White people (or simply
whites) is a term which is usually used to refer to a
racial group of
human beings, known collectively as the
white race and characterized, at least in part, by the light
pigmentation of their skin. It can sometimes refer narrowly to people of
European ancestry.
[1] A broader racial concept uses "white" as a synonym for
Caucasian. People from the
Middle East,
North Africa,
Central Asia and northwestern parts of
Indian Subcontinent may also be considered "white" under the latter usage.
Rather than a straightforward description of skin color, the term white functions as a color terminology for race. The term emerged in a racialized, European historical context that assumed that race was a scientific fact rather than a social construct.[2][3][4][5][6] Various conceptions of whiteness have had implications in terms of national identity, consanguinity, public policy, religion, population statistics, racial segregation, affirmative action, eugenics, racial marginalization and racial quotas. The concept has been applied with varying degrees of formality and internal consistency in disciplines including sociology, politics, genetics, biology, medicine, biomedicine, language, culture, and law.
Raj Bhopal and Liam Donaldson, both M.D.s at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, criticize the broad classification of white used by contemporary demographic surveys such as the U.S. Census and British Census. They state that the term white "in practice, refers to people of European origin with pale complexions". They conclude that white people are a sufficiently heterogeneous group that white should be abandoned as a classification for purposes of epidemiology and health research.[7]
There is no universal definition of "whiteness" as a human physical characteristic. The most notable trait describing people who identify as white is light skin,although even this trait is not universal amongst people identifying as white, for example there is an "influence of social class to the fluidity of color/race identification in Brazil. Wealthier people with darker phenotypes tend to classify themselves and be classified by others in lighter categories".[8][9]
