolute gibberish "racial anthropology" (whatever that is) discussions are, as far as I can see. Some moronic people running neo-nazi sites devoted to "racial typing" have decided that Björk can't be "European" because they do not think she looks right. Sounds like it's right up Joseph Mengele's street. Alun 14:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's a nice blog post by a biologist about using an anthropometric "cranial calculator" to estimate his "race", it's very good and highlights what nonsense this all really is.

Nevertheless, she is from Iceland, whose people are usually considered "white" and unless and until one comes up with a statement from a reliable source which says she identifies otherwise, nobody can count here as anything but "White" on looks alone. There is enough human genetic variety that someone can looklike her and still be "White". Please remember that facts, not personal opinions is what WP is based upon.--Ramdrake 11:54, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

But other than the (apparently huge) issue that Bjork looks Asian, there's nothing wrong with the gallery? If we took out Bjork and added another Icelandic person (one which doesn't look Asian), we could put the gallery in without complaints? The only complaint about the gallery I've seen is that Bjork looks Asian. Is everyone else content with the sample gallery? --Piroteknix 15:35, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Who says Björk looks Asian? Who says that she can't be included just because some odd people think that their personal opinion about what "looks white" (or "looks European" or looks like something that they think is the subject of this page, but can't actually define it) does not encompase the way Björk looks. The reason we don't have a gallery is because a gallery is a stupid idea, there is no accepted universal concept of what "white" is, and you'll never get any consensus about who to include. There's been argument at the English people article for an eternity about who should be included in the infobox picture. As soon as some notables are decided upon, someone raises an objection. Not only is the validity of the concept of "white" at issue, but the acceptance or rejection of any given individual is extremely difficult to get consensus on. We start to get arguments about there being no Germans, or no Armenians or no Israelis etc, untill you'll end up with a gallery of thousands of people, because every group of people with any claim to being "white" will demand representation. This is in addition to the fundamental dafftness of galleries as a concept in the first place. If you want as gallery, then go and play around with commons:White people. You can always put a link to it on the article page. Alun 14:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

sigh… I believe that the inclusion of Björk was deliberate, because she doesn't look stereotypically white, but my almost every formal definition that's ever been put forward seriously, she is. Beyond that, there has been so much hoo-hah over that gallery before, that it really isn't worth keeping. What does it add? Do we really believe it helps anyone understand the content of the article? By the way, take this as an objection. SamBC(talk) 15:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Of course a picture or gallery helps. I don't see how it can't hurt. If anything, the inclusion of a picture that might not be considered white by the majority of people helps us understand what "white" can mean. If Bjork's ancestory is pure Icelandic (or at least not a mix of Asian and European), if she is genetically white, then she's the perfect example of what "white" can mean to people. If she's genetically white, she should definitely be included in the gallery to show how many phenotypes are included in "white." Other than Bjork looking a bit Asian, what other problems with a gallery are there? --Piroteknix 15:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Sources discussed here in recent weeks indicate problems with any idea of anyone being "genetically" white. In any case, including people that some people will look at and say "they aren't white!" is a recipe for edit wars. Can people really not understand what's being said without pictures? If they can, then it's better to avoid the edit wars and the bigot-bait. SamBC(talk) 18:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

• Of course a picture or gallery helps. I don't see how it can't hurt.

So Piroteknix, you are saying that it must hurt? How can anyone be "genetically white", surely it should be "biochemically white", i.e. lacking the biochemical ability to synthesize reasonable quantities of the pigment melanin? This is the whole problem isn't it, a gallery is always going to be a bad idea, there will never be a consensus about who should or should not be included. Alun 15:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• • Way to bring an irrelevant typo into the discussion. I meant it can not hurt the article, but if people argue “omg this guy is .03% Asian, he’s not white,” it’ll be a problem. If we want only pictures of people who are 100%, pure white by heritage and phenotypes, there wouldn’t a person we could use as an example, which also makes this article moot, or hypothetical at best. If there’s not a person in this world that would be, visually and by heritage, considered a “white person” by us on the talk page, there isn’t a person that falls into the category of “white person” in the article. --Piroteknix 15:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The only person here who seems to think that the concept of "100% white" has any relevance or validity is you. No one can ever be 100% genetically "white", or to put it another way, we are all at least 30% banana. Alun 15:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• I don't see any advantage of keeping the Bjork picture, with the hand on the face obscuring the features. The style of the photo seems to be deliberately ambiguous and androgynous through either a manipulation of makeup or effects of the camera etc. Perhaps we should seek another photo of the person or of another Icelander. --Kevin Murray 15:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd side with Alun on this, and I'd rather say we lose the entire gallery. It's just a giant edit-war here! sign, for all instances and purposes. And if one must keep the gallery, I'd say we should keep Björk's picture, as an example of how far the diversity of "white" people can go.--Ramdrake 15:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

RD, I don't say take Bjork out, but that could be virtually anyone under that makeup and image manipulation. --Kevin Murray 15:18, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

::: RD, I was a big proponent of the gallery a few months back. I still believe that it has potential value as expressed by Alun above, but the fight to keep it from becoming a popularity contest or POV tool is overwhelming. I'd like to see this included as a great demonstration of diversity, but am skeptical of the practicality. --Kevin Murray 15:18, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

You're saying it's hard to prove that anyone is genetically white, right? Then the page about "white people" and "black people" are hypothetical: no one (or almost no one) falls into the category of "white" or "black." Someone is 98.5% European and 1.5% Asian and he or she isn’t considered a good candidate for a picture of a white person. You say Bjork (and other people of questionable or arguable white phenotypes) shouldn’t be in the gallery because it causes “hoo-hah.” This means anyone who isn’t 100% pure genetically white could be arguable, making the entire concept of a (pure) “white” person or “black” person moot. --Piroteknix 15:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Your comment is quite confused, but I'll try to answer what I think you mean. There is no such thing as "genetically white", there's no such thing as "98% white", there's no such thing as "50% white". White is a social construct, one is "white" if one is accepted as "white" by a community, one is not "white" if one is not accepted as "white" by a community or society, irrespective of that person's ancestry. It's not about biology, it's about culture and society. The only people here who claim that Björk is of "questionable" anything are those who cling to a "biological conception of whiteness", but there is no such thing. No person is ever "100% pure genetically" anything except perhaps 100% genetically themselves, we are all genetically unique after all. I have never said that Björk shouldn't be in the gallery, I think that a gallery is a stupid idea full stop, because it is irrelevant and can never be of any use, what will it illustrate? The only thing genetics has to do with "whiteness" is that people who have pale skin are incapable of producing melanin, if genetics is your definition of "white" then we should include all people who fail to produce a certain level of melanin as "white"? Is that what you are saying? I suppose this would therefore include quite a lot of Asians as "white" anyway though. It's the only genetic basis for "white" that I can think of. Alun 15:26, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I support the idea of a gallery because no one is genetically, by heritage, pure, 100% white. The idea that Bjork shouldn't be in the gallery goes against the article. You're saying the gallery shouldn't be included because it doesn't contribute anything? It illustrates the diversity of people considered white by society. I mentioned pure whiteness because it's the only against Bjork. She’s from Iceland, so she would be considered white because of her heritage, and she is socially considered white because she’s Icelandic, so there only reason she shouldn’t be in is because someone thinks she looks Asian. --Piroteknix 15:38, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Alun, I think Piroteknix here is trying very hard agree with you. :) To all, while I think a gallery might be good for illustrative purposes of the diversity of white people, I think we'll always run into situations like this. Now, the question is: do we want to put up with explaining why such objections as "they aren't white because" are pointless again and again, or jsut remove the gallery and spare ourselves the nonsensical debates? I put the question to you.--Ramdrake 15:45, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• I misspoke above. The gallery example here was deemed irrelevant to White people months ago, and if practical it is potentially relevant to European people. Alun is absolutely correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevin Murray (talk • contribs)

Ok, Piroteknix, I think we agree on this, I was misunderstanding your point of view. Conceptually the idea of having a broad range of people may be valid, though I'm unconvinced of the validity of a gallery personally. But I think there is a real problem with getting any sort of consensus about what "white" means vis a vis a gallery, and who is "representative". I still think the commons is the way to go. I also think that Kevin's idea that this is more appropriate to European people has a great deal of validity. Alun 16:54, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

