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The cultural boundaries separating White Americans from other racial or ethnic categories are contested and always changing. Most persons considered White today, would not have been considered White at point in U.S. history. Among those not considered white at some time in American history are the Irish, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Slavs, Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples.^[1]
David R. Roediger argues that the construction of the white race in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slaveowners from slaves.^[2] By the 18th century, ''white'' had become well established as a racial term.
The process of officially being defined as ''white'' by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship. The Immigration Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to "any alien, being a free white person". In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people. By 1923, courts had vindicated a "common-knowledge" standard, concluding that "scientific evidence" was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a "performance-based" standard, relating to religious practices, education, intermarriage and a community's role in the United States.^[3]
The 2000 U.S. census states that racial categories "generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. They do not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria."^[4] It defines "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.^[5] In U.S. census documents, the designation ''white'' or ''Caucasian'' overlaps with the term ''Hispanic'', which was introduced in the 1980 census as a category of ethnicity, separate and independent of race.^[6] In cases where individuals do not self-identify, the U.S. census parameters for race give each national origin a racial value.
The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation also categorizes "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce. ^[7]
The official definition of race used in the Census and other data collection gives national origin a racial value. This can be problematic for groups such as Middle Eastern Americans, who are not commonly viewed as white and may not identify as white, but are encompassed in the official definition.

Contents

European Americans

Eastern European and Slavic Americans

Native Americans

Hispanic Caribbean

North African and Middle Eastern Americans

Muslim Americans and Zoroastrians

References

See also

European Americans

===German Americans===
Large numbers of Germans migrated to the United States between the 1680s and 1760s. Many settled in the English colony of Pennsylvania. In the 18th century, many persons of English descent harbored resentment towards the increasing number of German settlers. Benjamin Franklin in "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.", complained about the increasing influx of German Americans, stating that they had a negative influence on the early United States. The only exception were Germans of Saxon descent'' "who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased"''. Benjamin Franklin most likely thought favorably of the Saxons because Anglo-Saxons like him were thought to be the descendants of Saxon invaders to Britain.
Unlike most European immigrant groups whose acceptance as white came gradually over the course of the late 19th century (that is, in U.S. colloquial definitions, since all Europeans had been white by legal U.S. definition), German immigrants quickly came to be accepted as white.^[8] By the late 19th century, despite some lingering nativist resentment towards new arrivals, Germans, along with Scandinavians and the Dutch, were included with the British as America's ''old stock'', and thought of as racially superior to later immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.
===Irish Americans===

In the 19th century, Irish Americans, often immigrants, were often discriminated against because of their heritage majority Catholic religion.
According to historian George Potter, the media often stereotyped the Irish in America as being boss-controlled, violent (both among themselves and with those of other ethnic groups), voting illegally, prone to alcoholism, and dependent on gangs that were often violent or criminal. Potter quotes contemporary newspaper images:^[9]
Irish Americans were not considered truly white until the idea of white shifted to an identity that contrasted themselves with black slaves and newer, less Americanized immigrant groups began to arrive.

Eastern European and Slavic Americans

Slavic Americans were classified as legally white upon their arrival at Ellis Island.Due to large numbers, legislation was also passed, such as the Immigration Act of 1924 to restrict and reduce their further entry. But they were allowed citizenship and full participation in American society.
A wide variety of ethnic groups from Eastern, South-Eastern and Central Europe: Polish, Albanian, Hungarian, Czech, Croat, Bosniak, Serb, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian and Bulgarian, established communities in American major cities in the early 20th century, especially in New York City and Chicago.
===Italian Americans===
Mass immigration to the United States from Italy occurred during the late 19th and early 20th century. Italians had been colloquially considered "ethnic" or "not quite white" along with some other southern European immigrants, such as Greeks, Albanians, Romanians and Bulgarians.^[10] However, northern Italian immigrants were seen as a more "desirable nationality" after northern Europeans.^[11] Italians often fell victim to stereotypes of criminal involvement, anti-Catholicism, ethnic and cultural prejudices, and violence. Anti-Italian violence caused lynching in Tampa;^[12] and eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans, one of the largest mass lynchings in United States history. The Immigration Act of 1924 reduced the entry of Italians into the United States. Southern Italians were classified as a different ''nationality'' primarily at the request of their northern Italian counterparts.^[10].
Today, over 15 million Americans claim Italian descent. The largest communities are found in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Illinois, but many Italian Americans live in other states like Florida, Maryland, Louisiana, Indiana, and California.

