Talk:White people/Archive 14

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White People and the concept of the "Aryan" race?[edit]

Why did the Nazis use the term "Aryan" to describe white people and embrace the Aryan history as if it was part of their heritage? Aryans certainly weren't white; in fact, they were more closely related to Indians and those countries surrounding Iran (even the word "Aryan" is Sanskrit/Avestan). Present Iranians are not even considered as Aryans by white people even when they are directly related to Aryans. I thought that white people are more genetically related to Romans and particular Greeks. Were the Nazis confused? --Media Research 23:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

European and caucasian[edit]

I would like to add this section as a comparison of the terms European, white and caucasian.

Consumer advocate and former US presidential candidate Ralph Nader is of Arabic origin from Lebanon which is in Asia

The term white is normally associated with people of European origin with pale complexions. The terms "European" and white are sometimes used interchangeably. One of the problems with the using term European as a synonym for white is that Europe is not a distinct geographic landmass. Europe is often described as simply the western peninsular of the continent of Eurasia. Europe is a political and cultural entity whose borders have been artificially created. The country Russia is located both in Europe and Asia. From a biogeographical perspective, North Africa is also sometimes considered as part Eurasia since Africa is connected to Asia at the Suez. Since Europe is a part of Eurasia it follows that historic migrations and exchange of genes took place without regard to the borders of the present day. For example the Indo-European languages are spoken in India, Pakistan, Iran, Afganistan and all throughout Europe right up to Scandinavia. Consequently, with regard to physical appearance, Europeans share many affinities with other Asian peoples. Though other Asian peoples may have darker skin tones, the physical similarities they share with Europeans are significant.

The terms 'caucasoid' or "caucasian" are thus been used to describe the people from Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia, and South Asia". However people who are anthropologically described as caucasian may not be primarily identify themselves as white.

Muntuwandi 05:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No absolutely not, stop drawing conclusions which no Reliable Source has --देसीफ्राल 05:56, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes for an article like this please stick to only cited claims. This policy doesn't need to be strictly followed for topics which are not likely to be disputed, but editors here have said they disagree fundamentally with what you have been introducing to this article and some related ones. We should find experts to support any statements added, aside from the very most obvious. Two paragraphs like this just can't be added without some kind of reference. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 06:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"the physical similarities they share with Europeans are significant"? What does this mean? It may also be a valid POV that "the physical similarities shared" by humans and chimps are also "significant" because we are primates and 99% geneticall similar. But yet we are also "significantly" different. So are Asians. You can always distinguish a Far Eastern and an European in less than a second. The problem is these are all uncited weasel words...KarenAER 11:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"The similarities between many South Asians and Europeans are striking"
The Real Eve Stephen Oppenheimer Muntuwandi 00:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Relevance of Frost's maps[edit]

The new pitch is now that Frost's maps (about Europeans, not whites) are "relevant" because Europeans are part of "white people." This reasoning is particularly absurd, as it would also justify including information about:

  • European trends in car purchases,
  • the percentage of Europeans who wear glasses,
  • European alcohol consumption,
  • the percentage of European families who give blond and blue-eyed dolls for their children to play with,
  • and so on...

These may be about Europeans, but they aren't relevant to "white people" because they don't actually have any direct pertinence to the racial concept itself. The same direct pertinence is required of Frost's maps in order to establish relevance. Has Frost applied his work to the "white people" concept? Have any RS done this? - remember, RS doesn't include white supremacist sites like 'white-history.com'. If any RS have applied Frost's work to white people, then we can represent and attribute this with due weight, but so far it looks as if this is original work being done here on Wikipedia - original, that is, unless some Nordicist or otherwise non-RS have already used the maps to support/define their views.

Right now, these maps are being used (perhaps originally) to project and advance Nordicist viewpoints as non-controversial ideas about "white people" against WP:NPOV, WP:RS, and WP:UNDUE, if not WP:OR. I'm open to considering mention of such views for what they are (attribute them to their white supremacist promoters), but the current usage and presentation is a grave abuse of Wikipedia to promote a hateful and extremist fringe agenda. The Behnam 00:04, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The working definition of white in the article (taken from a dictionary) is pale-featured europeans. There is nothing "nordicist" about it since everyone from the french to the russians are included in the concept being portrayed by the article as the mainstream view of what "white people" means. This definition is also not exclusive of all greeks, italians or spaniards, just dark-featured ones or those with obvious non-european features. I don't object to mentioning in this article that there are also other working definitions of white which include any caucasian person - however I think we all know this is not the commonplace meaning of the word and we would be hard pressed to find any experts who would say it is. I think in this case the dictionary is going to have to stand as authoritative. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 00:28, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What in the world are you talking about? These are maps which give some idea of a distribution of eye color and hair color in the one area of the world where there is some significant divergence in these traits. I think that you are over reacting to this. The maps clearly cover an area broader than Europe. --Kevin Murray 00:31, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
These maps DO NOT represent white people. I agree with User:The Behnam 100%. Yeah, I'm back, and I'm pissed, again. I cannot allow the white supremacists to control this and other articles. They are extremist, at best. The maps should be out of the article. Like I said before, dammit, this is one anthropologist's view, and it does not relate to WHITE PEOPLE. Using definitions from one source and then applying it to the maps are WP:SYN As for the "devils advocate" Foudeee, the definition in the dictionary does not apply to these maps. Don't play stupid. - Jeeny Talk 00:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
J, I'm glad your back, but don't understand the objection to a display which seems reasonable. Why is acknowledging diversity among whites a negative? I see any demonstration of variety a positive factor. --Kevin Murray 00:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First, the maps are ugly. I can do a better job. Second, they are not Frost's maps, but a recreation, third, Frost is but one anthropologist. I do not in the least think that diversity among whites is negative what-so-ever. In fact, whites have the most variation in these traits. What I object to is the OR, and SYN attributed to these maps. Please remove them. I'll think of something else if you need a visual. Not those ugly maps. I was a graphic designer, and am sensitive to aesthetics. Images can be very informative for an article, but if they are ugly, difficult to interpret, and out of place, they take away from the subject. - Jeeny Talk 01:00, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK. (1) if you cna make them better please do. (2)let's make them more accurate according to Frost. (3) Why don't we leave them in place and I'll work with you on replacements either new source or better copies. Please! --Kevin Murray 01:03, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Jeeny, I am not and do not play devil's advocate on wikipedia. Your reading comprehension is not very precise if you are refering to my user page. I fully believe what I am saying and in many more things related to this topic that I dare not say here. Anyway, "white people" clearly means what the dictionary says, pale skinned europeans. This is reflected by the lightest colored area on the map. Whites more or less correspond to celtic, germanic and slavic people and there is no expert source which refers to white in common usage in English meaning anything else. "White people" are stereotypical europeans. This definitely includes some italians and spaniards and greeks. It is appropriate to mention that for the purposes of the census, most or all caucasians are included as white. However that is not the common usage (find an expert who says otherwise) and "white people" in english never (to my knowledge) refers to negroes or mulattos. Anyway, we have an expert source already for the meaning of "white people" in English so the onus is on you to challenge that. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 01:09, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Then take it off your user page if you do not want to be considered as such. I do not disagree with you of the dictionary's definition at all. What I do disagree with is your agenda. Do not pretend you do not have one. Your "goodbye" to me is proof. How dare you. I will not take you seriously again. You have proved to me what your character and agenda is, and I don't care what the hell you say otherwise on your userpage, or here. The maps, is this topic heading, NOT the definition of white people. (I didn't read your whole post, as I don't want to throw up) Get over it. Also, the onus is not on me, re the maps. It is whoever included them, to find sources that support the ONE anthropologist's theory. Kevin, I stand by my objection of the maps, not that it matters much. Until you or someone else has another reliable source, I'll work on an image. - Jeeny Talk 01:19, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. --Kevin Murray 01:25, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Like I said, Jeeny, you are having a reading comprehension problem. My user page does not say or imply that I play devil's advocate, which would actually in some cases be a sort of disruption or WP:POINT. My user page says "sometimes it may appear to be devil's advocacy." In English, the implication here is that if something "sometimes may appear to be", it is actually not. I'm not sure what you think my agenda is but you are probably not wrong. However the issue in this article is how the concept of "white people" is used in English, not any agendas or beliefs I (or you) may have. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 01:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My problem with the maps is that their inclusion tacitly indicates that some people are more white than others. Whereas many people who are white have the default hair and eye colors. Muntuwandi 01:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some whites are whiter than others, just as some blacks are blacker than others, what's your point? --देसीफ्राल 01:31, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Muntuwandi, the hair and eye color maps just show some unique features that occur in white people. I don't see anything about this article that states or implies brown-eyed french people are not white. If we are to discuss white people we should address the most remarkable features unique to (or substantially associated with) the population. Clearly light hair and eyes are notable features. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 01:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Default hair and eye colours"??? What, exactly, are the defaults? SamBC(talk) 01:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Nazis hijacked many things such as the Swastika, the Roman Salute, and even Nordic heritage. The editors here that are arguing against presenting the facts which are that white people are pale skinned Europeans, are not acting against Nazism or Nordicism, but are infact empowering it. --देसीफ्राल 01:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that there is not just one definition of what is white. Its subjective an comparative. Arabs are whiter than Zulus, so comparatively white. By a KKK definition White are not only pale, but Protestant as well. --Kevin Murray 01:46, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In other cultures hair and eye color are not valued as much as they are among Europeans. Consequently people just tend to recognize the most important quality when it comes to race determination, which is color of skin. Of all the years of my existence, its only after dealing with this article that I have began to observe the eye colors of people I meet on the street. They must think I am crazy. But I never paid much attention to them before. I can't really name the eye color of any famous person. But that is just my personal experience, I know that European culture takes these things quite seriously. Maybe it should be included thus but it makes the article seem unscientific and tabloid like. Muntuwandi 01:58, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Blue eyes, or especially Green eyes are seen as a sign of utmost beauty in Eastern cultures too, some might say even more so than European/White cultures. The reason, Muntuwandi, that it is not so important in your Black culture is the lack of variation, many blacks in africa probably never saw blue eyes before. --देसीफ्राल 02:03, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To what ever the heck your user name is, says who? You? Show me where it is considered the utmost beauty in Eastern cultures, I'm from Missouri now. Fourdee, this is the last time I'll respond to you civily... I can read perfectly well, and between lines. You think you're some intellectual and you think that others cannot see your sneaky double-speak. Bullshit! - Jeeny Talk 02:12, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
but we see blue eyes on TV. Also several animals also have blue eyes too goat. Muntuwandi 02:33, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"European trends in car purchases, the percentage of Europeans who wear glasses, European alcohol consumption." Car purchases, glasses, alcohol consumption....These arent specific to Europeans/Whites. However blondism, light colored eyes are virtually an European/White trait. Thats the difference...KarenAER 19:40, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am trying to find out who this Pter Frost is. I found this: http://pages.globetrotter.net/peter_frost61z/ . Is this the most prominent scholar on this subject? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gallery again[edit]

