What qualifies a white?

Question

Some times I can tell a person of Asian, African or European origin but I can't really tell why some people are called whites. Is it the country they come from? if so why are the Red Indians in America not called whites? Is it the hair colour? There are only a handful of people with white hair and they are of origins the world over. Is it the skin colour? Many Europeans have rather red skins or even green and blue skins, yet they are still called or they still identify themsleves as whites. Who therefore is/is not, a white?

Answer 1

It has more to do with the symbolic meaning of colors: white vs black meant simply lighter and darker - you says "white grapes" when it's actually yellow-green (and in some languages you say "black grapes" instead of red grapes when the closest color is blue). Other colors where added for people who couldn't fit in the white/black class, and those colors were even less related to their skin tone.

Answer 2

A white person is someone that is Caucasian...

they have a light peachy, creamy kind of skin colour which sometimes becomes darker in the sun and they can have hair colour ranging from red, auburn, blonde, brown and so on. They are mostly found naturally in European countries.

Answer 3

Actually in the UK we do refer to ourselves as either black, white or asian.

Firstly, Red Indians are more native to America than Americans, that is why they are of different colour. But this is the problem. By identifying people as either black or white etc. we are effectively seeking out differences, which is a good starting point for racism. But really, I don't know.

Answer 4

The "Human Body" Discovery channel had the best scientific answer I've heard.

The amount of melanin in the or, going into the human skin, determines the color of the person. Therefore, there is no set answer, not in the scientific community that determines the race according to the color but, the amount of melanin going into the persons skin.

I don't think there are any places or people that say "you are white because....." or you "are black because...."

Answer 5

Irish and scottish and English and Welsh people are white. So are the Scandinavians.

I think the Irish win it on colour, Im the same colour as a bottle of milk at the height of Summer!

Answer 6

Morphology of the skull and skeletal face is the major way to figure out if someone is of negroid, mongoloid, or Caucasoid decent. The reason for this is because anthropologists can determine ancient remains.

Of course, for the living, the phenotype characteristics apply - which are skin color, hair color, and even the size of brows, noses, chins etcetera.

At the genotype level, DNA specialists are studying haplogroups and haplotypes to determine decent. I studied Amerindian DNA which is haplogroup a,b,c,d, and X.

Answer 7

it is only america we really use the word "white" because, in europe, they call themselves british, irish, italian, dutch, swedish,etc.

so white is your typical W.A.S.P. or anyone in america with mixed-white european ancestry.
but it can depends too, back then in america, even if you have a very small percentage of black, you are still considered as black even if you look white, blonde hair and blue eyes. called the one drop rule.

btw, there are more than just three groups, such as the malays which the filipinos in american history, they fought the law that they are not part of the mongolian race, so they can marry white woman but then that was overturned later on.

Answer 8

There are only 3 original races caucasian, negroid, and mongoloid(white black asian) all others are a combination of these 3. American Indians were originally Asian. I don`t ever remember seeing any of these green and blue people you speak of.

Answer 9

That's actually a very interesting question. The answer is probably that it depends on who's asking - there is no universally accepted definition, every body (whether police, anthropologists or whoever) uses its own classifications. Current thinking suggests that the whole idea falls down because there is such a wide variety across humans.

This may make interesting reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

Answer 10

There are no people with white skin, there are no people with black skin. Light skin people are called white, dark skin people are called black.