If we use a broad enough range of people, we wouldn't need "representatives," we only need enough people to cover the characteristics mentioned in the article. We wouldn't need a picture of a person from every one country in which people are considered white, just enough to cover the basics. --Piroteknix 20:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

LOL. Absolutely hilarious. You want to illustrate a concept on which barely two people can agree and then, surprise surprise, you disagree over whom you should use to illustrate it. "White" is an invention, not a real thing. It's oppositional to "black", which we had to invent because we homogenised people from many different cultures and ethnicities (by enslaving them). This, by the way, is nonsense: "I support the idea of a gallery because no one is genetically, by heritage, pure, 100% white." "White" is entirely descriptive, nothing to do with genetics, and the idea of being "pure" white is so disgusting that you'd think people would be ashamed to bandy it about. (Even allowing it as a concept is a bad thing.) Obviously not though. As I point out below, Osama bin Laden considers himself "white". So do Berbers. Let's have a picture of Zidane next to Björk's. B-b-but... yeah, I know. He doesn't look half pastyfaced enough for the "purist". The gallery is clearly intended as a metric for readers to be able to have a definitive source for the descriptive "white": you measure up your person against our gallery, and if they fit the stereotype we provide, they're "white". Nice one. Grace Note 05:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah, we absolutely disagree. Especially Alun saying "Ok, Piroteknix, I think we agree on this." I'm mulatto (50% black, 50% French-Canadian more or less, let’s not get into it), I’m not a “purist” who only wants pure, 100% Aryans on the page, disallowing anyone who is darker than this shade or that shade to be “white.” That’s the opposite of the point that would be made by the gallery. I mean "pure" in the sense that the person's father isn't from Kenya and his or her mother isn't from Thailand: the person obviously has descendants from Europe that would also be considered “white”. I’m half black and you're calling me a purist?! That’s ludicrous. I said we should have pictures to illustrate the variety of people that could be considered white because “white” has such a broad spectrum. A gallery would only be a fraction of the people considered white, but broad enough to show that you don’t have to have THIS skin tone to be white. It wouldn’t be the “White Chart” where, if a person fall between this color and that color, he or she can be white, but to hell with the rest of you. There is an article on “white people,” so there should, hypothetically, be at least one person who would fall under that category. If white is “invented,” and “not a real thing,” and the same for “black people,” why would we even have articles for them. That makes the articles, especially any physical definition of a person (“pale skin”), or any physical location of heritage (“of European ancestry”), an opinion by the writer(s), and these articles can never be considered NPOV. --Piroteknix 15:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Just a correction, I don't think that you have contributed to the homogenisation of any people. You were not in existence during those times. Muntuwandi 05:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Another correction: computers and steam locomotives and atom bombs were all invented but they have Wikipedia articles. Just because something is invented does not mean we should not have an article on it. I would have thought this was obvious but Piroteknix seems to think that the opposite is the case and we need to be clear on this. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

"White" isn't something you can hold in your hand like the other things. It was invented in the sense that it's a category to put people into, but everyone here seems to think there's no way to tell if someone is in this category or not. I agree, a general consensus about someone's skin tone shouldn't be the way to tell if someone is white, but if that's not the way, what is? If there isn't a surefire way to tell, and not everyone will agree that a person is white, can we not be sure that anyone actually falls into the category of white or black? --Piroteknix 23:19, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Let me try to explain: what most editors here argue about is that there isn't a single definition of "white" that everyone will agree with. While there are some people most will agree are "white", where each people draws the line between "white" and "non-white" (or "other than white") is actually quite subective, a definite matter of interpretation, and possibly the subject of hundreds of different definitions: are non-Europeans "white"? are non-Christians "white"? You may think the answer is obvious, but in the past, some editors here have answered both questions with a resounding "no". So, please forgive if some editors here react rather sensitively each time the question is potentially brought up. Personnally, I think there are some people you can definitely put in the category, but there are also a lot of people that others would disagree about if you tried to put them in a category, and unfortunately, we have all become rather sensitive to the issue here. Hope my explanation makes sense. I'm personnally an ethnic mix myself (although I do identify as French-Canadian culturally), so I guess the issue has resonance with me, has it does for many, many of us.--Ramdrake 00:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Piroteknix writes, "everyone here seems to think there's no way to tell if someone is in this category or not." This is a red-herring. Editors never express their own views, only verifiable views expressing a notable point of view. I have said several times that once we have laid out the notable, verifiable views of who is white, we can add photos to illustrate. But our content policies apply to photos as much as they do to words. When we add photos they should illustrate all notable views, even conflicting ones. But our additions should illustrate the article and be guided by V, RS, and NPOV. As far as I am concerned all other issues are red-herrings. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

This discussion isn't about Wikipedia editors' opinions on whiteness, and until we can all resist the impulse to inject our own thoughts about whiteness into the article, talk of a picture gallery should be suspended. We have no business making up a gallery depicting white people if we don't have a reasonable source or sources that say what or whom such a gallery should depict. W.M. O'Quinlan 18:48, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

And even then, it would be white people according to such a source. Agreed.--Ramdrake 18:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jossi

User:Jossi reverted to this version of the article because s/he claimed it had a "better quotation". It did not have a better quotation. It did not have a direct quotation from Blumenbach. My version of the article did have a direct quotation. Would Jossi please explain this reasoning?----^DarkTea© 16:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

You deleted a good source. I have re-added it and consolidated Blumenbach's opinions of others. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

We need to add to Blumenbach stuff, that many of his theories were adopted by nazi Germany. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:19, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] lead image

This article needs an image in the lead. I suggest maybe one of Ronald Reagan or someone else who is white and famous. There are millions of white people; it shouldn't be too difficult to find an image. Yahel Guhan 02:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

That is the problem, there are too many people so disputes will arise as to whether any one person is representative of the whole group. Muntuwandi 03:05, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no one photo that will encompass the large variety of persons that are considered "white". ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

(ec) I understand, but you said yourself, that there "are millions of white people" so how could one image represent all white people? I don't think Ronald Reagan can represent White people IMO, as there will often be those who object. What about Bill Clinton? Again, whiteness is arbitrary, and it is difficult to use one, two or even 4 or more images to cover the spectrum, and every one will have their own view as who is "white". Again how can one image represent the whole "white race", since there are millions, if not billions? Jeeny ^(talk) 03:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC) UnsignedIP -->

Here is another idea. We do something similar to what is done on black people. Have an image which actually is a collection of multiple images. Yahel Guhan 23:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Let's go for Osama bin Laden. He thinks he's white. That's kind of the problem with broadbrush definitional terms, isn't it? They depend on whom you're talking to. Grace Note 05:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

LOL. I agree 100%! I don't know if you were here a few months ago (re: this article) There were a bunch, (now indef banned) that wanted only the "pure white race" represented (no tanned whites either), (IE. Aryan, as in German, blonde, blue-eyed, etc.) in the article. Sheesh. lol. Jeeny ^(talk) 05:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] INTERESTING ADDITION: ANCESTRY AND WHITE PEOPLE

SEE:

According to the study all non-African populations are more closely related to each other than to Africans consistent with the hypothesis that all non-Africans are descended from a single African population. Europeans are most closely related to East Asians and least related to Africans. However of all the non-African populations, Europeans are most closely related to Africans. As the genetic distance from Africa to Europe (16.6) is shorter than the genetic distance from Africa to East Asia (20.6) and even much shorter than the Genetic distance from Africa to Australia. Cavalli-Sforza proposes that the simplest explanation for this short genetic distance is that substantial gene exchange has taken place between the nearby continents. Cavalli-Sforza also proposes that both Asian and African populations contributed to the settlement of Europe which began 40 000 years ago. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Europe has a genetic variation in general of about a third of that of other continents.^[1][2]

THIS TYPE OF INFORMATION IS IMPORTANT FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS:

1. THE FACT THAT DARK SKINNED PEOPLES, IN SOME CASES VERY DARK SKINNED PEOPLES LIKE INDIANS, NATIVE AMERICANS, NATIVE AUSTRALIANS, ETC ARE LESS RELATED TO SUBSAHARAN AFRICANS THAN WHITE EUROPEANS.

2. THE FACT THAT RACIALIZED EUROPEAN SOCIETIES HAVE MORE OR LESS SPREAD THE MYTH OF US AND THEM (COLORED VERSUS WHITE PEOPLE), THEM BEING ALL THE OTHER "COLORED" PEOPLES, AS IF ALL THE OTHER COLORED PEOPLES WERE CLOSER RELATED, ON THE ONE HAND, AND WHITES FUTHER AWAY FROM THEM ALL.