Once again the gallery is filled with young women and old men. Only Royal is middle aged. this is the inherent problem with the article. Instead of discussing whiteness as a racial identity it has become a topic of white beauty. The demographics of all westernized countries are skewed to middle aged people. The boomers are the largest single demographic group. So this is a misrepresentation of whiteness. Muntuwandi 02:22, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any emaciated starving blacks in the Black People gallery, so again, what's your point? --देसीफ्राल 02:24, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We are not discussing the black people gallery. I don't know what your name is but since it looks like some kind of middle eastern script, I'll just refer to you as Saddam. Muntuwandi 02:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's Mr. Hussein to you --देसीफ्राल 02:47, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but most average, every-day white people are not beautiful. The same can be said of black people. That's what determines averages. Sheesh. Change your username. Use English - Jeeny Talk 02:42, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with the maps and the gallery is that they generate so much controversy. In all this discussion nobody has added a single source, maybe its a good idea to remove them because their has not been any source apart from frost discussing this. Furthermore, contrary to what may be believed hair and eye color are polygenic and not Mendelian so in actual fact there are several shades of blue green and brown eyes and similar with hair color. Consequently these maps may not be accurate. Muntuwandi 02:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Muntuwandi, it's some kind of Romani language, not Arabic. So maybe Hitler would be a better referral lol. - Jeeny Talk 02:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to see that you'll both be blocked soon. Catch ya next time. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 03:32, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Indic script editor whose name we can't decipher has the same username as Desiphral's signature. I posted this finding on his/her talk page, but I haven't gotten the affirmative on this inquiery. I suggest we call him/her "Desiphral" instead of giving him/her a potentionally insulting nickname that might be construed as a personal attack.----DarkTea© 03:57, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Call me Phral, to avoid me looking like that other editor. I might end up having to change it now, as he/she has been editing under the name longer than me --देसीफ्राल 04:01, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Image:BrookeShields.jpg

No point in adding this to the article, since it's targeted for deletion, but there needs to be a place for Brooke Shields, who was once described by Eddie Murphy as "the whitest woman in America." Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 04:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It shouldn't have been added to the talk page either. Non-free images (which means any images not confirmed as free) are not allowed on talk pages. A simple colon after the second square bracket (as I've just added) would have sufficed, if you had some reason for wanting to discuss the image here. For more information, please take a look at WP:NFCC#9, which is policy. Thanks. ElinorD (talk) 11:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Muntuwandi's Images Listed For Deletion[edit]

I have listed two of Muntuwandi's afrocentric-agenda pushing images for deletion here. They are Image:Light skin colors.jpg and Image:One drop rule.jpg. Your comments at the IfD are most welcome --देसीफ्राल 05:24, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, though I can't help but be disappointed that citing a lack of encyclopedic value is considered "bad faith." So long as we keep them orphaned the deletions go through. The Behnam 05:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So you all know, I've put in for a username change to the latin Phral --देसीफ्राल 06:00, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One serious problem with the one-drop image is that I believe Muntuwandi is identifying Angelina Jolie as someone who would pass the one drop rule when she is pretty obviously part injun (something which I think few people from white countries would miss, whether or not they cared). Even if that's fixed it speaks to the fundamental difficulty with creating this sort of collage to depict something. A photograph we can say is just a picture of its topic as taken by the camera, while the collage involves some assumptions that may not be correct. For a non-controversial article it may be a welcome addition but for something that is likely to be challenged at the least one should be extremely scrupulous about facts like is the individual actually identified as claimed. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 06:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bias in article[edit]