Native Americans

In Oklahoma, state laws identified Native Americans as white people during Jim Crow-era segregation.Kathleen O'Toole, "Toggling Between Ethnicities," ''Stanford Today'', November/December 1998.
In the late 19th and 20th century, Native Americans were seen as people without a future to be assimilated into a larger American culture. Tribal membership was frequently defined according to so-called blood quantum standards, so that "mixed race" children were eventually excluded. This led to the classification of increasing numbers of people with Native ancestry as white, a trend that has been reversed in the census figures of recent decades which show increasing self-identification as Native American.
==Hispanic Americans==
Hispanic Americans are those who descend from inhabitants of Portuguese and Spanish colonies. While Latin Americans have a broad array of racial and cultural backgrounds, they all tend to be labeled as Hispanic, often erroneously giving it a "racial" value.^[14]
On the 2000 U.S. Census form, race and ethnicity are distinct questions. A respondent who checks the "Hispanic or Latino" ethnicity box must also check one or more of the 5 official race categories. Of the over 40 million Hispanics or Latinos in the United States Census, 2000, a plurality of 48.6% identified as "White-Hispanic," 48.2% identified as "Hispanic-Hispanic" (most of whom are presumed to be mestizos), and the remaining 3.2% identified as "black-Hispanic."
Judging by census intermarriage statistics, even non-white "Hispanics" — that is, mestizos and mulattos — may be in the process of integrating into the majority community. Mestizos and mulattos are often considered or consider themselves non-white.
The media and Hispanic community leaders in the United States refer to Hispanics as a separate group from "whites" and the "white majority". This may be because "white" is often used as shorthand for "non-Hispanic white." Federal agencies' standards have been confused in this regard. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission once explicitly defined Hispanics as a separate and distinct "ethnicity,"^[15] but now their forms follow the Census Bureau in separating "ethnic" and "racial" identity.^[16]
===Mexican Americans===
The official racial status of Mexican Americans has varied throughout American history. From 1850 to 1920, the U.S. Census form did not distinguish between whites and Mexican Americans. In 1930, the U.S. Census form asked for "color or race," and census enumerators were instructed to write ''W'' for White and ''Mex'' for Mexican.^[17] In 1940 and 1950, the instructions were to "Report ''white'' (W) for Mexicans unless they are definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race."^[18]
When Mexicans were uniformly allotted white status, they were permitted to intermarry with what today are termed ''non-Hispanic whites'' (unlike blacks and Asians). They were allowed to acquire U.S. citizenship upon arrival; served in all-white units during the World War II; could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas, especially San Antonio; ran the state politics and constituted most of the elite of New Mexico since colonial times; and went to integrated schools in Central Texas and Los Angeles. Additionally, Asians were barred from marrying Mexican Americans because of Mexicans were legally white, while Asians were not.
U.S. nativists in the late 1920s and 1930s tried to put a halt to Mexican immigration by having Mexicans (and Mexican Americans) declared non-white, by virtue of their Indian heritage. They based their strategy on a 1924 law that barred entry to immigrants who were ineligible for citizenship, and at that point, only blacks and whites, and not Asians or Native Americans, could naturalize.
The test case came in December 1935, when a Buffalo, N.Y., judge rejected Jalisco-native Timoteo Andrade's application for citizenship on the grounds that he was a "Mexican Indian." Had it not been for the intervention of the Mexican and American governments, who forced a second hearing, this precedent could very well have made most Mexicans, the majority of whom are mestizo, ineligible for citizenship.http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez3sep03,0,3733464.column?coll=la-home-commentary
During the Great Depression, Mexicans were largely considered non-white. As many as 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans were deported in a decade-long effort by the government called the Mexican Repatriation.^[19]
In the early 1970s, Chicano activists switched from the "other white race" to "the other minority" strategy as a way to fight discrimination. Just as whiteness once offered the best prospect of protected civil rights, the emergence of race-based policies such as affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act created incentives for them to highlight the nonwhite side of their mixed heritage.
In the 2000 U.S census, around half of all persons of Mexican or Mexican American origin in the U.S. checked ''white'' to register their race (in addition to stating their Mexican national origin).^[20]

Hispanic Caribbean

Caribbean countries such as Cuba,^[21][22][23] Puerto Rico and especially the Dominican Republic have a complex ethnic heritage since they include an indigenous and African legacies. Africans were imported to the islands in throughout the colonial period (and indeed Blacks accompanied the first Spanish explorers, with more arriving to harvest sugar in the 20th century prior to the Revolution^[24]).
Cuban Americans exemplify this complex ethnic status. The Cuban exiles that entered the United States before 1959 tended to appear white, due to connectedness of social class and race in Cuba.^[25] Their appearance allowed them to pass as white. (This passing was consistent with Cuban preferences for whiteness that stemmed from racism in Cuba itself.) Their passing "allowed them to feel superior over other racial and ethnic groups and to make claims to rights and privileges, as well as to justify their discriminatory practices and hostilities by attributing immorality and evil intent to these other groups." This shift to whiteness upon arrival has been challenged by Cuban-Americans and others, but it continues among new arrivals, even as post-Mariel Cuban immigrants are darker-skinned.