3. POINTS OUT HOW MEANINGLESS IS SKIN PIGMENTATION AND SUPERFICIAL FEATURES TO TRY AND INFER ANCESTRY, A KEY COMPONENT IN THE CONCEPT OF RACE.

THEREFORE I SUGGEST THAT THIS INFORMATION IS SOMEHOW USED AND ELABORATED ON IN THIS ARTICLE. IT IS VERY INFORMATIVE TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE MYTHS THAT STILL SURROUND RACIALIZED VIEWS OF WHITE AND NON-WHITE PEOPLES. JAN —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 11:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How do you solve a problem like Hayden5650?

Banned user Hayden is back and reverting multiple times. I have semi-protected the page, at least for a few days, so we don't have to waste time reverting him. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:06, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think that semi-protection should be permanent on sensitive articles. --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:44, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree Kevin. This one and Negro, Negroid as for the past few days he's been all over them. ~Jeeny ^(talk) 00:37, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I will avoid personal attacks, and will strive to be civil, to fellow wikipedians. As far as i see it, banned user are like outlaws. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC) How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Sarsaparilla (talk) 18:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page protection HELP

It says it is semi-protected: "Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism." Well, I'm registered, and am a long time editor, well kinda, yet I can't edit. So are we to be punished because of the racist troll Hayden the crusader? -Jeeny ^(talk) 05:24, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

• I think that SL goofed and protected rather than semi protected, which was his stated intent. Probably just need to find another admin to fix this if he is off-line. --Kevin Murray (talk) 05:30, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I think so too. What a goof. :p -Jeeny ^(talk) 05:57, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Look on the bright side, it's a good reason to get away from the computer and go dancing. WP will be here tomorrow, but there is only one Saturday night each week. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 06:10, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I goofed. I fixed it now. Sorry. You can go bck to work on it - by the way, I see real improvement on the page, good progress! Slrubenstein | Talk 12:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No pictures

In stark contrast with black people, white people has absolutely no photos of white people at all? JayKeaton (talk) 03:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a perfectly good gallery of white people in the commons which is linked in the see also section of this article. There has been an inordinate amount of squabbling about whether this article should or should not have any images of white people, but there is even more squabbling when someone tries to include an image, everyone has a different opinion about who should be included. In this particular article images have just led to edit wars, so the best policy has been to have the gallery at the commons. This also sorts out the problem of unfree images because the commons only contains free images. There are several threads above about this subject if you want to see the numerous discussions about this subject. All the best. Alun (talk) 07:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see what the fuss is about. There is enough room in this article for an old female, a young female, an old man, a young man and a baby. It doesn't really matter who they are just as long as it relates to the article, which is white people. Could even mix it up a little by showing one or two images of white people from history. I don't think we should let someone elses squabbles spoil the quality of this article, that's like letting the terrorists win. JayKeaton (talk) 11:37, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I have added one picture that I believe is certainly controversy-proof. 69.107.76.201 (talk) 09:37, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AUSTRALIA

More emphasis on Australian perceptions of white and how the barrier between Nordics and Mediterraneans still exist. Southern Europeans are still not widely regarded as white in that country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.58.18 (talk) 09:29, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

That is somewhat true, but the 2006 census shows that half the Italian population have origins other than Italian, almost overwhelmingly other European origins such as Irish, English, Scottish, showing that the future of Italian-Australians will be multi-ethnic, which shows a growing social acceptance with Northern Europeans; I would highly not consider them to be "divided by a barrier".

The government has always considered every European as white including Italians, Greeks, macedonians, Portuguese etc. See White Australia policy. Plus I would consider rugby player Mark Ricciuto, Natalie Imbruglia, and the Veronicas as white persons, but there will always be some who consider them white and others who dont. Galati (talk) 18:54, 25 December 2007 (UTC)Galati

Well this is all very relative, popular perceptions. In Europe, some Europeans (a bit idiotic in my opinion) do not consider Australians white at all or anyone who is not from Europe, for they are all very mixed and so on.In fact whites in all those places are becoming minorities and some extremists in Europe think that those "whites" remaining are all suspect. But that has to do with extremist views rather than interesting information for a encyclo. To see what I mean look at the population structure of California, which is meaningful in relation to what is going on in those places. Only about 40% identify a white. It is logical that 40% of people who are supposed to be white, living among 60% who are not white, are not that white indeed, and in any case those places cannot be considered white territories anymore. The problem is that this issue has often racist overtones and a lot of people do not want to see that most of the European colonies f the past are not white anymore, although some citizens from those places overreact trying to convince themselves and others that their countries and they themselves are very white. I think a good example is the comment from this user from Australia, a territory of dubious white majorities right now, who likes to claim that he is whiter than other Europeans. It is a interesting case of these types of reactions, which can be understood in very racialized societies that are becoming non-White or which are non-White anymore. John.

By the way, there is a lot of ignorance in relation to skin pigmentation in Southern Europeans and people seem keen to ignore all scientific evidence and continue with their stereotypes. They do not even read the article. See here>:

http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/chem/faculty/leontis/chem447/PDF_files/Jablonski_skin_color_2000.pdf

It is a scientific study that is already in the article and lots of people here seem to ignore. It measures the skin pigmentation of different populations in areas of the body not exposed to the sun. The Spaniards (samples from two regions in Spain), in spite of living in a Mediterranean area, where a darker skin pigmentation is to be expected due to exposure to the sun, as the article states, show a skin pigmentation in unexposed areas similar or even lighter than that of Northern Europeans. Spaniards have an observed reflectance of around 65. For a comparison, Namibians have around 22-25, North Africans (Tunisians) around 56 (Morrocans) around 54, in Japan 55. What about Europe. In London it is 62, darker than in Spain, although in other areas it is slightly lighter at 66.In Ireland 64-65. In Belgium 63, again darker than in Spain. So much for so much ignorance about the subject, that seems very common in this Anglosphere full of people who think that Spaniards or other South Europeans are like Mexicans. Funny they do not think that Jamacans are not like the British. PS. It should be mentioned, thought, that pale skin is considered unattrative in Spain and that most people will almost kill to get some colour or a good tan, in the beaches or in even using sunbeds. In fact most people do not consider pale skin attractive, so I do not think why so much fuss about such a ridiculous issue. The information is there, in any case. Jan.

[edit] ARGENTINA

The user Dúnadan has removed my entire paragraph of text and replaced it with his, with no reason whatsoever. If you follow his edits, you can clearly see that he has an agenda, as he has been reverting and removing sections from articles concerning Argentine demographics all across the wiki.

I consider my original text was apropiate for the article, yet the one posted by the Dúnadan is a clear copy-paste of what he typed into Demographics of Argentina. In both articles, Dúnadan has reintroduced the controversial UBA study that says 56% of Argentines have amerindian descent. This study has been proven wrong by many others, such as [1], as well as arguments explaining that the supposed "amerindian" markers analized are also present in Spanish and Galician populations, of which Argentina has plenty of descendants.

As a result, the UBA study was considered too controversial, and a consensus was reached to keep it out of the Demographics of Argentina article. Yet this user has been adding it again, and even worse, HAS REWRITTEN MY COUNTRIBUTION WITH NO REASON WHATSOEVER, as he basically posted the same information with a different rewording.

I've made more than 500 contributions to the Wiki, with a dynamic IP, but it's pretty sad to see that so many editors are willing to side against an anonymous editor simply because he's anonymous. I guess I'll have to create a nickname for myself, even though that undermines the purpose of the Wiki itself.