Aside from census data, this article is mostly about the relationship between certain genotypic and phenotypic features associated with "white people." I have two problems with this. First, it utterly ignores a vast literature in anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies on the social construction of whiteness, how the notion of "white" people has changed historically, and its cultural dimensions. I realize that to write about this someone would have to go through peer-reviewed journals (including interdisciplinary ones like Critical Inquiry, Representations and Public Culture) to find the important articles and look through book reviews to identify the important books - but hey, that is what you have to do if you want to write an encyclopedia article, right? Until someone does this, the article fails to live up to our NPOV standards by ignoring many important points of view. Second, the sections on genoytpe strike me as original research insofar as they are synthetic i.e. making claims about "White people" in general. All the scientific studies are on specific populations, and different populations will have diferent features and it is not scientific to take results from different populations and average them unless you have a good reason. Here is a good reason based on the article itself: country by country. When the US does a census to identify White people, and the Ecuadorian census identifies White people, they are NOT referring to members of the same race or ethnic group. Censuses reflect states' views of their citizenry, although the degree to which they reflect the interests of bureaucrats, social scientists, or political negotiations with representatives of ethnic groups varies. But often time within many countries (certainly the US and Brazil) the boundaries between ethnic groups and how people self identify may vary from what is recorded by the census ... which is why you really need to look at work by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists - otherwisewhat you have is at best a distortion, or at worst amounts to OR (in the form of synthesis). Slrubenstein | Talk 18:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, especially on the genotype OR (as should be evident from this talk talk page). What do you propose be done about this? The Behnam 18:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well for starts, i would just check the sources (sorry, I am overcommitted myself and cannot do it) and disaggregage anything that was clearly aggregaed by a Wikipedia editor. I would check the sources and would use only those sources concerning genotype/phenotype that make it clear what the sample is, and organize the section according to countries or self-identified ethnic groups at specific times and places. I know there is lots of easily accessible research on clines that show changes in skin-color and eye-color correlated with latitude - I would reject ALL such sources as appropriate for this article because such research on clinal variation is explicitly not about discrete populations, races, or ethnic groups or nationalities, that research is all about a continuum of change that only blurs the boundaries between so-called races or ethnic groups. Once you guys have rectified the sources - making sure they are appropriate (specifically about a bounded race or ethnic group, and not about latitudinal variation) and appropriately used (as sources of information about geographically and temporally specifically located populations that are clearly identified) to make sure there is no OR, see ifyou can come up with a better way to organize what is left. In the meantime: if there is a core group of people really dedicated to this article, start looking for books on Whiteness, books and articles by anthropologists, sociologists, and historians who specialize on ethnicity and start addind that research. Good luck. Look in the three journals I mentioned for articles on "whiteness," as well as recent articles in the major anthropology and sociology journals (American Anthropologist, American ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Current Anthropology, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Journal of Historical Sociology, Comparative Studies in Society and History - anything in the past 20 years on "whiteness" or "white"+"ethnicity" or "white race" and see what you come up with - despite the long list of journals you will not end up with a huge number of article and inforporating their findings into this article will start moving it from commonly-held popular beliefs mixed in with some stats, to a real encyclopedia article. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have already pointed out the inapplicability of the Frost maps, which I believe is an example of what you called inappropriate information about clines. The problem is that there is no way to stop this OR or otherwise enforce content if enough other editors want it, regardless of whether or not it is not about directly pertinent to "white people." The most recent attempt to discuss this is at Talk:White people#Relevance of Frost's maps. The Behnam 19:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can't agree that the Frost maps are anything other than a simple graphic demonstration of distribution of two simple charactersitics, over the geography where these ethnic groups were indigenous. This only serves to demonstrate diversity among those commonly catagorized as "white". How is any of this OR? It is a simple demonstration of fact. --Kevin Murray 19:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I echo SL's concerns about the quality of some of our references and a synthesis among the information. However, WP is not a peer-reviewed publication, nor do our standards require sources of that level. Idealism aside, WP is a volunteer project and never likely to get beyond a cursory presentation of topics. I think that this article should stick to presenting simple facts and point readers to more in depth sources. Less is more. --Kevin Murray 19:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your clinal map is inappropriate because it is not showing variation among White people, it is saying that there are no white people (i.e. bioogically distinct ethnic groups). And you do not need to inlcude the chart here to make the point - just say many scientists have rejected biological races or the claim that ethnic groups are biologically distinct and have a link to the Race article which explains it all in greater detail. But the only justification to include the clinal chart in this article is if it had a caption that reead, "According to many scientists, there are no white people." That is the only fact it demonstrates. If yu don't add that caption take out the chart. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:02, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(A) it's not my map, I have just tried to make it more accurate and clear. (B) how does showing variance among "white people" imply that there are no white people. The term "white people" is a vague term with many definitions. My preference would be to have this topic merged under a better name, but if it is to exist, I think it should demonstrate diversity within the established definitions. --Kevin Murray 20:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(A) I was using "your" rhetorically and apologize for the misunderstanding. (B) I am afraid you did not read what I wrote carefully. Clinal maps simply are not about variation among white people. I did not say that showing variance among white people means there are no white people, I said the map does not show variance among white people. What it does is it shows variance within the human race, and it reveals a particular kind of variance that is incompatable with ay notion of biological ethnic groups or races - and such maps are used by the scientists who develop them explicitly to make the point that there are no biological races and that you cannot talk about ethnic identity as something based in anything biological (this actually does leave room to say that there is such a thing as "White people" but only in a sociological or cultural sense and not in a biological sense - which brings us back to my point that this article ignores the vast published and available research by historians, sociologists and anthropologists on "whiteness" and it is only by drawing on that research - not the clinal map - that one can talk about the existence of "white people.") To make any other claim about the clinal map would be to violate our NOR policy.Slrubenstein | Talk 23:32, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As for "less is more" - whell, garbage in, garbage out. Wikipedia was intended to be an excellent encyclopedia first and formost. The decision to make it a wiki, i.e. any one can edit, was not made with the expectation that the people who would wdit would actually not care about building an encyclopedia and definitely not to create an encyclopedia that reflects the lowest common denominator (of knowledge). It was premissed on the idea that of the thousands plus who would work on wikipedia, some will have already read many of the books and articles on Whiteness, or others would have the desire to do real research. Seriously, I doubt youwould hold physics articles to the same low standard. You would really want an article on a physics or biology topiuc not to be based on current research? That is a laughable attitude towards an encyclopedia. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:08, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This attitude is delusional at best. In its current format WP has limitations. I see the strength of many as winnowing out the extremes, but to expect WP to be anything more than cursory is the laughable attitude. Regardless of the topic, we shouldn't get carried away with our own self-importance. However, this topic is surely not a shining example of WP's capacity. I see this as a dangerous ground for propaganda. --Kevin Murray 20:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you seriously underestimate the extent to which high-school and university students rely on Wikipedia for research. Anyway, I try to take pride in anything I work on. If a job is not worth doing well, don't do it. Conversely, if you are going to do something, do it right. These are things my parents taught me as a kid - I think they are still wise words. Honestly, if you really do not take Wikipedia seriously (I only mean, seriously enough to take pride in it and do as good a job with it as if you were doing anything else you cared about) why try to influence the quality of its articles? I would rather take you on good faith and assume you do take Wikipedia seriously and would like to be proud of it. I am just trying to explain my motives for making the suggestions I made. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:32, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In high school, college, and university my research frequently started at Britanica or even World Book for an overview, but after Sophmore year I'd have been embarrased to stop there. Yes we should be proud of what we do but the world needs Toyotas and Ferraris; and the designers and builders of each take pride in their accomplishments. --Kevin Murray 23:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We are alike: in high school I used the World Book, and in college Brittanica. But I have been teaching college and university courses for fourteen years, and I assure you that in just the past four years I have seen an exponential increase in undergraduate and graduate student (of different majors/disciplines) use of Wikipedia in their research papers and dissertations. Your point about toyotas and ferraris is well-taken, but I am trying to be practical: more and more people are using Wikipedia, including students. It is just a fact. And I take your point about the potential for propaganda (expressed earlier) which is precisely why I urge the use of peer-reviewed journal articles, and books published by academic presses, as sources for this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 05:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While I think Slrubenstein is a meticulous and scrupulous wikipedia editor, I don't think introducing material which questions the existence of a concept that is obviously in wide use would be useful. I don't believe the article makes claims that whites exist as an absolutely discrete group or that racial categories are or aren't absolute or do or don't reflect monophyletic clades. We're just trying to report the concept as it is used and understood by the average person. Material that undermines this should merely be listed lower in the article in a "criticisms" section as is the usual practice on wikipedia. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 05:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About questioning the concept - in part you misunderstand what I am saying, and in part you misunderstand Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia demands NPOV and NPOV includes representing multiple points of view. The view that "white people" does not designate a biological entity is widely held by scientists and must be included in this article. Wikipedia also prohibits original research and that includes novel syntheses: to use the research of population geneticists to make a claim that those scientists themselves reject is not only plain disingenuous, it just violates our policy. As for "just trying to report on how the average person uses the concept," please tell me where in Wikipedia it states that this is our policy. I really think you have to be kidding - what you say is among other things the task of dictionaries and it is very explicit that Wikipedia is NOT a dictionary. And really, do you think the article on evolution should limit itself to what average people think evolution is? Do you think that the article on the theory of general relativity should be about what average people think relativity is? Do you think that the article on global warming should be about just what the average person thinks it is? Honestly, I think you have to be joking. The issue is not whether material undermines the popular view and should thus be listed under "criticisms." The issue is that evolutionary scientists have done considerable research on genetic variation that has led them to reject claims that races and ethnic groups are biological entities - this is not merely a "criticism" of popular ideas, it is positive scientific research that adds to our nowledge of the world and leads us to insights that when people talk about "White people" the are talking about something other than a biological entity, which, and I am not reapeating this for at least the fourth time, is why it is so important to include research by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists on "Whiteness" and "White people." If you do not draw on such research, you are violating NPOV and NOR and just pushing your own POV - or worst, just being a bullshit artist. I appreciate your calling me a meticulous and scrupulous editor, and I really hope that what we have here is a sincere misunderstanding. It sounds to me like you want to exclude scholarly research from an encyclopedia and I really hope that is not what you mean. Anyone who is not willing to read articles and books to research writing an encyclopedia article - and I am asking nothing more than what an undergraduate college student would do to study for an exam or write a term paper - or worse, someone who actively discourages others from doing this and using it to develop an article, has no place at Wikipedia. If you do not want to write an encyclopedia, well, it's a free country (if not where you live, certainly wikipediaworld) - you are free to do whatever it is you really want to do ... except come here and violae our policies like, (1) wikipedia is not a dictionary, (2) NPOV and (3) NOR. Slrubenstein | Talk 05:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not every wikipedia article is about a scientific concept. A great many are not. This is one that is only partly about historical anthropology or biology, and partly about the social concept of whiteness. A wikipedia article should 1) identify a concept 2) report on the concept 3) list any criticisms of the concept - in that order. And if that is not in any policy or guideline, it is the unwritten practice. The article on God doesn't start with "No scientists have found any evidence that there is any God." The original research or POV-pushing here would be to take some biology that questions race and try to prevent there from being an article that describes the concept as it is used. And there is no biology that says the people we are calling white are not genetically different from those we are calling black - the cline argument is feeble at best and works only against the concepts that the races are absolutely distinct clades, not the concept that there are identifiable clusters of genetic material. The voluminous material debating both sides of that dispute is well outside the scope of this article. In this my friend I think it is perhaps you who are bullshitting as I can't believe you honestly think the existence of some science can possibly be used nullify the reporting of a concept in wide use. I have no objection to mentioning this issue and referencing the relevant articles. However the topic of this article is in quite firm ground as a widely-used "social construct". -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 06:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think SlR is trying to advance the argument that emphasis be placed on it being a social construct, with a focus on its variability. El_C 06:15, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
@Fourdee - You believe race is a genetic concept? Also, I'm not seeing how the cline argument is "feeble." Slrubenstein rightly points out that such cline maps are not intended to describe "race," which is probably why we don't see any RS using these maps to describe the "white race." To characterize the "white race" based upon hair and eye colors, such that 'lighter' hair or eyes indicate "whiter" people, is quite distinctly the definition used by Nordicist/white supremacist racist viewpoints, and the current use of the cline maps pushes the Nordicist definitions into this article. The maps are about certain traits that aren't necessarily those used to define the "white race" by RS - if you disagree please show that RS do indeed apply these maps to the "white race." Otherwise take it out and keep it out, as we aren't supposed to prop up POV-pushing OR. The Behnam 06:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We may basically agree with how this article should be presented but I think there is some difference over the tone that should be used and what the bulk of the material should be. I was at one time extremely opposed to phrasing this as a "social construct" but I think with the proper wording that is actually the way to phrase it. What I have been concerned with in the past is phrasings that imply it is a "social construct without any basis in genetic features" rather than pointing out that the traditional races are definitely not clades (although a few ethnic groups may be close to clades) but are more loosely organized groups of genetically similar people. I guess basically what I am concerned with is leaving the wording of the introduction paragraph as neutral as possible and just reporting the fact of the concept without introducing a lot of challenges to it - except to mention that there are some challenges which will be referenced below. I think the treatment in the God article is similar to what should happen here. The volume of material questioning the concept of race itself should be mentioned but should not overwhelm the article and perhaps it belongs in a "Criticisms of the concept of a white race" article since it could easily fill such an article - much like how the criticisms of God and Jesus etc. tend to be broken out into separate articles since they are as large as a discussion of the concept itself. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 07:19, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fourdee, we do agree on almost everything. First I am going to express my personal view, just for the sake of transparency, then I will express my view as to how to proceed with the article itself. Personally, I would agree with you that there is a connection between race and skin-color, but I would not agree with the claim that "The social construct (of race, ethnicity, whiteness, whatever) is based on genetics. Fom all the research I have read, the social construct is based on historically changing political and economic conditions and relationships, and for various reasons (one of which has to do with (1) the fact that at certain key moments in history political and economic inequalities developed between groups from different geographic regions - and I emphasize that the social dynamics is explained by changing political and economic geographies, not genetics and (2) geographic differences correlate with genetic differences - but really, the point of the clinal map is that geography "causes" genetic difference, not the other way around)) under very specific conditions phenotypic (not genetic as such) differences became markers of race (in the late Roman Empire, by contrast, people had a concept of race but it was not based on physical appearance or beliefs about descent/ancestry ... my point is that what people mjean by race varies depending on time and place). This really is very different from saying that racial or ethnic identity is "based" on genetics - I think that statement is flat out false. i realize that what I wrote above is complex but I think the view can be explained in an accessible way if expanded only into two or three paragraphs. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Second, I think a problem with the idea of "criticism of the white race position" is that it implies that there is only one position concerning the white race and all other positions are criticisms of it. I just do not agree with this. I think that there are several different views of "the white race" and while it is true that they are all in conflict, no one view should be elevated as "the view." There just happen to be different views. The view that race is a social construct should not be reduced to being a criticism of the view that races are biologically real, any more than the view that races are biologically rel should not be presented solely as a criticism of the view that race is a social construct. These are just two different views among others. It is a fact that there is a concept of "White people" We can say that in one sentence, but it doesn't mean much - it begs the question, how do people conceive of Whiteness? Fourdee writes as if there is only one way that people conceive of Whiteness. And that is not a fact. There are different conceptions of Whiteness. One could say tha there are several "concepts of whiteness." Now, here is what I think we should do to improve the article. I agree entirely with Fourdee's desire to comply with NPOV, not just in the first paragraph but in the entire article. But I do not think that we will achieve neutrality by arguing over which of us editors is right. We will achieve neutrality by complying with our NPOF and NOR policies. This means representing multiple views if they exist, and "if they exist" means, if they can be found in reliable verifiable sources. My knowledge of the sources makes it clear to me that there is no one view of "White people" meaning the concept of "white people;" there are several. To elevate one of these views as the proper view of the concept, and present any other view as a criticism of the "proper" view, is not neutrality - it is far from neutrality, it is one editor's bias. The introduction should introduce the article as a whole by saying what the different views are. This is a general principle. But it leads me right back to the comment I wrote at the top of this section, that there are two major flaws with this article: (1) this article presents the views of researchers in the life sciences but misrepresents them: this is a violation of NPOV and NOR, and if we are going to provide the views of population-geneticists we must represent them accurately (see my comment to Kevin Murray in the following section, "Genetic and other Populations"). (2) this article excludes other views that have been documented or proposed by researchers in the social sciences and humanities. This is another violation of NPOV and reflects an absence of research based on verifiable and reliable sources (i.e. the flip side of NOR - if NOR is what we shouldn't do, researching verifiable and reliable sources is what we should do). The remedy is simple: editors committed to working on this article need to research what sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have written about the concept of Whiteness (some of what they have written is descriptions of how regular - meaning, non-academic - people living in different times and places have conceived of race, and some of what they have written express their own conception of whiteness based on their analysis of their data). Slrubenstein | Talk 09:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the simplist way to redress the problems with this article: read this book (the US has an extensive interlibrary loan system so anyone in the US - I am not living in the US - can get this book:
  • Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic;
Both are law professors and it is published by Temple University Press, so it is quite reputable. As an edited volume it contains essays by a plethora of authors and thus represents a wide range if views - helpful for complying with NPOV, and all in one easy source. I think this is generally considered the best collection of diverse essays. But to help you guys out some more, here are some other books directly relevant to this article:
  • Allen, Theodore The Invention of the White Race
  • Babb, Valerie. Whiteness Visible: The Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature and Culture (Valerie Babb is a professor of English at the University of Georgia)
  • Bonnett, Alastair. White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives (Alistair Bonnet is a Reader of Geography in the University of Newcastle-upon-Thyne)
  • Brodkin, Karen. How Jews Became White Folks: and What that says about Race in America (Karen Brodkin is a professor of Anthropology at UCLA)
  • Dyer, Richard. White (Richard Dyer used to be in Media Studies at the University of Warwick)
  • Hale, Grace Elizabeth. Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (Elizabeth Hale a professor of History at U. Virginia (and her book is very well-regarded, often assigned in college classes))