North African and Middle Eastern Americans

Some people in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Levant have enough black African ancestry or are dark-skinned enough to be considered nonwhite by popular U.S. standards, but others are similar in complexion to Europeans.
Under the U.S. Census definition and U.S. federal agency groupings, North African Americans and Middle Eastern Americans (including Arab Americans, Iranian Americans, and Turkish Americans) are classified as white. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations also explicitly define ''white'' as "original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East."
In the United States, common social understandings of "white" exclude Muslims even if they appear white, in contrast to the country's official government definition.^[26]
It is to be noted that many North African and Middle Easterner Americans would not consider themselves "white." An Egyptian man once sued the U.S. government to have "white" removed from his immigration documents.^[27] Similarly, the U.S. Census considers Egyptian and Berber Americans as "Arabs," even though most Berbers and many Egyptians object to this classification.
===Jewish and Israeli Americans===
According to one source — although not supported by census records of the period which recorded all Jews as white — European Jews in America did not become accepted as 'white' until the 1940s.^[28] As early as 1911, German/American-Jewish anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1952) purported in ''The Mind of Primitive Man'', that "no real biological chasm separated recent immigrants from ''Mayflower'' descendants."^[29] Ergo claims of difference were based on prejudice, whether religious or ethno-cultural, and had no biological basis.
Anti-Semitism was prevalent in the world, including the United States, in the early part of the 20th century, but after World War II, public attitudes toward Jewish Americans changed to more positive depictions, and American Jews enjoy a relative acceptance. Nonetheless, Neo-Nazis and white supremacists continue to deny them recognition as whites.
The U.S. census assumes that all unidentified Israeli Americans are white. By responding ''Israel'' in the U.S. census, a person will be categorized as white, even though not all Israelis are of European (Ashkenazi or Sephardi) or Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) descent. They may be Jews of Ethiopian (Beta Israel), Yeminite (considered by some a Mizrahi subgroup) or Indian descent; or they may be Israeli Arabs or Druze (who may or may not identify themselves as Arabs).
==Asian Americans==
Since the mid-19th century, the United States has experienced immigration from the countries of Asia. With this, there has also been mounting legislation which was passed trying to restrict these peoples from immigrating, most forcefully against the Chinese. The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted naturalized American citizenship to whites only. As a result, in the early 20th century many new arrivals with origins in the Asian continent petitioned the courts to be legally classified as ''white'', and hence there exist many United States Supreme Court rulings on their "Whiteness".
Supreme Court cases decided which groups are white and which are Asian. While previously being classified as Asian, Armenians were classified by the courts as white due to the testimony of anthropologist Franz Boas.^[30] In 1922, the court case Takao Ozawa v. United States deemed Japanese to not be white, even though they had light skin, since it considered them to be part of the Mongoloid race. In the court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the courts found Thind, a high-caste Punjabi Aryan, was of the Caucasian race, but not white, since the "''common understanding''" of a Caucasian/white to the framers of the Constitution and the common man did not include Punjabis. In the current US Census if an Indian American writes in "''Aryan''" in the some other race category then they are included as part of the white race, suggesting the US Census has overturned the Thind ruling.University of Michigan. Census 1990: Ancestry Codes. August 27, 2007. [1] However, the US Census categorizes write-in responses of "Indo-Aryan" part of the Asian race because they are mixed with Dravidians who are the original people of the Indian Subcontinent
In Jim Crow era Mississippi, however, Chinese American children were allowed to attend white-only schools and universities, rather than attend black-only schools, and some of their parents became members of the infamous Mississippi "White Citizens' Council" who enforced policies of racial segregation.^[31]
==African Americans==
:''Main Who is African American and Admixture in the US''
Owing to the one-drop theory in the United States, Americans with any known African ancestry, no matter how slight, have often been categorized as black. Those of Hispanic, Middle Eastern or North African heritage have been an exception, in that those who look European, or occasionally even those appearing mixed, are not labeled "black" though they may have some sub-Saharan African ancestry, perhaps even acknowledging it.
Laws dating from 17th century colonial America that defined children excluded children of at least one black parent from the status of being white. Early legal standards did so by defining the race of a child based on a mother's race while banning interracial marriage, while later laws defined all people of some African ancestry as black, under the principle of hypodescent. These laws ensured that the children of slaves were available as labor to their parent's master and furthered racist standards of white women's "purity" under threat from black sexual "contamination." Some 19th century categorization schemes defined people with one black parent (the other white) as mulatto, with one black grandparent as quadroon and with one black great grandparent as octoroon. The latter categories remained within an overall black or African-American category. Some members of these categories passed temporarily or permanently as white.^[32] Until the Civil War, racial identity depended on the combination of their appearance, African blood fraction, and social circle.^[33]
However, since several thousand blacks have been crossing the color line each year, the phenomenon known as "passing for white", millions of White Americans have recent African ancestors. A statistical analysis done in 1958 estimated that 21 percent of the white population had African ancestor. The study concluded that the majority of Americans of African descent were actually White and not Black^[34].