Please take a look on this info I gave you. The genetic study has no bearing whatsoever in the article, unless you also want to include genetic studies on Canada, the USA, Brazil, or Australia, which also show similar levels of admixture. Regards,

--200.117.168.68 (talk) 00:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

My reply Dlohcierekim Deleted? 01:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dlohcierekim. I will like to point out just a couple of points concerning 200.117's claims:

The "UBA" study, is a study conducted by the Genetics Department of the University of Buenos Aires, whose findings have been corroborated by numerous studies; these findings were also accepted by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the Government of Argentina.[2], [3]. This study has not been challenged by the Academic community, so there is no "Academic" controversy. The only controversy is that of some Wikipedian users (like the above) who happen to dislike or disagree with the results. I have invited some of them (I have never met 200.117) to provide equally reliable sources to prove that the UBA study has been "proven wrong" other than their own opinions (the link he provides is broken, and other links provided in the past related to discussion amongst geneticists of general genetic tests not on Argentina's particular case). One user actually provided the link to the Ministry of Education which ends up with the following words:

""The information herein summarized is based on scientific observations that allow [us] to redefine the belief in the purported European origin of all the inhabitants of the Argentine territory. According to our results, and many others, generated by different research groups in our country, we can confirm a substantial genetic contribution of the original peoples of the Americas into the current constitution of the Argentine population. Researches of this kind tend to contribute to the characterization of our country's identity in a respectful and anti-discriminatory way" (end of quote). [4]

A similar discussion took place at the Spanish Wikipedia with the involvement of several users. (Part of the systemic bias at the English Wikipedia is that there are just a few Argentine users not precisely representative of the entire population). There, the users agreed that the studies were valid, and therefore the information was not only kept at es:Argentina, but a new comprehensive and very informative article was created concerning the Argentine genetic composition es:Composición étnica de Argentina.

I will also like to point out that I did not delete his "source". In fact, his source (which happens to be the CIA Factbook) is included in the first sentence of my edits. I simply expanded and complemented the information presented.

I will copy this paragraph to Talk:White American and Talk:Demographics of Argentina and will welcome your opinion on the matter. I would be happy to respond any questions and participate in the debate as long as the results and consensus actually complies with Wikipedia's policies of WP:NOR, WP:Verifiability and WP:NPOV.

--the Dúnadan 01:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I am aware of the Dispute Resolution venue, even though, in my past experience, it has been of very little help. Honestly, I don't think this issue merits Dispute Resolution. When an edit is comprehensive and fully reliable, and the other is POV and not referenced, I think that the latter clearly violates Wikipedia's three core principles.

--the Dúnadan 01:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I've adopted a username and will try to follow your advice. Regards,

--Dharma for one (talk) 01:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello. I'm the formerly-anonymous user 200.117.168.68, having finally adopted a nickname to clear up the confusion. I should have brought this argument to you instead of allowing the edit war to escalate.

My main beef with your edit in the White People article comes from the fact that you decided to erase my entire contribution as opposed to building up on it, which was a rude thing to do, and from your decision to include the controversial UBA study, which contradicts many previous studies on the matter, such as [5] or [6]. Additionally, I don't believe genetic studies belong in the "White People" article, since this article deals with *social definitions* of "white people", not actual genetics.

The UBA study is controversial, because it's based on a sample of 200 Argentineans and uses a form of genetic testing that only traces one lineage from either the mother or the father's side. The overwhelming majority of genetic studies on Argentinian population shows no major differences between the admixtures of white Argentinians as compared to, say, white Canadians or Americans.

I'm not trying to deny that there's an amerindian component to Argentine population. Of course there is. But this component may range from 5% to 56% of the population, depending on the study cited, and does not make Argentine demographics any less different from other "Areas of New Settlement". Either we also include genetic studies showing admixture in Canada, Australia, and the US, or we don't include any genetic study at all. The white people article is supposed to deal with cultural and census definitions, after all, and no country in the world uses genetic testing for its census definitions.

Regards,

--Dharma for one (talk) 01:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I would be more than happy to include not only reliable, but pertinent sources into solving any issue. However, this is not the case. Let me outline my comment:

• I did not erase your "source" that claims that Argentina's population is 97% White. It is still there, however it is contextualized.
• The UBA study has not been contradicted. The first link you provide is broken (you might have an account that lets you access it, but not us). The second one does not contradict it. It simply says that Whites are majority, and Amerindians a small minority. No mention whatsoever of Mestizos or admixtures. Let's not misuse our sources to claim they say what they do not say.
• The UBA study was accepted and endorsed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the Government of Argentina. Their presentation even states that several other genetic studies actually confirm what the UBA claims. They present it as a way to change the false historical conceptions and to end discrimination.
• This is not the place to discuss the intricacies of Statistics (I recommend a book on it), but a few highlights will help:

• This study is the first to include major urban centers of all regions. (All previous studies relied only on Buenos Aires).
• It is a random sample of 310 individuals not 100.
• The random was statistically chosen; most studies with over 90% accuracy require as little as 30 individuals if the sample is randomly or stochastically selected and Gaussian normality is assumed. That is the very core or foundation of Statistics: you don't need to test the entire population.

• I cannot say anything about admixture in the US or Canada, or how it compares (if at all) to Argentine. If you have sources of other genetic studies, we might discuss.
• Also, the study claims that 56% of Argentines has an Amerindian ancestor. It does not say anything on the "percentage" of Amerindian ancestry per individual. It can be 1% or it can be 100%. Do not confuse what the study claims.
• Last, but not least, Wikipedia does not work on "content socialism", but on continuous improvement. If you want to include genetic reserach in Demographics of the United States or Demographics of Canada, please feel free to include it there. This is not an "either-or" situation. In this particular case, the inclusion of this genetic study is fully compliant with Wikipedia's rules.

Thanks for registering at Wikipedia. I would recommend you to review the policies and guidelines that rule our community, and wish you a happy editing. --the Dúnadan 02:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

It's good to see that we are both willing to resolve this dispute. Some objections:

• I did not erase your "source" that claims that Argentina's population is 97% White. It is still there, however it is contextualized.

My text was already "contextualized". All you did was reword it differently.

• The UBA study has not been contradicted. The first link you provide is broken (you might have an account that lets you access it, but not us). The second one does not contradict it. It simply says that Whites are majority, and Amerindians a small minority. No mention whatsoever of Mestizos or admixtures. Let's not misuse our sources to claim they say what they do not say.

The second study clearly states, and I quote: the minisatellite bin distribution of the metropolitan population is not significantly different from other Caucasian populations., which is quite significant considering Argentina's population is around 90% urban. As for the first study, it gives a 19.4% Amerindian contribution, using the Bayesian clustering algorithm structure.

• This is not the place to discuss the intricacies of Statistics

Agreed.

Additionally, you have failed to address my original point, which is that genetic studies have no bearing on an article about cultural and census definitions of white people. In case you didn't notice, the section you edited is titled: Census and social definitions in different regions. The UBA study may be suitable for an article like Demographics of Argentina, but certainly not where you placed it. You might want to read the original talk page of the article to see the previous debates that have already been held on the matter. --Dharma for one (talk) 02:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you don't understand what is meant by "contextualizing"; contextualizing is rewording to reflect the context in which a particular definition is being given. Like you pointed out the title of the section is "census and social definitions..." (no need to bold it, unless you intend something). Well, if you read the other sections, you will see... well... definitions of what "white" means for a certain country both in census and socially. [Please read the other sections]. Your text simply stated that Argentina has 97% Europeans and that they come from this and that country, and that the "most conservative" [btw not true] estimate is 85%. There is no "definition", but a statistical demographic description which happens to be incomplete. How do we contextualize it and make it actually give a definition of what White means for Argentina? Well first by:

• explaining that there is no description of White in the census, but simply self-ascription (i.e. they asked the population, what do you consider yourself to be? Not surprisingly, the great majority of Argentines say "White". (A similar survey reported that the great majority of Chileans also claim to be White or Europeans, again, not surprisingly).
• explaining that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology supports the findings of UBA and other studies that confirm that the admixture has been significant, and that by acknowledging it, it would bring tear down discrimination in the country, as the link suggest. Maybe we should make this more clear in the section so that the reader doesn't have to click on the link to confirm it. For example, the section of US does speak of DNA and white admixture in blacks. So, I guess it is pertinent to talk about it on the Argentina subsection.

Finally, again, I cannot confirm the first study: it is a broken link. Links and sources must be WP:Verifiable, yours isn't. The second source simply says that they "do not differ from other Caucasian population" in "metropolitan pops". Two things. "Caucasian population" like the US contain admixture (so there is no contradiction either), and secondly no definition of which urban populations are given. I think a further review of the actual content of the article is needed before claiming that "it contradicts" studies, confirmed by several other studies, and accepted by the Ministry of Education and Science.

