What does it mean to be white?

[Era Might]

Prescinding from humor for a second, what does it mean to be "white"? Here's a picture of Langston Hughes:

[url="http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/images/Langston_Hughes.jpg"]http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/imag...ston_Hughes.jpg[/url]

Would you say he is white? One of his parents was. Does that make him half white? His skin is not white, so if he is half white, "whiteness" has to be something more than skin.

What is it? It's not a nationality. There are hispanic people with white skin. It's not a language.

What is it? Light's question is deeper than it appears.

I suppose you can ask the same about other colorful identifiers (eg, black). What does it mean to be black? That you're African American? What if you're blacker than an African American, and your ancestors are from Brazil?

I'm biracial like Hughes. It's an interesting question to pose to yourself. What am I?

Edited October 25, 2005 by Era Might

[KobeScott8]

It means you try to jig and can't you try to rap(but most) can't. You try to sag, but no you look stupid.

But if you want to be white and a gangsta, you play b-ball like ME!!!!!! A white boy that can dunk, I defy the boundaries of RACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

White boyz can jump if they believe

[tojo]

[quote name='Era Might' date='Oct 25 2005, 05:44 PM']What if you're blacker than an African American, and your ancestors are from Brazil?
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Then you're Afro-Brazilian?

[Era Might]

[quote name='tomasio127' date='Oct 25 2005, 05:46 PM']Then you're Afro-Brazilian?
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You have no ancestors from Africa. How are you Afro-Brazilian?

[tojo]

[quote name='Era Might' date='Oct 25 2005, 05:47 PM']You have no ancestors from Africa. How are you Afro-Brazilian?
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There are many, many Afro-Brazilians.... and he didn't say specifically that the Brazilian ancestors were native, most modern Brazilians aren't...

[AngelofJesus]

You have an open invitation to join the KKK.
(They have turned me down twice already just cause Im asian and not caucasian) Asian... Caucasian. Tomato... tomatoe.

[Era Might]

[quote name='tomasio127' date='Oct 25 2005, 05:49 PM']There are many, many Afro-Brazilians.... and he didn't say specifically that the Brazilian ancestors were native, most modern Brazilians aren't...
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Ok, so if you have no ancestors from Africa, and your skin is blacker than "African Americans". Are you black?

[RC_]

[quote name='Era Might' date='Oct 25 2005, 04:44 PM']Prescinding from humor for a second, what does it mean to be "white"? Here's a picture of Langston Hughes:

[url="http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/images/Langston_Hughes.jpg"]http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/imag...ston_Hughes.jpg[/url]

Would you say he is white? One of his parents was. Does that make him half white? His skin is not white, so if he is half white, "whiteness" has to be something more than skin.

What is it? It's not a nationality. There are hispanic people with white skin. It's not a language.

What is it? Light's question is deeper than it appears.

I suppose you can ask the same about other colorful identifiers (eg, black). What does it mean to be black? That you're African American? What if you're blacker than an African American, and your ancestors are from Brazil?
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I know someone who's parents came from South Africa. He's white. Is he an African American?

[quote name='era might']I'm biracial like Hughes. It's an interesting question to pose to yourself.
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I'm biracial too...my mother is white, but my father is Honduran. I tend to identify myself as "Hispanic," since that's the label that was put on me since I was in school.

[Era Might]

[quote name='RC_' date='Oct 25 2005, 05:51 PM']I know someone who's parents came from South Africa.  He's white.  Is he an African American?

[quote name='era might']I'm biracial like Hughes. It's an interesting question to pose to yourself.
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I'm biracial too...my mother is white, but my father is Honduran. I tend to identify myself as "Hispanic," since that's the label that was put on me since I was in school.
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Are you kidding? I'm the same mix. HAHAHA. Where's your father from? Mine's from La Ceiba.

And yah, I think a white African in America could be called African American.

[tojo]

[quote name='Era Might' date='Oct 25 2005, 05:51 PM']Ok, so if you have no ancestors from Africa, and your skin is blacker than "African Americans". Are you black?
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Are there such people? The Australian Aborigines are rather dark aren't they? Anyways, I don't know the answer, why should I?

[azaelia]

Do with it what you will.

[quote name='Dictionary.Com']The Oxford English Dictionary contains evidence of the use of black with reference to African peoples as early as 1400, and certainly the word has been in wide use in racial and ethnic contexts ever since. However, it was not until the late 1960s that black (or Black) gained its present status as a self-chosen ethnonym with strong connotations of racial pride, replacing the then-current Negro among Blacks and non-Blacks alike with remarkable speed. Equally significant is the degree to which Negro became discredited in the process, reflecting the profound changes taking place in the Black community during the tumultuous years of the civil rights and Black Power movements. The recent success of African American offers an interesting contrast in this regard. Though by no means a modern coinage, African American achieved sudden prominence at the end of the 1980s when several Black leaders, including Jesse Jackson, championed it as an alternative ethnonym for Americans of African descent. The appeal of this term is obvious, alluding as it does not to skin color but to an ethnicity constructed of geography, history, and culture, and it won rapid acceptance in the media alongside similar forms such as Asian American, Hispanic American, and Italian American. But unlike what happened a generation earlier, African American has shown little sign of displacing or discrediting black, which remains both popular and positive. The difference may well lie in the fact that the campaign for African American came at a time of relative social and political stability, when Americans in general and Black Americans in particular were less caught up in issues involving radical change than they were in the 1960s. ·Black is sometimes capitalized in its racial sense, especially in the African-American press, though the lowercase form is still widely used by authors of all races. The capitalization of Black does raise ancillary problems for the treatment of the term white. Orthographic evenhandedness would seem to require the use of uppercase White, but this form might be taken to imply that whites constitute a single ethnic group, an issue that is certainly debatable. Uppercase White is also sometimes associated with the writings of white supremacist groups, a sufficient reason of itself for many to dismiss it. On the other hand, the use of lowercase white in the same context as uppercase Black will obviously raise questions as to how and why the writer has distinguished between the two groups. There is no entirely happy solution to this problem. In all likelihood, uncertainty as to the mode of styling of white has dissuaded many publications from adopting the capitalized form Black.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.[/quote]

[Sojourner]

[quote name='tomasio127' date='Oct 25 2005, 04:54 PM']Are there such people? The Australian Aborigines are rather dark aren't they? Anyways, I don't know the answer, why should I?
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Many Indians (from India) are quite dark, and yet are technically Caucasian.

[RC_]

[quote name='Era Might' date='Oct 25 2005, 04:53 PM']
I'm biracial too...my mother is white, but my father is Honduran. I tend to identify myself as "Hispanic," since that's the label that was put on me since I was in school.
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Are you kidding? I'm the same mix. HAHAHA. Where's your father from? Mine's from La Ceiba.

And yah, I think a white African in America could be called African American.
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My dad's from Santa Rita in Yoro.

[tojo]

[quote name='Sojourner' date='Oct 25 2005, 05:58 PM']Many Indians (from India) are quite dark, and yet are technically Caucasian.
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Some of them are quite dark, yes. But as you say they are Caucasian, there's a difference, you can tell (not that it matters).

None of the Indians I have known have thought of themselves as black, but then it has a rather particular connotation in this country, so that may hinder such self-identification.

[toledo_jesus]

race is a social construction. We're all humans.