  • Haney-Lopez, Ian. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (Ian Haney Lopez is a professor of Law at UC Berkeley)
  • Hill, Mike, ed. Whiteness: A Critical Reader (Michale Hill is a professor of Social Policy at U. of Brighton)
  • Hollinger, David. Post-Ethnic America (David Hollinger is a professor of History at UC Berkeley)
  • Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White (Ignatiev is a professor of Critical Studies at the Massachussetts College of Art and a Fellow at Harvard university; this book is one of the foundational texts in Whiteness studies and is very widely cited)
  • Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Matthew Frye Jacobson is Chair of the American Studies Program at Yale)
  • Kincheloe, Joe, ed. White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (Joe Kincheloe is a professor of Education at McGill (and there is a Wikipedia article about him!))
  • Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (George Lipsitz is a professor of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara)
  • McCarthy, Cameron and Warren Crichlow, eds. Race, Identity, and Representation in Education (Warren Crichlow is a professor of education at York University)
  • Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
  • Thomas, K. Nakayama, Judith N. Martin (editors): Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity (Thomas Nakayama and Judith Martin are professors of Communication at Arizona State U)
  • O'Donnell, James and Christine Clark, eds. Becoming and Unbecoming White: Owning and Disowning a Racial Identity (James O'Donnell is an associate professor of Education at New Mexico State U.)
  • Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s (Michale Omi is an associate professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley; Howard Winant is a Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Barbara)
  • Rasmussen, Birgit Brander, et al., eds., The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness (Birgit Brander Rasmussen is a professor of Chicano Studies at U. Wisconsin-Madison)
  • Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (David R. Roediger is a professor of History at U. Illinois Champaigne-Urbana (his book is another classic, it is assigned in LOTS of college courses),
  • Rogin, Michael Paul. Black Face, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Melting Pot (Michale Paul Rogin passed away but was a professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley)
  • Saxton, Alexander. The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Alexander Saxton is a professor of History at UCLA)
This is only a partial sampling of the amount written by scholars on the concept of "White people" - there is much more than the very length of the list reveals just how inadequate this article is, how much it is leaving out. Now, some of the above books are absolue classics. But for more cutting-edge research, your best bet is journals (it takes less time to write and publish a journal article than to write and publish a book, so rejecnt journal articles are more likely to be "state of the art." Of course, journal articles are also shorter which is a mixed blessing: obviously, they take less time to read, but they are much more focused. Still, good articles review the literature and thus provide handy summaries of the range of views. They can also provide great little case-studies that illustrate specific aspects of the concept "White people." Above, I listed these journals:
  • American Anthropologist (Hartigan's article in 1997 is a god starting point)
  • American Ethnologist
  • Cultural Anthropology
  • Current Anthropology
  • American Journal of Sociology
  • American Sociological Review
  • British Journal of Sociology
  • Journal of Historical Sociology
  • Comparative Studies in Society and History
  • Critical Inquiry
  • Representations
  • Public Culture
Any major library will have subscriptions to at least a few of these journals. In hard-copies, one could look at the index at the back of any given volume; if one has J-Stor or another electronic version of the journal once can do a boolean search. It woul dnot take long to search for "Whiteness," "White+Race" and "White+Ethnicity." You will not come up with an overhwlming number of articles, but what you do come up with will represent the best scholarship (these are all top-ranked peer-reviewed journals; the authors of the articles did all the complex hard work, we just need to benefit from their labor). You will also come up with book reviews and if the review is positive, it is probably worth reading the book. In the end, you will know a lot more about White people (which presumably is what you want, if this article interests you) and you will be able to improve this article by ensuring it complies with NPOV and by ensuring that you are not violating NOR. Like I said (I think!) above - good luck! No article in Wikipedia is ever perfect - after all, by its very Wiki nature, all articles are perpetual works in progress. But obviously this article can be much, much better. That's pretty exciting! Slrubenstein | Talk 09:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ok thanks for the list. Just quickly... First, I think WP:FRINGE may come into play as far as balancing the article. If the overwhelming majority of people believe they can reliably visually identify a white person, and a handful of scholars say they cannot for X tangentally related reason, the scholars may actually constitute a fringe or tiny minority opinion for purposes of wikipedia. For example if most newspapers, television broadcasters, police agencies, etc. regularly use a term, that is the mainstream meaning of that term and we should stick to analyzing that usage rather than descontructing its premises on the say-so of essentially a tiny minority.
First, you seem (in your third sentence, "A handful of scholars") to think you know what these scholars think. Unless you have read all the books and articles, I do not see how you can make this claim. I believe they are saying something very different from what you claim they are saying. This is precisely why one cannot write an encyclopedia article without doing research: we just cannot make things up, this isn't a bullshit-session. Second, what makes a view prominant or notable is generally not determined by how many people share that view. I think almost everyone has beliefs about what is "real" and I believe that these beliefs have nothing to do with or actually contradict string theory or quantum mechanics. The percentage of Americans (let alone, people of the planet) who are proponents of the views of string-theory or quantum mechanics is very small. Yet, this encyclopedia has articles expressing those views. Ditto research on population genetics. You seem insistant that there is only one real view, and any other view is not a view but is either a criticism of your view, or fringe. What makes an individual book or author prominent enough to cite in an article - in other words, a relevant and appropriate source, even an authority, does not depend on a popularity contest but rather the judgement of his or her peers. By peers I do not mean people who hold the same view, I mean people of the same profession. Most of these books and articles are written by people whose work is considered authoritative by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists. This article should represent all major views: this means the dominant view held by the masses of uneducated people, and also the dominant view of scholars. If the dominant view of historians is different from the dominant view of sociologists, we should distinguish between and include both views. A "fringe" academic view is a view held by a small fraction of the scholars researching a particular subject - not a small fraction of society at large. In fact, in Academia, these views are not "fringe." For you to call them fringe is tantamount to saying "Academia" is fringe. Are you saying that we should not read books and articles by historians and sociologists when writing an article about something that has a historical or social dimension? Are you really saying that an excellent encyclopedia should ignore the views of scientists? If so, it becomes impossible for me to take you in good faith. If this is really your position - if you view the work of professional researchers to be "fringe;" then you have no business researching articles for an encyclopedia. A relatively small number of people understand either the math behind E=MC squared, or what this equation means for our understanding of time and space - by your standards that makes Einstein fringe, and we should just delete the articles on Einstein and the theory of relativity. Your attitude is fundamentally opposed to the integrity of Wikipedia. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also I personally think the phrasing and balance of this article comes down to motivations as far as interpreting what is really fringe, balance, or neutral-point-of-view: On the one hand are people who believe that the concept of a white identity is good for the world (or America) and that people should be encouraged to believe in it and select their mates from that pool, and on the other is the agenda to diminish the value of that categorization and encourage people to select mates from outside that pool - especially by insinuating nothing would be lost since there is nothing genetically distinct about who we are calling whites (I think it relies on deceptive phrasing to mislead people who don't understand genetics). One's position in that matter I think influences one's judgment on the other matters to the extent that it becomes almost impossible to interpret policies like WP:FRINGE, WP:NPOV etc. completely fairly. This seems to be a particular problem in this article. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 09:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Personal opinions of editors should never enter this article. It does not matter to me whether you are or are not a racist. You can edit Wikipedia as long as you comply with our policies. There are racists who hold strong views about "White people" and however much a minority they are in the United States, I would agree that their view should be inclouded in this article. But there view should not be the only view in this article, nor should any editor decide which view is most important - that is a clear violation of NPOV. Similarly, the fact that racists do not understand genetics or evolutionary theory does not mean that their views about gnetics should be excluded - it is a notable view and shoulod be inclouded. But the views of actual scientists (population geneticists and evolutionary biologists for example) should also be represented accurately - even if a relatively small minority of Americans are population geneticists. You can't say that scientists' views about their own field of expertise are fringe just because relaively few people join that profession. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So the conclusion I draw from that is that we have a situation as I mentioned to Muntuwandi: It's not a clear cut case of science but instead introduces a huge array of different philosophical, sociological, moral, cultural and religious points of view and if the propaganda from one camp is introduced I don't see how we can avoid balancing it with another. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 09:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The word "propaganda" is meaningless in Wikipedia: all you are saying is it is a view you disagree with. What matters is not whether you agree or disagree with it, but that it is a view. NPOV demands we include all notable views. Whether we like or agree with them or not is utterly irrelevant. Wikipedia is not about truth, it is about verifiable views. And it is most definitely not about editors views. In this entire discussion I have only been arguing that this article should accurately represent verifiabloe views. You on the other hand seem to think that this article should represent only your view. If this is really what you think, then you do not belong at Wikipedia. If you do not think this, then I do not understand your comment Slrubenstein | Talk 10:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I believe you are incorrect about what is considered fringe. "Mainstream here refers to ideas which are accepted or at least somewhat discussed as being plausible within major publications (large-circulation newspapers or magazines) or respected and peer-reviewed academic publications." It doesn't offer a way to decide between newspapers and academic publications but I dare say if 100 newspapers use a term and 2 acadaemic journals say that term doesn't mean anything, they are fringe. My intent here is to prevent the article from having misleading material inserted which implies there is not a genetic cause for physical appearance, that these traits are not heritable, that these traits are not associated with certain ethnic groups, or that there are not differences in genetics between populations - because those are lies. Sometimes lies (and other deceptions) are promoted in academia through various means as part of sometimes shadowy and nefarious and sometimes overt campaigns, and I fully intent to accurately portray any such lies or deceptions as the fringe theories they are when the overwhelming majority of people know full well what a white person is and that they are white because of their ancestry and genetics. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 10:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now I know for certain that you are acting in bad faith. First, you quote the policy that states that "mainstream" refers to "ideas which are accepted or at least somewhat discussed as being plausible" in "peer-reviewed academic publications" Among other thingsw (that is what the word "or" signifies). This is precisely what I have been calling for, I have listed major peer-reviewed journals, and I have listed books published by academic presses and cited and reviewed in peer-reviewed journals, and despite the fact that you have quoted the policy that defines these views as mainstream you insist that they are not. Second, you state explicitly tht you want to keep lies out, as if you are the ulotimate arbiter of truth and falsity. You are not. Nor am I. In Wikipedia, no one is. That is why we have the NPOV and V policies, and the fundamental dictum that Wikipedia is about verifiability not truth. You have made it clear that you are here to push a point of view, and that you want to use this article as a soapbox. You really do not belong here. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to keep out your proposed material (yes, largely what I would call deceptions and propaganda), I just don't think it represents the mainstream published beliefs as reflected by the newspapers and mass media and does not deserve an equal footing with the idea that it is possible to identify a white person by his appearance. This other material deserves a mention in a citicisms section, not to take over the article with tangental arguments. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 11:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been asked to comment on this discussion by SLR. I must first explain that my education is in biology, especially genetics (BSc) and biotechnology (MSc) (some of you know this). I'm not a population genetics expert, but I suspect I have a relatively better understanding of population genetics than most Wikipedia users. I've also been reading a little about anthropology because population genetics and anthropology are inextricably intertwined. So I'll present the situation as I see it, I don't pretend this is the only way to see things but maybe I can help a little. Alun 11:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Although hardly anyone would dispute that White Europeans are White people the terms are not anywhere near synonyms. As I see it we can, at best, describe White Europeans as a subset of White people. Who is counted as White is very much dependent upon the cultural background of the observer. In some cultures White and European are near synonyms, in others White and Caucasian are near synonyms and in yet others Caucasians are a subset of White people. It is also true that White Europeans themselves are a subset of Europeans, not all Europeans are White, and neither would all Europeans describe themselves as White. So if we are going to present information that is specific to White Europeans it should be contained in a subsection of the article that clearly states that this group only represents a subset of White people. We should then also have sections for other groups that are often considered White people. Alun 11:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • What is the purpose of having maps of hair and eye colour? Why don't we also have maps for the distribution of obesity or alcoholism? These are also claimed to be caused by genetic factors are they not? There is nothing per se important about hair and eye colour, even in Europeans (let alone all concepts of White people). The vast majority of White Europeans do not have light coloured hair as the map clearly shows, and many Europeans do not have light coloured eyes either. These are neither physical nor genetic markers for Europeans, so why are they there? I can see only one reason for using these two markers and no other markers, and that's because blond hair and blue eyes are the traits that are most associated with the idea of Nordicism, or what used to be called "Aryanism" by the Nazis, they do not have any other significance as far I as can see. It's odd that even in so called "Nordic" regions (Scandinavia for example) a large proportion of people clearly don't have light coloured hair). If we want to present evidence of genetic differentiation within Europe then I know of two studies that have shown population clusters in Europe, Seldin (2006) showed three European populations and Bauchet (2007) showed five European populations. It would be more rational to display these data than to choose eye colour and hair colour, which are arbitrary phenotypes and only explain European genetic variation in terms of a tiny and unrepresentative proportion of the genome as a whole. Here's some images I created of genetic variation in Europe using the data of Seldin and Bauchet Image:Seldin geography.png Image:Bauchet European clusters.png. Alun 11:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've just read fourdee's comment "If the overwhelming majority of people believe they can reliably visually identify a white person, and a handful of scholars say they cannot for X tangentally related reason, the scholars may actually constitute a fringe or tiny minority opinion for purposes of wikipedia." I'm not quite sure what he is getting at. It may well be true that the overwhelming majority of people really do believe that they can identify a White person on sight, and I don't have a problem saying this in the article if it can be cited, but the statement is irrelevant to the question of what a White person is, is it not? For a start we cannot say that the overwhelming majority of people are using the same criteria for "identifying a White person on sight". I may well believe that I can do such a thing (identify a White person on sight), but this neither means that (a) any of the other "overwhelming majority of people" agree with my identification nor that (b) this identification has any quantitative meaning, i.e. my identification is based on what I "believe" a White person looks like, what it is not based on is any knowledge of the continental or "racial" origins of the person I am identifying. This categorically means that White people are a social and culturally constructed set of people, and fourdee's comment seems to contradict his previous comment that he thinks that White people are identified by genetics. I think the best example I can think of is a Black person. Barack Obama can be identified as half Black (he has a White mother) and also as a Black man. So Jonathan Marks would say that we end up with the mathematical impossibility of 0.5B=B. Alun 11:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mostly I agree with slrubenstein, there is no such thing as a White person except in the perceptions of the observer. White people are not a "race" by any definition of "race", except to those people who believe that White people is a synonym for Caucasian, while this is a perfectly valid point of view, it is not the only point of view, and it certainly is not more correct nor accurate than any other point of view. Alun 11:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why stop at whiteness. Arguably, everything is categorized only in the mind of the observer and by inextricably inconsistent standards. What is blue is subjective, what is hot is subjective, what is 335 degrees celsius can vary from observer to observer. What's a planet is subjective, what's a permanent fixture of a house versus what is furniture is subjective, the difference between a twig and a stick is subjective. Where a person ends and the air begins is subjective. In fact, every observation and every categorization always depends on the viewer and every viewer uses slightly different standards and perspectives to measure it. This same tactic could be applied to every article until wikipedia was nothing but an endless repetition of this same deconstruction. Certainly some mention is appropriate but can we keep it to a dull roar? -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 12:00, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why stop at whiteness? Probably because this article is about White people? Let's please try to stick to the subject at hand. What I said is most anthropologists say. That what I or you personally think of as a White person is not necessarily the same, we do not per se use the same criteria for drawing our conclusions. As I say, if you want to claim in the article that the vast majority of people believe that they can identify a White person at sight, then that's fine, but you cannot then claim that this same "vast majority" of people all have exactly the same criteria for their identification. All the best. Alun 13:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see from your userboxes [1], Alun, which you have since deleted, that you are another person who believes race is nothing more than a social construct. So I really don't see how you hope to contribute constructively to an article dealing with the White Race. --Phral 12:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whether you personally believe that I can contribute constructively or not is not important. Comment on content not on contributors. You are entitled to your opinion about anything, but you are not entitled to decide who can or cannot contribute to an article. I am a biologist, in biology race is nearly always a synonym for subspecies. Human genetic diversity does not conform to any biological concept of subspecies, Templeton (1998) for example states that populations can be claimed as subspecies when their Fixation index (often abreviated to FST) reaches 0.25-0.3 (that is that 25-30% of genetic diversity is found between rather than within a population). The human species nowhere shows such diversity, on average human diversity between Races is about 7%, well below 25-30%. If race does not conform to any biological concept of subspecies, but anthropologists tell us that race does exist as a social construct, then I for one am happy to accept their expert opinion. All the best Alun 13:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is my third opinion on this discussion, and there are two parts to my comments here. First, Phral your last comment fails[2] to assume good faith and is borderline incivil - it is inappropriate to speculate on the views of another editor. This comment extends to Fourdee as well for their earlier comments[3]. I would remind editors to keep cool and to remember that people coming here are doing so in good faith.
Second, there are 3 issues here a) White people as defined by Race & Ethnicity studies, b) White people as defined by biology & genetics and c) white people as defined by popular discourse. Race & Ethnicity studies (which is for the most part Slrubenstein's list) is not a fringe theory it's a well established discipline - if you are unsure ask at WP:FTN. Race & ethnicity studies does not say there is no connection between genes and race but says there is also an identitarian aspect to categories like "white" or "black". This info should be easily included in the article. Alun has explained that "Caucasian" and "white" are not synonymous - this is the scientific position and it should be easily included in the article. What I understand one of fourdee's points to be is (and I apologize if I'm wrong) that many branches of the media refer to white people in a much more generalized way (ie skin colour equals race) - this is probably true and if this can be sourced with examples it should be in the article. None of these ideas are under-threat from the other ones. Including all of them does not diminish any one of them--Cailil talk 13:14, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Quick thoughts.
  • Social construction—is by and large the sociological, historical, anthropological consensus across many fields (see Race). It doesn't claim merely that "race" or "white people" doesn't exist, but that racially defined groups are not biologically distinct. The borders are drawn by social processes, not biological judgments, and (this last is a physical anthro conclusion) the observable differences are largely clinal.
  • Mainstream media—Their use of "white" and more frequently "black", "Asian" etc. does not reflect an opinion between a social construction position and a biological position, and more than the use of "gay" makes a claim as to whether that status is inherited or chosen. Further, newspapers almost never refer to physical factors as determinative of race, but rather their ancestry, cultural background etc. Certainly none of them are referring to the hair and eye colors discussed here.
  • Physical characteristics is written about Europeans, but plenty of "white people" have non-European ancestry and features as well, notably in Brazil, Latin America generally. We need to either carefully differentiate the section as non-determinative, talk about the much larger set of white people (variously defined around the world), or push the material into other pages. At least we should be including the standard caveats around the race as physical concept issue and referring them to Race.--Carwil 15:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed material related to European people which already exists there. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Genetic and other populations (section)[edit]