--the Dúnadan 03:34, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I know exactly what the meaning of "contextualizing" is, and I believe my original text was properly contextualized, as it mentioned the fact that the Argentine census is based on self-identification, and it made a comparison with Argentina, and other "Areas of New Settlement", which is the geographic and economic term used to describe countries outside of Europe that obtained the bulk of their populations through European immigration in the XIX century, also known as "settler economies". (Canada, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand and Uruguay)

Again, the problem with the UBA study is that it's the higher end of the spectrum. Most other studies put the number lower than that, with one putting as percentage of Amerindian contribution as low as 19.4%. I was able to access this study through two different proxies, as well as my usual internet connection, so I'm afraid your problems in accessing it are local. This does not make the study any less veryfiable, as anyone willing to make a google search can find it for free.

If you read through the 18 pages of the talk page archive, you will see that the consensus was to keep genetic studies out, and to try to focus on the social and census definitions instead.

Having followed this debate to its logical conclusion, I will now proceed to edit the article accordingly.

--Dharma for one (talk) 12:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I find it interesting that you decide when "the debate has reached a conclusion", instead of waiting for a more explicit agreement between parties. I have to insist that there is no verifiability for your first source, and I have tried to access it from different computers and locations. Two questions (1) was it a randomly selected sample of the entire population or just of BA (as it is usually the case); (2) can you prove that UBA is the higher end of the "spectrum", given that the report of the Ministry of Education says the results have been confirmed by other studies?

Secondly, I fail to see why you need to mention origin of immigrants. It is irrelevant to the "definition" of White? I don't think so. Moreover, you are automatically including Middle Easterns (with the weasel adjective "large" (how large?), which might not necessarily fall into the "White" category.

Thirdly, you say "more conservative estimates put it at 85%". Well, not according to the study by UBA. The conservative estimate would be 44%.

I will wait for you comments on this matter before doing any changes.

--the Dúnadan 14:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The Argentine population genetic structure: Large variance in Amerindian contribution study is based on sampling from the cities of Rosario, Santa Fe, Cordoba, Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires. These cities combined and their provinces, the central region of Argentina, represent around 60% of the total population of the country.

Secondly, yes, as far as I know the UBA study is the higher end of the spectrum. I may be wrong, however, I invite you to provide a study that shows a greater Amerindian contribution.

The origin of the immigrants is relevant to understand the origins of the social classification of "white" in Argentina, given that the article itself states that the term "white race" has its origins in Europe during the post-rennaissance era. Including this is relevant to understand how the social concept of "white" appeared in Argentine society. Middle Eastern immigration is also relevant, to show that ethnic groups such as the Lebanese or Syrians are also considered "white" in Argentine society.

Thirdly, "having Amerindian admixture" is not the same as not being white. A white argentine may have a non-visible admixture of 5% to 20%, and still be considered white, just like Spaniards with moorish ancestry, or New Zealanders of non-visible Maori heritage. The point is to show that, according to Argentine standards, at least 85% of the population is visibly white. Nobody is objecting to the Canadian "visible minority" definition of whiteness, yet both definitions use the exact same criteria.

If you can't access the study, I suggest using a web-proxy. I've been able to access it that way using two different US-based webproxies, as well as my regular internet connection. In any case, the study is also available in paper. Having an internet link to a document is not necessary for Verifiability, as long as the document is easily available in paper.

--Dharma for one (talk) 15:05, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I could finally access the study. However, you are comparing apples to oranges. The Study shows a large variance of Amerindian contribution within individual Argentines (94 to be precise), whereas the UBA study shows the percentage of Argentines with Amerindian contribution regardless of its weight (i.e. the variance within it can be large). In other words, UBA simply showed that 56% of Argentines had an Amerindian ancestor -based on the other study the Amerindian contribution of each individual in this category could be as low as, say 1% or 19%, or whatever other percentage). So, the study actually complements UBA findings. That was precisely the study I was talking about that some other user had presented a long time ago (probably in the archives). One thing is the Amerindian contribution in an individual's DNA and another the percentage of Argentine population with an Amerindian contribution of whatsoever size.

Just like DNA studies were presented in other subsections of the same article, I believe it is appropriate to do so here. "Visibly white" is as subjective as "visibly non-White", and probably biased.

Again, I fail to see the point of citing the countries of origin of Argentines. Obviously... all Whites come from Europe. No need to specify countries in order to define what a "White" is. Perhaps it could be useful like you pointed out, to say in the article that in Argentine demographics a Middle Eastern is considered White.

Cheers,

--the Dúnadan 15:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dlohcierekim i have been looking forward the article white people and this particular user the Dúnadan who has been editing all the articles with the UBA study made surprisingly in all white and demographics articles about Argentina I personally think we should report it as vandalism because he cannot just appear and erase all our contributions just because he wants to put a racist study against Argentina and all ending up in a great discution because that's what he has created..well I wait your opinion

Fercho85 02:32 09 Feb 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 05:06, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

My reply.

Let's recap. The genetic study comes from the Genetic Department of the University of Buenos Aires, it was confirmed by several other studies, and its findings were accepted and supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the Government of Argentina. In fact, the government says that "these findings help fight discrimination". These findings show that the Amerindian contribution is much larger than previously showed.

Fercho claims that writing a paragraph that complies with WP:OR, WP:NPOV and WP:Verifiability is "racist". He also claims that this study, which, in words of the government of Argentina, will help fight discrimination, is "racist". Moreover, he claims that I am racist (in a very inappropriate insult here). Now he claims that I erase his contributions (not quite true see his contributions) and that I am vandalizing Wikipedia. Isn't everything the other way around?

--the Dúnadan 16:10, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear Dunadan I understand what you say but you should have proposed to add this study previously. Specially in this article which I personally think does not fit in here because it is not about argentina's demography it is about white argentines so genetic studies shouldn't be included here as Dharma said if we add this study we should add studies on other countries I have reverted you editions until we get to a final decision with the other users

Fercho85 05:12, 09 Feb 2008

[edit] This article needs pictures

I looked at the black people article and there were several pictures there. However, I don't see any pictures on here, there used to be a picture of an extended white family and a few more pictures of other people. I checked again and the only picture there was just an old lady, now there aren't any on the page at all. What's the big deal? Why should it be controversial for pictures of white people on the white people article while I look at the other black people article and it has pictures. I'm pretty sure there are people in countries who never saw caucasions but they'll never get a clear image of them if it's all just text and no images on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.52.99.64 (talk) 03:42, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

IT does need pictures. Any idea on which person best represents white people? Yahel Guhan 02:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

No it does not. This has been discussed at great lenght. Please refer to previous debates. Thank you. The Ogre (talk) 06:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem with pictures here is that it is almost impossible to get any sort of consensus about who to include, practically every European nation wants to have a representative, and then there are other non-European groups that are often considered "white". So the consensus was to have a gallery at the commons, see White people, take a look at the See also section of the article, the "Find more about White people on Wikipedia's sister projects" infobox has a link to "Images and media". So there are pictures of "White people", but they are at the commons and are linked from this article. All the best. Alun (talk) 06:44, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers and Demographics

Should this article include some information on estimate on numbers of white people in the world, based on some common identifications of the term white? It would be helpful to include some rough numbers, as well as rates of growth and/or decline, to create a complete picture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emblazoned (talk • contribs) 06:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re organization

Would it be better to classify races by ancestry rather than skin color? For instance, there may be dark skinned peoples in Australia and Africa, but they are of very different lineage. I think that the articles that concern races and ethnic groups such as this article should be classified in the following manner:

• African Ethnic Group(s)

• Caucasian Ethnic Group(s)

• Asian Ethnic Group(s)

• Native American Ethnic Group(s)

Each article would have information such as the history of each group. Then, there would be an ethnic category, in which all of the ethnic group articles would fall.

What do all of you think of the idea?-(Wikipedian1234 (talk) 16:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC))

[edit] The great white illuision

Whoever posted the picture of the lapplander, obviously doesn't know anything about population genetics. A Lapplander is hardly Caucasoid, whether they are 'white' or not is misleading and meaningless. Admixture estimates for Lapps reveal at least a 35% mongoloid component. Compare this to your average Russian carries about ~4% mongoloid - insignificant. As for South Americans, they are not true caucasoids, although one can often see uncanny, conspicious similarities between certain populations of South America and Southern Europe. It is likely that sexual selection has played a role in their apparent phenotypes. Phylogenetic trees show South Americans to have far more in common with surrounding hispanic populations, than they do Europeans. Cavalli-Sforza determined that Hispanics are a mix of 'proto-mongoloids' and Europeans (and, in some regions, African blood), being predominately the former. Hence, it is not surprising that some Hispanics appear Caucasoid (given that proto-races probably looked closer to whites than anything else).