Muslim Americans and Zoroastrians

People who reported their race as the following religions Muslim, Shi'ite, Sunni or Zoroastrianism in the "''Some other race''" section are automatically categorized as whites in the 2000 US Census.^[35]

References

1. John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," ''The Yale Law Journal'', Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), pp. 825-827.
2. Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 186; Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York, 1998).
3. John Tehranian, "Performing Whiteness: Naturalization Litigation and the Construction of Racial Identity in America," ''The Yale Law Journal'', Vol. 109, No. 4. (Jan., 2000), pp. 817-848.
4. Questions and Answers for Census 2000 Data on Race from U.S. Census Bureau, 14 March 2001. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
5. http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-4.pdf The White Population: 2000]}}, Census 2000 Brief C2KBR/01-4, U.S. Census Bureau, August 2001.
6. Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin 2000 U.S. Census Bureau
7. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/handbook/ucrhandbook04.pdf Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook]}}, U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. P. 97 (2004)
8. See David R. Roediger, ''The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class'' (London: Verso, 1991) p. 32 for their earlier status. See op. cit. p. 142 for Stephen O. Douglas's acceptance, in his debates against Abraham Lincoln, that Germans are a "branch of the Caucasian race." See op. cit. p. 155 for anti-abolitionist tracts of 1864 accusing abolitionist German-Americans of having "broken their ties with the white race" by opposing slavery. Finally, see Frank W. Sweet, ''Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule'' (Palm Coast FL: Backintyme, 2005) p. 332 and Leon F. Litwack, ''North of Slavery: the Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860'' (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961) p. 75 for the legislated disfranchisement of Pennsylvanians of African ancestry by the first state legislature controlled by German-Americans.
9. Potter p. 526; see also T. J. English, ''Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster'' (2005). On stereotypes see Dale T. Knobel, ''Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America'' (1986)
10. Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945, 2003, ISBN 0-19-515543-2
11. http://www.italiamerica.org/id49.htm
12. http://www.h-net.org/~filmhis/documentary_films/american_history_miscellaneous_p2.htm
13. Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945, 2003, ISBN 0-19-515543-2
14. Mexico's ethnic composition is illustrative. There, 20% of the population descends solely from the indigenous peoples of the region, including the Mayas and the Aztecs, and remain to a degree "un-hispanicized." Many of them do not speak Castilian (Spanish), and practice both Native beliefs and Catholicism. About 8% of the population has nearly all of its roots in Europe. The remainder of the population shares a mestizo racial and cultural legacy, influenced by Spainish as well as indigenous elements.
15. ''Employer Information Report EEO-1 and Standard Form 100'', Appendix § 4, Race/Ethnic Identification, 1 Empl. Prac. Guide (CCH) § 1881, (1981), 1625. In apparent self-contradiction, this version of the regulation states that the distinct Hispanic "race" comprises, "All persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race". [Underline is the author's.]
16. http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/jobpat/eeo1.pdf
17. http://www.genealogybranches.com/1930census.html
18. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~vbashi/soc108-handout-census.htm
19. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-04-1930s-deportees-cover_x.htm
20. http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/cenbr01-1.pdf Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2000
21. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/014.html
22. http://www.kacike.org/Figueredo.html
23. http://www.pathcom.com/~cancuba/articles/extinct.html
24. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5001334916
25. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume16/pdfs/aguirre.pdf
26. Painter, Nell Irvin. Yale University. Collective Degradation:Slavery and the Construction of Race. Why White People are Called Caucasian. 2003. October 9, 2006. .
27. http://edition.cnn.com/US/9707/16/racial.suit/
28. Karen Brodkin, ''How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America'' (New Brunswick NJ, 1998).
29. Franz Boas, ''The Mind of Primitive Man'' (New York, 1911).
30. http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_03_c-godeeper.htm
31. James W. Loewen, ''The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White'' (Cambridge MA, 1971); Warren (1997), 200-18, 209-11.
32. Winthrop Jordan, ''Black Over White'', ch. IV, "The Fruits of Passion."
33. See "Chapter 9. How the Law Decided if You Were Black or White: The Early 1800s" in ''Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule'' by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0-939479-23-0. A summary of this chapter, with endnotes, is available online at | How the Law Decided if You Were Black or White: The Early 1800s.
34. AFRICAN ANCESTRY OF THE WHITE AMERICAN POPULATION
35. Surveilance Epidemology and End Results. Race and Nationality Descriptions from the 2000 US Census and Bureau of Vital Statistics. 2007. May 21, 2007. [2]

See also

White American