Anyway. I agree with the delition of White_people#Genetics_and_other_population KarenAER 20:22, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • While I don't support the removal of this section, I offer a compromise. I've put MW's text at White people/genetics where perhaps we can refine it. I see the information as very interesting in explaining the evolution of Whites and the important similarities among us all. --Kevin Murray 21:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
With respect: the question is not whether you see this as information that explains the evolution of Whites, but whether the scientists who did the research see it as an explanation for the evolution of Whites. If they do, then the article should clearly state that "scientists x, y, or z use this data to provide the follwing explanation for the evolution of Whites: ..." However, if they do not, then you cannot use them to provide or support an explanation f the evolution of Whites - to do so would violate NOR. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:36, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kerry et al pic[edit]

It is biased. Because for every 4 people whose skin color is similar like that, there may be 4000 with clear skin tone differences. Europeans are the lightest ethnic group (Spectrophotometry confirms that). That's why they are called white...KarenAER 19:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can agree with wanting better and more verifiable picture, but I'm OK with the concept. --Kevin Murray 20:04, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You ok with the pic? But if we only include that pic without showing instances where skin color differences are clear, that doesnt give the whole picture...KarenAER 20:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The pic seems to be saying "all of these people have pale skin, but they're not all (considered) white". Sounds okay to me. SamBC(talk) 20:34, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But those people are not pale, except the albino. They are "pale" compared to sun tanned Kerry. They arent pale compared to Kim Basinger. Look at the difference between Kim Basinger and Kerry. That's why this picture is POV pushing. There seems to be no objective comparison, ie: suntanned Kerry vs other people in bright lightening. Also look at here: [4]. Thandie Newton's skin color is clearly non-white compared to Matt Dillon...KarenAER 21:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
By the way... if you google Kim Basinger, you will rapidly discover that she is of German, Swedish and Cherokee Indian ancestry (her grandmother was part Cherokee Indian)...! The Ogre 14:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest cooperating with MW in a sandbox to develop a collage which meets all of our needs, and in the interim leave this in place. Specifically, I don't like the picture of the euro-asian woman being described as asian, but we have no verifiable infomation on her heritage. Perhaps it is consistent though with the afro-asian woman, but her heritage seems verifiable. I don't like using celebrities, but they do have some potential for a higher level of verification. --Kevin Murray 20:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Karen, I'm quite a Bassinger fan, but we are being critisized for making our article into a beauty pageant. I agree that we should be using realistic photos and the Kerry at his darkest is misleading compared to a very pale Newton. On the other hand, it demonstrates the sillier nature of this whole concept of evaluation based on skin tones. There are many more important criteria upon which to evaluate people. --Kevin Murray 21:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So ya'll know, I'm no longer देसीफ्राल --Phral 23:22, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome Phral -- short names are the best. Cheers! --Kevin Murray 23:28, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on what particular population you look at, the average not-obese white woman is in fact beautiful. Kim Basinger is not particularly unusual looking for her ethnic group. She's also not young. I don't see what would be wrong with using young people though. At any rate, the first photograph in this article must be of a pale-skinned white person. Doesn't matter what color hair or eyes but the person should be *white* and have stereotypical features which if it is a female are going to be "beautiful". Tough. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 04:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also this material Muntuwandi is introducing is overwhelming the article and is at best only tangentally related to this one. Discussions of people who are not white, or who white people don't consider part of their ethnic or racial group, belong elsewhere. At this point I'm ready to treat Muntuwandi as a vandal. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 04:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had previously introduced these photos of average-looking (or merely somewhat photogenic) non-famous white people to this article. Something like these should appear before any other image (probably without the caption of nationality since what is being shown is that they are white, not what ethnic group):