What may long from now, be a quiet part of western history is the fact that the caucasoid race had it's origins near the fertile crescent, and the area around the Iranian plateau. Through the last glacial maxim, the cold savannah's of West Asia provided the only survivable habit, that account for cold-adaption. Europe and central asia were a sheet of ice. Proto-man, naturally migrated southwards, and due to population densities, some men were forced to inhabit west asia (some inhabited viable pockets of land in south africa, south india, southern arabia, southeast asia ect.) . It has been determined through haplogroup studies that the vast majority of European (+90%), and middle eastern genes originated between 30,000 to 10,000 years ago in West Asia. At 10,000ybp Europe and the middle east were flooded by populations expanding at the Zagros mountains. With agriculture, the first Caucasoids spread throughout the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.151.161.85 (talk) 01:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Caucasian redirect

I've just noticed that caucasian redirects here...Should that really be so? I think Americans may use caucasian=white but in Europe and India Caucasian covers are far broader category of all 'caucasoid' (to use a archaic term) people. i.e. whites, latins, arabs, Indians, Iranians, etc...

Should not the caucasian article more reflect this?--Him and a dog 12:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd say so; in some places, "caucasian" is even taken to mean, literally, "from the caucasus". SamBC(talk) 09:14, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

latins are whites and many iranians are in fact white there are northern indians who are white also and arabs also not all white people come exclusively from europe go take a trip to syria or lebanon or better yet look at shakira she is lebanese and spainish in decent--Wikiscribe (talk) 04:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

"white" is a complex term that does not always denote skin tone; I think this article makes that point, it certainly used to. In the UK we'd happily call anyone of Iberian descent white, but in the USA they seem to be seperately categorised as "hispanic" (or "latino" if their descent is via latin america, AIUI). SamBC(talk) 09:14, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm in the UK now and a lot of Iberians wouldn't be white, they'd be latin (though there are a lot of white people in Spain these days), with them it is about skin tone. But then outside of Europe though it certainly isn't and asians are always asian no matter how pale they are--Him and a dog 16:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

This discussion was already held in Australia. Here is a fragment: By the way, there is a lot of ignorance in relation to skin pigmentation in Southern Europeans and people seem keen to ignore all scientific evidence and continue with their stereotypes. They do not even read the article. See here>:

http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/chem/faculty/leontis/chem447/PDF_files/Jablonski_skin_color_2000.pdf

It is a scientific study that is already in the article and lots of people here seem to ignore. It measures the skin pigmentation of different populations in areas of the body not exposed to the sun. The Spaniards (samples from two regions in Spain), in spite of living in a Mediterranean area, where a darker skin pigmentation is to be expected due to exposure to the sun, as the article states, show a skin pigmentation in unexposed areas similar or even lighter than that of Northern Europeans. Spaniards have an observed reflectance of around 65. For a comparison, Namibians have around 22-25, North Africans (Tunisians) around 56 (Morrocans) around 54, in Japan 55. What about Europe. In London it is 62, darker than in Spain, although in other areas it is slightly lighter at 66.In Ireland 64-65. In Belgium 63, again darker than in Spain. Jan.

As to the term Hispanic in the US, wrong, the US census states that Hispanic refers to people of Latin American descend. It is not a racial classification. It also states that People of Latin American descend can be of any racial group.

In fact this is cut and pasted:

note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.) Religions: Definition Field Listing

From here.

www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html#People

In other words, in the same way as American is used to denote people form the US in the US, and who may be of any race or mixture thereof.

By the way, I guess that people seriously interested in this matter already know that all Britons are themselves of Iberian origins or descend, as you say. Just some quotes follow.

Jan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.175.249.250 (talk) 10:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Umm, Caucasian is a disambig page, and Caucasian race is a seperate article. Neither redirects here.

That is odd, yesterday I was brought here.--Him and a dog 16:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Stephen Oppenheimer has stated in The Origins of the British (2006), although Basques have been more isolated than other Iberians, they are a population representative of south western Europe. As to the genetic relationship among Basques, Iberians and Britons, he also states (pages 375 and 378):

By far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal), ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales and 93% Castlerea, Ireland. On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipeout theory... ...75-95% of British and Irish (genetic) matches derive from Iberia...Ireland, coastal Wales, and central and west-coast Scotland are almost entirely made up from Iberian founders, while the rest of the non-English parts of the Britain and Ireland have similarly high rates. England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples...

Brian Sykes, in his book based on genetics Blood of the Isles (2006) comes to similar conclusions. Some quotations from the book follow. (Note that Sykes uses the terms "Celts" and "Picts" to designate the pre-Roman inhabitants of the Isles rather than as linguistic terms.)

“

[T]he presence of large numbers of Jasmine’s Oceanic clan ... says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic seaboard north from Iberia, beginning as far back as the early Neolithic and perhaps even before that. The number of exact and close matches between the maternal clans of western and northern Iberia and the western half of the Isles is very impressive, much more so than the much poorer matches with continental Europe.[3]

”

“

The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or about the same time as farming reached the Isles. (...) The connection to Spain is also there in the myth of Brutus.... This too may be the faint echo of the same origin myth as the Milesian Irish and the connection to Iberia is almost as strong in the British regions as it is in Ireland. (...) They [the Picts] are from the same mixture of Iberian and European Mesolithic ancestry that forms the Pictish/Celtic substructure of the Isles.[4]

”

“

Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantic chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes. The sea routes of the Atlantic fringe conveyed both men and women to the Isles.[5]

”

Jan again. Smile.

Well one needs to think about this logically. It's probably true that all British people have a paleolithic Iberian ancestry, but one shouldn't confuse this with the claim that all British ancestry is paleolithic Iberian. We all have numerous ancestors, given the great antiquity of the founding populations within Great Britain and Ireland it must be true that all of the Iberian founders are the ancestors of all "indigenous" modern British people. One the other hand this is also almost certainly true for all migrants from the neolithic and so on, we're all descended from Paleolithic, neolithic, Bronze age, Iron age, Anglo-Saxon and Norman people, it'd be hard to argue that anyone is not descended from someone from one of these groups. Think about it, if we go back 1000 years and we assume 25 years per generation, that's four generations per century, that's 40 generations over 10 centuries. A quick calculation shows that we each have 2⁴⁰ ancestors from just 1000 years ago, this works out as 1,099,511,627,776 or about one billion ancestors (one US trillion). Clearly this is impossible, and just highlights how closely related we all are. It should also be remembered that we only get our Y chromosome and mtDNA from two of these ancestors. Indeed all "indigenous" British people are related to each other, as are all European peoples. The level of shared ancestry globally is remarkably high due to the recent origin of our species, the small founding population size of every population and the high levels of gene flow between populations.Alun (talk) 14:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

well i guess what been corrected been corrected by jan and alun i need not say more--Wikiscribe (talk) 16:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chile

Chile have an important percentage of white people (around 45%). After Argentina, Uruguay and Brasil, Chile was the country that received most europeans inmigrants during 1850-1950 period. To this, we have to consider that the white spanish population was already, before that inmigration, numerous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.21.122.122 (talk) 08:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] LOL

An article discussing a color of people using only black and white photos. Very sensible. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 08:52, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, the worst part is that this article (and it's corresponding articles) gives the impression that this is a real classification and not a product of ignorant over-simplification. The media talks about white and black people, rights activists say "white people do this...", "black people do that...", but both "blacks" and "whites" are really a huge collection of different ethnicities (which is the point so often missed).

Even the indigenous people of a single country are often a mixture of many different peoples. Are even African Americans from the same ethnic group? Were the slave traders only abducting people from one part of Africa? Do all Africans have the same culture and language?

