Yeah the US hasn’t had consistent definitions of who counts as white, or what different races even are. I don’t trust 1940s census data to reflect demographics in 2010. Like my friend’s grandparents in the 1950s got arrested for miscegenation because the wife was Cajun and the husband Italian. Not to mention the quagmire of whether or not Latino is white.
I’m also reminded of Dow v. United States, where Syrians got legally classified as white under the logic that since Jesus was white, therefore other middle easterners are white. The USA has a completely fascist social caste system of race, where whiteness serves as an elite social category rather than anything specific to heritage or even skin color sometimes. Like ask anyone if Muslims are white, even if they have fair complexions and have primarily European ancestry.
Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.
Yeah the US hasn’t had consistent definitions of who counts as white, or what different races even are. I don’t trust 1940s census data to reflect demographics in 2010. Like my friend’s grandparents in the 1950s got arrested for miscegenation because the wife was Cajun and the husband Italian. Not to mention the quagmire of whether or not Latino is white.
I’m also reminded of Dow v. United States, where Syrians got legally classified as white under the logic that since Jesus was white, therefore other middle easterners are white. The USA has a completely fascist social caste system of race, where whiteness serves as an elite social category rather than anything specific to heritage or even skin color sometimes. Like ask anyone if Muslims are white, even if they have fair complexions and have primarily European ancestry.
my favorite quote about this:
Franklin?
yep. he’s often touted as one of the less awful founding fathers cos he didnt own slaves, but… you know. this is him :D
The only good founding father was Thomas Paine.