I think they would go well on the page, and would make a pleasant change to the somewhat overwhelming (at times) number of old politicians, late Kings and albinos --Phral 05:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Those three pictures should be added, I agree. --Vonones 05:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


those pictures should not be added. A blonde white american and a red haired american? Come on thats unrepreasentative of white americans and is what the nordicists want you to put in. Most white americans are dark haired. And a dark frenchman? these are all racist stereotypes.

Let me put it this way, most british people are dark haired and around 30% have dark eyes with 20-30% having mixed eyes aswell.

The french are not much darker than the british, the welsh are actually darker eyed than the french.

the pictures we have are fine and we need many pictures not just 3. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.153.17.237 (talk) 17:28:02, August 19, 2007 (UTC)

I feel comfortable saying that as a rule more photos is better than fewer. That said, though, I think we should start with the principle that photos should illustrate specificx points of the article. This means that we shouldn't just add photos arbitrarily. But i also have doubts about trying to come up with a gallery that is in some way "representative" of White people, especially when there is some debate as to what a truly representative gallery would require (to be clear: i am not opposed to the idea in theory, I just think it is impractical, at least right now). Below, SamBC suggests we (re)open the discussion on how to organize the article. I suggest we wait to see if we can reach consensus on this - I suspect that it will take a while in part because some editors have strongly conflicting points of view. As a matter of fact, I think there is going to be a recursive process for a while, where we discuss organization (which necessarily involves ideas about what should be included), then reading sources or potential sources, and then perhaps revising the organization based on what we have learned, which may reveal the need to consult more sources, which may again lead us to revise the organization. Be that as it may, once we have consensus on organization, we can discuss what collection of photos would best illustrate each section of the article. Let the contents of the article lead the way in deciding on photos. But that means as long as there is conflict about the content, many photo-choices will be controversial. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Content fork[edit]

The European people article seems to be a POV fork of this article.Muntuwandi 03:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You have lost all credibility with me, Muntuwandi. Comparing a deeply tanned white man, with a halfcast black man, an albino and a man of unspecified Oriental origin? this is an encyclopaedia, not your personal blog of fringe theories --Phral 04:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Muntuwandi, please stop. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 04:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think Muntuwandi's point is that skin color is mutable and that the use of the word "White" to identify people (and I would thin equally "Blacl" is metaphorical. Am I right, Muntuwandi? Slrubenstein | Talk 09:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So I guess if I mated with a black person we might have a baby who looks just like a blonde Swede? Interesting. Calling it "mutable" or "clinal" or "phenotypical" is misleading to the average person. Take this concept that "race doesn't exist" and package it up for mass consumption as a scientific fact and you might have people believing it doesn't matter what their mate looks like because we're all just the same. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 10:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This slippery slope has been argued before. We all know that light-skinned people can tan their skin and become darker, but I perceive their ability to darken is only within a range of their natural skin color. For those who wish to disregard skin color as a determiner of race, I would like you to present a reliable source that says someone with naturally pink skin can turn black through tanning and the blackest black can turn pink through staying out of the sun.----DarkTea© 10:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, there are several examples of "white" people living at sub-Saharan latitudes who after many years (and sometimes one or two generations) become much darker than their forebears, even though there was no miscegenation, and who remain darker even when moving back to higher latitudes. Evidence shows that skin color adaptation is a remarkably rapid adaptation by evolutionary standards.--Ramdrake 12:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Both of you miss the point - I am guessing because you have not actually researched the topic. I don't want this to turn into a bull-session where we are just expressing our own views, we should be talking about improving the article. The way to do that is to ignore our own views and provide accurate accounts of releant verifiable views from reliable sources. The article curretnly fails to do so in two ways: it refers to research by population geneticists but misrepresents it. And it ignores all the research by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists. Perhaps if you studied any of that research you would avoid making silly statements that have no bearing on the actual debates among scholars (including those who argue that race, including "the White race," is a social construction). Slrubenstein | Talk 10:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently you haven't read the material either since you cannot cite the specifics and your words to me indicate someone who has little understanding of the concrete genetics involved and is operating from more of an off-the-cuff recitation of tired carefully crafted "sociological" deceptions often repeated in certain circles to support a political agenda which unfortunately has yet to be exterminated. At any rate you've indicated you don't have the time to deal with this article so the sooner you can start doing that the better. Thanks. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 10:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just watched The Simpsons before, it had a hilarious joke in it. Springfield Elementary were throwing out two boxes of textbooks. The first box read '1950s History Books - too racist', the second read '1990s History Books - not racist enough'. That joke really does sum up alot of things. I think people are being too worried about offending others and are trying to be too inclusive, a problem which is thwarting society in general today. 50 years ago a White man was a white man, a black man a black man and an asian an asian. Hairy-fairy phrases like 'Social Construction' were unheard of --Phral 10:46, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it's a lot of nonsense. If you give an inch to these sorts they will sneak their propaganda in, which has been very very carefully designed to be plausibly supportable from a rational standpoint, but has a builtin lie that will spread with the concept. For example that "race doesn't exist" - I can't count the number of times I've heard average people say that in the last few years. So I look at that one one hand and say yes, race in the sense of absolutely distinct populations isn't true, especially between asians and europeans. But by accepting that theme that "race doesn't exist" you help perpetuate the hidden lie - that whites are not genetically different from blacks, or asians, or etc., and it can further degrade among the most innocent people into a belief that there really isn't a close connection between the genetics of a parent and their children, or between genetics and appearance (or behavior). I think the idea here is to get that worst form of the lie into the heads of the most vulnerable people so they are caught by it (for life) before they even have a chance to analyze it. I think WP:FRINGE is on our side in this though and that at the least the article heading can be kept relatively free of the worst propaganda phrases (hidden deceptions). -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 10:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All human beings are genetically different - and there is greater genetic variation within self-identified races than between them. Moreover, the larger the interbreeding group, the greater the genetic variation within it. An attempt to keep a "race" pure by not interbreeding with other races will eventually lead to less variation within the group (i.e. certain traits will be lost); interbreeding between races (creating a larger interbreeding population) will preserve more3 alleles and have a higher degree of genetic diversity. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would genuinely enjoy continuing this conversation on a user talk page or someplace appropriate but I think we have all gotten a bit off track here and should try to focus on what this article should look like. Of course you are welcome to add or recommend additional material from peer-reviewed journals, I think the question we have is what balance it should be given, and WP:FRINGE and related guidelines don't give concrete enough examples to decide. I think again we should look to the God article for the right sort of balance between a belief and challenges to it, and limit the challenges to the very concept of race to a criticisms section, since this article is not even about race it's about "white people". The different interpretations of what is white, as far as how the term is used by governments and in different cultures, are of course more directly relevant to the article and there's no real way to keep them out. It comes down to a debate over formatting, phrasing and balance which is something we have to work out with each other. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 11:15, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@Muntuwandi. The two articles are not POV forks, they are about two very different subjects. If they contain similar or almost identical content, then this needs to be rectified, though one would expect a certain amount of overlap. European people is not synonymous with White people, if it were then the articles would indeed be content forks and one should be redirected to the other. Clearly White people are not all European, White Europeans are that subset of White people that come from Europe. Conversely there are many European people who are not White, just like there are many English, or British people who are not White. For example we actually have a lot of African-Carribean people living in the UK who are obviously Europeans, they are mostly not White though. Alun 13:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Medcab requested[edit]