Yes, you can eventually get the right impression by reading through the article in full, but the introduction gives the impression that this is a "real" classification. As is the case with other imaginary/derogatory/ignorant classifications (such as "nerd"), Wikipedia should be clear on whether it is talking about a popular misconception, derogatory terms (and their basis), or a real classification (for example, "nerd" is akin to the nature of racism, is based on the same irrational hatred, jealosy, and discrimination, but the article here is written as if it is a legitimate non-offensive term for a factual class of people). Likewise, dividing the world into "black" and "white" is both ignorant and racist, or at least ethnically insensitive. Are all two-legged animals "birds"? Are all four-legged animals "cats"? There are historical reasons for this error in classification, but the classification itself is unreal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.210.187 (talk) 14:35, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Images in the article

Folks, as per talk page consensus above, there was a decision not to have pictures for this article, as it leads to too much disagreement on who is and isn't considered typically white. Now, two things can happen: we can either respect the existing consensus, or ask again to see if the consensus has changed. In either case, I would ask all editors not to unilaterally reinsert pictures of "White" people until this matter is settled again. Thanks.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:24, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Quite. Images are at the commons as per consensus. The article does have a link. Alun (talk) 00:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Consensus on Images

This whole 'no photos' rule is patent nonsense. The Black people article is crammed with photos, they seem to have no problem deciding who is black. We all know George Bush is white, Queen Elizabeth II is white, John Howard is white and the list goes on. How is there not already a consensus?? --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 05:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

In fact, looking up the talkpage here there seems to be many people asking why there are no photos, and saying photos should be included. However every one of these comments is followed by Alun saying there isn't a consensus. I'd say there is quite a clear consensus, and that is to include photos. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 06:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you Prince Paul, I personally think there should be at least two images in the article. --Fercho85 (talk) 06:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I disagree with you, and agree with Alun. If you re-read the talk page, you will also see there are many other editors who feel as we do that images shouldn't be included. Please don't assume the consensus has changed yet.--Ramdrake (talk) 09:38, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

And here's some reasoning; if we include only those cases that are unambiguously white, there is the implicit assertion that no others are white; it's just too much of a tangled mess if we wade into it. SamBC(talk) 10:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

However, images of historical references from various works on the matter might make sense. SamBC(talk) 10:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

However, images of historical references (such as the drawings which appeared on the page recently) are plagued with the same problem: would putting up the picture of a German as an example imply that Turks shouldn't be considered "White"?--Ramdrake (talk) 12:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

It depends on context; if you're referring to them as historical examples of a particular historically-attested understanding of the term, rather than saying "these are white people". SamBC(talk) 12:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Why would it? You are letting social problems interfere with what should be a straightforward exercise. I know there are alot of Turks in Germany and I know the Germans don't like them there. But how having a photo of a German is in anyway denigrating to the Turks is beyond me. That's some fucked up reasoning. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 12:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

You may be sensible enough to realize that Turks are, for the majority, "White", but if you look at the revision history of the article, you'll see that pictures of non-European Whites (such as Turks) and Muslim Whites (such as Chechens) have been removed from the article because some editors did not agree with their inclusion as "Whites". The only non-controversial pictures, we found, were those of Christian European Whites of Nordic descent (some Spanish and Italian people's pictures were also removed on the grounds of their subject being too swarthy). I guess what everyone is trying to say, is that if we want to fairly include a variety of "White" people, this will become a magnet for bigots and racists to replace some of the pictures with others they agree with. If, on the other hand we include only pictures everyone agrees with (including the bigots and the racists), then the selection will look skewed in a rather unsavory way. This is why it was decided it would be less trouble in the long run to forego all pictures of "Whites", so as to avoid these unwanted situations.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone know how many white people there are in the world?? 24.160.145.53 (talk) 03:58, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] controversy and citation in opening

To the user Ramdrake: I find it a little hard to believe that there is truly no controversy associated with the completely unsourced assertions made in the last para of the opening of this article. Simply by the nature of this topic pretty much everything on this page is probably controversial to someone somewhere. But even if we accept your claim that they are uncontroversial, what has controversy got to do with the need for citation anyway? Surely *all* statements must be cited, regardless of controversy status. For a start, how are we to know that these statements are as uncontroversial as you say without sources to back that up? --81.129.138.48 (talk) 16:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

As per Wikipedia policy, uncontroversial statements need not be sourced. Second, most of those statements can be easily checked, if one reads up on the subject (see Race (classification of human beings) for the explanation to most of those statements. If you wish to confirm that these statements are really uncontroversial, please read just about any introductory book 1) in anthropology and 2) in population genetics. Also, tagging every single sentence in a paragraph without an explanation is considered bad form.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, in general statements like that should be sourced; just because they're in any introduction to the topic doesn't mean they're obvious to everyone. However, statements in the lead don't have to be cited if the same facts are cited later in the article, generally. Oh, and there really shouldn't be any info in the lead that isn't elsewhere in the article. SamBC(talk) 18:09, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe that quite simply, it is NPOV not to have any pictures, so I inserted one that I believe to be controversy-proof. 69.107.76.201 (talk) 09:40, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] neutrality

there is no real need for the whole article to be disputed this article seems to be very tame and not very controverial at all there is no need or do not see any valid reasons for the whole article to have that particular temp up on the page--Wikiscribe (talk) 18:15, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I did a little checking, and as far as I can tell the neutrality and cleanup tags were introduced into the article by Kevin Murray on the 8th of May,[7] but there was no discussion started on the talk page regarding these tags. As far as I understand it, without a proper discussion on the talk page regarding Kevin's concerns these tags should be removed. For example Kevin states in his edit summary This article and especially the lead appear to be expressing narrow opinions of "experts" selected to represent a POV and the format is not consistent with WP standards. If Kevin believes this, then he should have started a serious discussion about the neutrality of the article, including evidence that different "experts" hold different opinions. Likewise if there are format problems. I don't think it is good practice to include these sorts of tags in articles, leave a curt edit summary that lacks detail, and then refuse to start a serious discussion explaining exactly what the concerns are on the talk page. As you say the article is quite innocuous, besides you started a talk page discussion specifically to address Kevin's concerns, to which no one (not even Kevin) has replied in eight days, I suggest that we simply remove the tags. Alun (talk) 10:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] There is ONE opinion for no image

Every other editor wants an image. A consensus has clearly been reached. Therefore, it is included. [8]EgraS (talk) 23:26, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I can see no consensus to have this image. Indeed your statement is bizarre, there are three editors against an image and two in favour in the section you post to, yet you claim that there is consensus for an image and only a single editor against. Take a look Ramdrake and PaulBC dissent from having an image, and Paul and Fercho want an image, if you include my dissent as well, it means a majority against an image. The problem has always been that there has never been a consensus to have any specific image. Indeed it always gets to the point where every little group wants to include an image of someone from their region. Having a gallery didn't help this situation. So it was decided to have a gallery over at the commons. Not only are you incorrect to claim that only one editor disagrees with you, you are incorrect that there is a consensus for an image, a consensus is not the same as a slim majority. I suggest that if you want to seek a consensus then the place to start is with making some suggestions for images to be included, at least we need two images, one of a man and one of a woman. Preferably this should not be a "beauty contest", we are not only looking for "attractive young people", neither should we include famous people. On problem is that no image can reflect what a "white person" looks like, because the term "white person" is subjective and has different meanings depending upon context. The point is this though, if you want to get consensus around an image or two, then post the image here and ask people to comment upon it's acceptability. If there is a clear majority for an image then we can post it on the article page. If you provide several examples of appropriate images, then people are at liberty to discuss the relative pros and cons of any given image. I warn you though, this has in the past been a very difficult process. I have no problem with opening it up again, hopefully it'll be easier this time, but let's do it properly. There is no consensus for the image you included in the article, let's see if we can get some consensus for an image before including it in the article shall we? Alun (talk) 08:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

That image clearly illustrated features of the white race such as light skin color so clearly written in the article. It is irritating that there are many pictures for every other race, but not white people. EgraS (talk) 09:27, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Really? For a start I don't know what "features" are associated with the white "race", this article deliberately avoids typological observations. Light skin may something white people always have, but there are also many peoples who have light skin colour who may not be considered "white" under certain circumstances. This article is not about a typographic classification, and who is or is not considered white is socially constructed, with different societies having different norms for identifying "white people". Besides the bloke is wearing sunglasses, so you can't even see his eyes. How is that clearly illustrating these features? Furthermore you claim above that there is a consensus in favour of the inclusion of an image, something I see no evidence of. Now you are not even making this claim. As far as I can see you just want to spread the image of this pretty boy around as many articles as possible with little justification. I assume you are also 69.107.76.201 from Texas? Alun (talk) 09:43, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe that picture was especially good because it doesnt show eye color. Almost all white people do have white skin, but not all white people have the stereotypical blue/green eyes. Also, your reasoning doesnt appear to make sense. Non-white may have white skin, but that doesn't mean you can't include a picture because it depicts white skin. For example, would you take away photos from the Raccoon article because animals other than raccoons have fur? EgraS (talk) 10:11, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