Please note that I have requested the intervention of the Mediation cabal.--Ramdrake 14:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • We were at this point last week, but I thought we could develop a structure among us. I am impressed that we have attracted some new experienced editors to this project. Perhaps we have a balance now to form a coalition to establish an ordered solution, based on a middle ground. While the extremeist bring interesting information, I think this need to be tempered. With SLR here maybe our level of sourcing may come up. --Kevin Murray 16:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is a generous comment Keven and i appreciate it. But let me add something: given that our NPOV policy demands that we include points of view other than our own - indeed, even points of view we vehemently disagree with - there is no reason why individuals should add material only on views they like. That means that there is no reason why individuals cannot research views they do not like. Do you know the slice-of-cake model for fairness? If two people are going to share whatever is left of the cake (or pie), you have one person slice it into two portions, and then let the other person have first pick of which slice s/he gets (parents of yong children should see the immediate appeal here). I am trying to think along those lines - what if we all read sources we don't expect to agree with, but do our best to understand and represent accurately? Now i am not suggesting a formal rule that people only add views they do not like. But I would encourage people to read sources they don't expect to like. I think there is always a fear that when people put in sources, they are just putting in sources they like, or are going to present those sources as if their view is the correct view. If, however, someone were to add an account of a point of view that they do not like and they can add it without taking sides one way or the other, then everyone might be satisfied: people whoi like that point of view will be happy because it is included, and people who don't like that point of view will be satisfied that it is presented in a neutral way, because they are the ones who presented it. It is just an idea. I provided a list of books on whiteness. I think most of those books if not all generally take the view that race is socially constructed. I would encourage people who are skeptical of that view to read some of those books and consider what they think would be the most appropriate way to add the material. In this spirit, I would ask other editors (e.g. Fourdee and Phrall and Muntuwandi) to suggest sources. Kevin, I think you are trying to be even-handed about this and I know (well, I think) your main concern is that any account of a view be written in an accessible way so I hope if you have time to go to a libray you can take a look at some of those books and see if any look interesting (and based on the first few pages are well-written) enough to read. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Slrubenstein. I have seen many a "narrow view" editor preferring to editwar and POV push rather than conduct a bit of research. It is much harder to do useful work that to simply express an opinion. Wikipedia:Writing for the enemy is a nice way to approach it, as the good faith that we assume can actually be practically demonstrated. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and no we need balance. But this isn't "fair & balanced" Fox news (ho ho) where we debate. I think that an encyclopedia needs to present divergent opinion close to the center. --Kevin Murray 19:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, according to policy, "close to the center" isn't the criterion, "significant, verifiable and reliably sourced" is, but I see your point; WP:FRINGE should take care of keeping opinions closer to the center.--Ramdrake 20:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A Plan[edit]

NB: I am not part of MedCab, or any other grouping, not an administrator, I'm just me.#

So, I've been looking over all of this, participating in the discussion a little, and I've had a few thoughts I'd like to present.

I propose that the article be radically restructured, with a top-level section being given to each "domain" in which "white people" are considered (eg, ethnogenetics, sociology, anthropology, etc). The intro blurb would summarise that the term is covered in all these domains, and give a brief précis of each relevant definition.

I don't know exactly what these sections or definitions should be, but this should help to pick apart the speghetti-like interweaving of these ideas in the article, which inherently give rise to an increased likelihood of inappropriate POV and OR. I suggest that we discuss what these sections should be, and what (roughly) should be in them, here. Then people can try and pick apart the current content to fit it into these sections. If we are sure that there should be a section for a given domain but we've no content for it, create it as a stub section.

What do people think? SamBC(talk) 17:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think i like the idea, although I would phrase it differently and say that after a general introduction the first main section should provide an account of the main points of view. This would involve providing a framework for understanding the similarities and differences between the main points of view. Perhaps this could be followed by sections that provide exemplary case-studies, or that address any legal/political/policy implications of the different views. I think we ned to discuss thisk but right now I think we need to be open-minded about it. To go back to the opening account of the major different points of view .... unfortunately, we will only know those after we have read more sources. SamBC, you seem to think that academic discipline could be a framework (biologist versus sociologist etc). That may be the case, but I am not so sure. I think we can safely say there are at least two major points of view: one that is biological and one that is social-constructionist. But based on my research I am not so sure that the strongest proponents of the "biological" view are actually biologists. And I know that anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and historians share the social-construction view. Now, I think a major question is, do all people who think it is a social construction actually have the same view? I suspect that people who generally agree it is a social construction may actually have different and even opposing views when they get to the specifics. Now, these different points of view could be linked to academic discipline i.e. political scientists and historians and anthropologists may have distinct points of view. But maybe that isn't the best way to slice up the pie/characterize the differences. Above, Carwil suggests three groups though I am not sure whether s/he is identifying three different views or three different sources. Different views and sources may well be closely linked - but maybe they aren't? My point: we will only know after we have looked at a wider range of sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that a discipline-based division at the top level leads to the cleanest divisions. Discussing different views and the arguments for them with the disciplines mixed up makes for an apples-and-oranges comparison. In order to avoid synthesis, a clean division tends to work best - top-level sectioning for the disciplines/sources, then subsectioning for views/sources. However, a section after the lead and before these sections does make sense. SamBC(talk) 19:29, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What is your evidence? I am not saying you are wrong. I am saying only that you have not yet provided any evidence to suggest you are right. It seems very likely that brodkn (an anthropologist) and Ignatiev (in Critical Studies) take the same approach, or that Brodking (anthropology) and Rogin (political science) take the same approach or that O'Donnel (Education) and Rasmussen (Chicano Studies) take the same approach. But if we organize it by discipline, we would be separating these works. What is your evidence that these sources are best organized by discipline than something else? What is your evidence that an anthropologist and a political scientist are not each capable of growing apples, or that someone n education and someone in chicano studies are not each capable of growing oranges? We cannot make a decision without having concrete evidence. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would say then that "approach" might be a better term than "discipline", or draw the lines of discipline very broadly. The reason I used "discipline" is that it's probably possible to describe the different approaches in terms of disciplines, even if they aren't the primary discipline of the researcher. SamBC(talk) 20:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, yes, I agree with you completely about different approaches. Whether they correspond strongly to different academic disciplines remains to be seen (for example, a Marxist anthropologist has more in common with a marxist sociologist than with a structuralist anthropologist). But I agree with you on the principle. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. See the way similar issues have been handled in the Race article. Open with the contested and multiple definitions/uses and work from that to structure the article.Eyedubya 20:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You mean you agree with me? because your example supports my point. The race article shows how both anthropologists and evolutionary biologists took at variation clinally - two different disciplines share the same view and the section draws on scientists from both groups as sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Might I suggest that an admin protect the page and put it into a relatively consistent state, and leave it protected until there's a solid plan with consensus here? SamBC(talk) 23:33, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I second the motion.--Ramdrake 23:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Will copy & paste Genetics section from European people[edit]

Since there is a claim that there is "significant gene exchange between Africa and Europe", we should let the readers know about the genetic structure of Europe to be NPOV...KarenAER 20:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Make sure that you backreference the source article for attribution purposes. SamBC(talk) 20:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think this is needed. This article is not about European people about which we already have an article. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:26, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If there is a need, summarize the main points of that section and wikilink to it with {{details}}. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it is not about European people, why did you let the portion, which claims there was a significant gene transfer between Europe and Africa, remain?? And not all the information there was about European people. Please do not vandalize... KarenAER 22:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not dismiss my edits as "vandalism" and stop trolling my talk page. Please summarize the gene info if you wish and then wikilink to that article as explained above. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The accusations of vandalism in the edit summaries (or elsewhere) are completely inappropriate, Karen. See WP:VANDALISM, where it says: "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Apparent bad-faith edits that do not make their bad-faith nature inarguably explicit are not considered vandalism at Wikipedia.". ElinorD (talk) 23:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I consider it as simple vandalism because a large proportion of my edit WAS NOT COPY PASTED from European people article. So a large proportion was deleted without any given reason, ie: blanking vandalism. KarenAER 01:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What are you talking about? What gene? KarenAER 23:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For those of you who are intellectually challenged, "Genetics and other population" section currently mostly talks about how African and Europeans are related. In order to be NPOV, we need to present counter arguments. But even then the section will only deal with relatedness of Africans and Europeans. If that section is about genetics, why should it only focuse on that? KarenAER 23:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