So you're saying that the picture is good because it shows the typical features of a "white" person, while it's also good because it masks a good portion of the person's face? You don't even attempt to address what these typical features are. The torso is not displayed, only the head, and even then the sunglasses obscure a great portion of the face, not just the eyes. Essentially you are saying "this person is white because he has light coloured skin". Well we could include pictures of a lot of people who would not be considered "white" under certain circumstances even though they too have light coloured skin and even though they have a significant degree of European ancestry. You also claim that masking his eyes is good because we don't want to show blue eye colour as a "white" trait, but one could argue the same for his hair colour, the majority of European people do not have blond hair, and yet we have a picture of someone with blond hair. Why the sensitivity about eye colour but not an equal sensitivity about hair colour? Besides the issue is one of consensus. Let's get consensus for a specific photograph (or possibly two, a man and a woman) and then include them. Whiteness is a social construction, and it is not a universal monolith, different societies have different concepts of how a "white" person is identified. Take a look at the older version of the article when it contained a gallery here for some ideas. Alun (talk) 10:46, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I didn't anywhere state that we shouldn't include a picture of a person with light coloured skin "because it depicts white skin". What I said was that many people who do have light coloured skin, who also have a significant degree of European ancestry (indeed a majority of European ancestry in some cases) would not be considered "white" in many societies. This is not the same thing. This is part of the problem though, what are the criteria for considering someone "white"? So far you seem to be saying that it's only light skin colour, but you also freely admit that many people with light skin colour are often not considered "white". So what are the additional criteria for being "white"? Are they universal across different societies and cultures? Can you provide evidence that they are? I think the article currently shows clearly that different societies and cultures have very different ideas about the criteria for identifying a "white person". No single individual picture can meet all of these criteria. In the past this has lead to the inclusion of a gallery, but this gallery in and of itself became a very contentious issue. The problems we had before were not about the inclusion or otherwise of pictures, so much as the difficulty in agreeing what pictures are representative of a "white person". In many ways it's a shame because there are images in the Black people article that have a consensus, but it's been more difficult here. Besides we do actually have a gallery at the commons so it's a really easy matter for any visitor to this article to go to the commons and view these images. Alun (talk) 07:52, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

the opposition to having images in this article is ridiculous, and frankly disruptive. The Black people article has eight or nine images, no problem. The Asian people has an image of Tuvans for some reason. Why not. It could also have a bunch of image of other groups. This hysterical fear of showing images of "whites" is irrational. Yes, there is a link to commons:White people. Then what the hell prevents us from selecting a few good images from that category like we would for every other article on Wikipedia? I am sorry, but if this strange refusal to treat this article on the same footing as others, I will have to insist to tag it with {{NPOV}} until a reasonable selection of images is possible without all these bizarre obstruction tactics. dab (𒁳) 11:08, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The inclusion or otherwise of images is not a POV issue. How is the Asian people similar to the white people article? Asian people are from Asia, it's a geographically defined region and not a "race", there is no geographically defined "white" region. Wikipedia is full of systemic bias, take a look at Human and see how many images of "white people" are there compared to images of people from other groups. Looking there one would come to the conclusion that about 90% of all Humans are "white" and that all art, culture and science is produced by this "white" group. It's absurd to claim that this hugely overrepresented group on Wikipedia somehow lacks enough images. The term "white" is very problematic, I don't personally have a problem with having images, I'd like to see images in this article just as there are images on the Black people article, but no one wants to start a serious discussion regarding which images should be included in the article, and when images are discussed there is always some bias in favour of blond, blue eyed Europeans (surprise surprise), as if they are the only "white people", and it has become something of a "beauty contest" in the past. I don't have a problem with a gallery as long as there is plenty of variation, including people from the near East, north African and south and central Asia, as well as Europeans, white has a lot of different meanings depending on context. If you've ever seen the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour you'll know that Maz Jobrani, an Iranian, describes himself to the audience as as "white like you", implying that he does not consider his Arab colleagues (Ahmed Ahmed, Aron Kader, Dean Obeidallah) "white" (Iranian = Aryan = white, you see), but of course Arab people would be considered "white" if "Caucasian" is considered a synonym for "white". It's so contextualised that it's hard to get a handle on. Therefore the only way to make a gallery work is to use the most inclusivist concept of "white" we can find. Even then I don't think it'll be very easy, but I'm prepared to give it a shot. Alun (talk) 11:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't oppose an inclusive gallery such as Alun is suggesting either; however, I would be very concerned that it would become a magnet for drive-by trolls and racists. This is the very reason that first brought us to the conclusion that it was better off not to have images in the article.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Two options spring to mind, either a gallery or a collage of images as seen in some articles. One way to start the process is to have a sort of "nominating" period, where editors can nominate pictures for inclusion in the article. Then we close the nominating process, decide how many pictures we want to include, and have a vote, with the top pictures being included in the article. We may have to have some sort of handicapping system, in order to ensure a good heterogeneous and inclusive set of images, for example putting a cap on the proportion of images representing any given "phenotype", so we don't end up with 20 or so images all showing an idealised blond blue eyed northern European, but that shouldn't be a problem. Here's some random pics, please add, remove or discuss. Alun (talk) 19:49, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Sami woman	Tarja Halonen President of Finland	Karl Marx Philosopher and political economist.	Albert Einstein, physisist.
Yasser Arafat, Palestinian nationalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.	Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah and first Supreme Leader of Iran	José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain	Muhammad Ali Jinnah founder of Pakistan
Rania Al-Yassin, Queen consort of Jordan	Éamon de Valera, freedom fighter, Taoiseach and President of Ireland	Mikhail Saakashvili, President of Georgia	Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan
Mohammed VI of Morocco	Noam Chomsky linguist, philosopher, political activist and author	Darren Gough, cricketer, fast bowler

[edit] Intro definitions

The definitions in the intro may be far from perfect, but they are direct quotes from dictionaries, and are cited as such and quotation marks in the text explicitly show that these are direct quotes from a source. Whether any individual agrees with what the sources say, or whether the sources are appropriate is a different matter. These sources have been in the article lead for some time, considering they are direct quotations it seems odd that some editors feel that they need to alter them. When we quote a source we say what the source says, we cannot quote a source as saying what we want it to say, we can only quote it verbatim. Please refrain from changing quotes. Alun (talk) 11:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Also "ethnic group" is not the same thing as race or ancestry. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should rewrite the definition without quotations so then a consensus can be reached without the fear of misquoting a source. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 10:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand your position. What is your objection to the quote that refers to European ancestry? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Paul, the sources are not misquoted, you can check this, there are direct links to the sources used for the quotes in the footnotes section. As SLR points out ancestry is not a synonym for ethnic group, one can certainly have European ancestry without identifying as belonging to any European ethnic group (for example someone in North America may acknowledge English ancestry without identifying as belonging to the English ethnic group). Conversely one can identify as belonging to an European ethnic group without having European ancestry (for example many people of Indian, Pakistani or West Indian ancestry in the UK identify as British, or even Welsh, English or Scottish).[9] We should avoid Easter egg links, see Wikipedia:Piped_link#Intuitiveness. Alun (talk) 11:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

My apologies I should have been more clear. What I mean is, we should not use quotations in the lead to an article. It seems to give the feel that Wikipedia is not competent enough to write her own lead. What is so hard about simply saying "White people are a racial group characterized by their light skin, of European origin"? That is simple, straightforward, and I fail to see how it can be debated. Looking through the talk and merely observing the page and how it fails to progress it is evident it has largely been hijacked by a few editors of similar ideologies and beliefs who consistently tagteam against editors who wish to change the article. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 11:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Well firstly they are not necessarily of "European origin", though this is one way of thinking of "white" people, it is not the only way. Indeed the current quotes don't actually say this do they? They say that "white" people have light coloured skin and that the term especially refers to Europeans, but especially is not the same as exclusively. On the other hand I have no problem with paraphrasing the quotes that we do have and removing the direct quotes, but we cannot say that "white" people are only from Europe, the article specifically shows that "white" is not a constant, either geographically or historically. The rest of your comments seem simply to be ad hominem attacks on editors who not agree with you. Alun (talk) 12:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)