KarenAER, your "intellectually challenged" remark is not only uncivil but risky as it is bound to backfire on you. Now, given what you have written here, it is clear that you do not understand our NPOV policy. NPOV does not require that for every view we provide, we come up with an opposite view. NPOV reqires that we report all notable verifiable views relaed to a topic. If there is only one, we report one. If there are twnety, we report twenty. You say we need to present counter arguments ... well, what are your verifiable sources? The way you phrased it, one could read what you wrote and think that we editors whould come up with our own counter-arguments to comply with NPOV. But that would actually violate NPOV as we never put our own views in. The only question in this particular context is the following: Is there any debae among molecular and population geneticits concerning gene flow between Africa and Europe? If there is a debate, we should provide an accyrate account of it (but in science, this is likely to take the form not of "counter arguments" but rather alternate models). If there is no debate - if there is a relative consensus among molecular and biological geneticisms, NPOV demands that we do ... nothing. We represent the view that is currently widely shared, and be clear about who holds this view. In short, the application of NPOV is dictated by the available releant verifiable reliable and notable sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Slrubenstein, please dont write irrelevant long posts, the talk page is already hardly managable. My edits had reliable sources. Thank you...KarenAER 01:14, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As Alun explains below, you are misrepresenting those sources in order to fabricate the "counter argument" you feel is needed. That is a violation of NOR (you cite sources ut to make claims which are your own) and it actually violates NPOV (as they are your claims) - that's my point, and it is certainly relevant. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
KarenAER, might I politely suggest that you refrain from making WP:NPA personal attacks, such as suggesting that anyone who fails to understand or agree with you is "intellectually challenged". Can we all just calm down and try to keep things WP:CIVIL? SamBC(talk) 00:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow editors. Just to interject, the Cavalli-Sforza material is interesting, but it still belongs in Genetic History of Europe, where other info on European genetics lives. I can repost my merge proposal from way back when, but let me link to reasoning for now. There are other problems with just presenting Cavalli-Sforza, due to their inaccurate tree metaphor, but more on that later; (never mind; C-S as presented here doesn't include misleading tree model or "divergence time" data.).--Carwil 00:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just to reinforce that earlier discussion, here's a RS about the genetically mixed nature of present-day "white people":

So-called "racial" mixture has occurred extensively in Latin America, and to a lesser extent in North America, so that most people are descendants of ancestors from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and in many

places like the Caribbean, from Asia also (Graham 1990; Morner 1967). Throughout the colonial world, complex genetic mixtures among various peoples have taken place; and increasingly Europeans at home are participants in, and products of, new genetic combinations with individuals absorbed into their societies from distant lands. (AUDREY SMEDLEY, "'Race' and the Construction of Human Identity," American Anthropologist 100(3):690-702. 1999.)--Carwil 01:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Hello. I've been asked to comment here about some specific edits by Karen. Karen is concernrd abot the section discussing Genetics and other population, I share her concerns but think her reasoning is faulty. White people do not form anything like a homogeneous group, it is a non technical term that is not about any specific group of people, rather it is a term with numerous different meanings and applications. I'll summarise my thoughts in point form to try and save space.

  • The term White people means different things to different people. As a British person I think of White Europeans when I think of the term White people, I assume that this is the case because this is usually how the term is applied in Great Britain. I am fully aware that in many parts of the world this is not the case. I get the impression that in the USA the term Caucasian is more commonly used (I think this is due to the use of Coon's five race model by the federal state), due to this it seems that in the USA White people is commonly used synonymously with Caucasian.[5] Other states and cultures use the term White people differently again. It is therefore apparent that White people cannot form any sort of biologically, culturally, linguistically or socially homogeneous group. So we should not have this section for this reason. White people means different things to different people.
  • Karen tries to use mtDNA and Y chromosome data to show that there is little African contribution to the White European gene pool. It is incorrect to make this claim based upon Y chromosomes and mtDNA, these genetic elements are subject to genetic drift and cannot be used to infer rates of admixture. There is direct evidence that this is the case. In the late 1990s it was claimed that about 20% of White Europeans ancestors were from the Middle East (due to the introduction of farming in the neolithic). Analysis of the whole genome now indicates that the contribution of Near Eastern farmers is nearer 40-60% (we are already an "admixed" population), so mtDNA and Y chromosomes do not indicate levels of gene exchange. When we show that some African mtDNA or Y chromosome lineages occur in Europe all we can infer is that there certainly was genetic transfer, we cannot use these genetic elements for quantitative analyses of the extent of admixture. I doubt that the authors of the studies cited actually do this anyway, showing the proportions of these segments of DNA is not the same as making claims regarding extent of genetic exchange in totality. Interestingly there was recently found a west African Y chromosomal lineage in a family from Yorkshire, this family had no knowledge of any African ancestry, but there it was an African Y chomosome, furthermore it was a relatively rara haplogroup, even in west Africa. [6]
  • Karen also cites the 2005 paper by Tang et al., but it is incorrect ot claim that "A recent American study indicates that self-described race or ethnicity is a near-perfect indicator of an individual's membership in one of four genetic clusters within the population." The paper doesn't say this. What Tang et al. did was to ask the people in the study to identify as one of the four predetermined groups, they called this "SIRE" (Self Identified Race/Ethnicity), but this analysis was bound to identify four clusters because their samle was biased from the start (deliberately so), they specifically excluded people who did not self identify with one of these four groups. Tang et al. then "magically" showed that their genetic analysis corresponded to the predetermined self identification of the participants. To claim that this proves there are only four genetic clusters in the USA is not true and the authors of the paper do not make this claim. Indeed if this paper shows anything i shows that White people in America can have many different backgrounds, in the USA Hispanic people often identify as White do they not? Even if Tang et al. choose to use a different ethnic category for Hispanic people this does not preclude Hispanic people from identifying and being identified as White people. This study doesn't really show anything important with regards to the article. Indeed I suggest that Karen reads the paper " What is a population? An empirical evaluation of some genetic methods for identifying the number of gene pools and their degree of connectivity" [7] and the paper "Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations" [8] if she is interested in clustering analyses. Alun 06:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gallery[edit]

We should just have a few images side by side no need for a gallery since this is very common. --Vonones 22:31, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We can't have any non-free images in galleries, and there were quite a few in the one I removed. Whether or not there should be a gallery is a content dispute, and I'm not interested in it. But anyone who wants to have one must carefully check that every single image in it is either public domain or licensed under a free licence, before attempting to reinsert it. ElinorD (talk) 23:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Of those pictures, Image:HowardStringer.jpg and Image:Vaclav havel.jpg are tagged as unfree and should be removed; Image:Anna K.jpg is tagged as free (as a U.S. government work) but is also tagged as lacking source information, so it's questionable. The rest of the images all have a free tag and no tags indicating questions as to their status. *Dan T.* 02:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Phral's reversal of today's edits[edit]

I'd like to ask User:Phral to refrain from doing wholesale reverts like he/she just did and wipe out a day's worth of edits by nearly a dozen different editors. That strikes me as extremely disruptive, and smacks of article ownership.--Ramdrake 23:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your right, let me self revert --Phral 23:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Too late --Phral 23:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page protection[edit]

By request of User:Neranei, working as a mediator, I have fully protected this page of one week. The request was made through Request for Page Protection. If there is disagreement on this request, please feel free to request unprotection the same place, or come to me. - Philippe | Talk 01:14, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You've protected it with that revolting picture at the top of the article that is not of white people and I think is intended to make a person physically ill. It sure makes me sick. The mediation is not going anywhere, especially not with that mediator. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 01:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The picture is of various people, not all of whom are (conventionally) considered white, and it does this to make a point (described in the caption). I'm not sure how it could make anyone physically ill, but if you'd care to explain in calm, even, and reasonable tone, then that might help.
If you think that mediation won't get anywhere, then the only thing to resort to is arbitration. Arbitration will not be able to make a determination to article content, only regarding user behaviour, and as there's been a lot of objectionable behaviour here from a fair number of people, I would imagine that it's in everyone's best interests to avoid that and work hard to reach a sensible outcome through mediation. SamBC(talk) 01:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is bloody pathetic! There are 5 pictures of non-whites and only one picture of a deeply tanned white IN THE WHITE PEOPLE ARTICLE!!! --Phral 02:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This state of the page is intended to be temporary while all parties discuss and reach a consensus on a way forward. SamBC(talk) 02:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've already stated my position on all of this. It's a waste of time to keep repeating the same arguments. In fact, this article is probably a waste of time and might be best left with that vomitous photo of degenerates at the top just to remind people what white isn't. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 02:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The point of mediation is (partly) to avoid just going around in circles, hearing the same arguments again and again. If you do not wish to avail yourself of it, of course, that is your choice. SamBC(talk) 02:41, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All mediation will do is introduce a bunch of people with no real interest in the article who are too concerned with being politically correct and not offending anyone. --Phral 03:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please reconsider, Phral. It may very well help make us come together as a whole, to produce a NPOV article. It is not about offending others, but about scholarship, reliable sources and neutrality. - Jeeny Talk 05:29, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Politics and Politicking[edit]

It's funny that Slrubenstein tries to make such an issue of someone's politics when this guy he brought in is well known for ultra-extreme-far-left politics[9] (anti-race, anti-capitalism, anti-nation etc.) which strangely seem to correlate with the material he is trying to insert. Nobody is neutral on this and the belief that this article should read as an attack on the very concept of race and a platform to introduce deceptive genetic arguments designed to mislead people into believing genetics are not the reason for differences in appearance - that is the real POV-pushing here. I'm just being honest that my beliefs are the polar opposite of Alun's whereas he has taken to hiding them.

SLRubenstein has also gone running to an administrator friend of his (who posts his essays on his (user:jossi's) user page) to try to stop me from editing the article for being a racist despite his significant violations of WP:CIVIL etc. You are right I am "racist" and unlike some of the other people who work on this I don't try to pretend I don't care about the issue. But the fact is Alun is not neutral, SLRubenstein is not neutral, they are promoting specific agendas and want to overload this article with tangentally-related material and the same old often-repeated attacks on race which are designed to mislead laypeople about genetics. This is as I have said all along an issue of how the article should be balanced to correspond to mainstream beliefs and what is on-topic for the article at all. I don't object to any of their material being mentioned, only to it being phrased in a way that is misleading or being used to overwhelm the article.

There no way I can try to work on this if slrubenstein is going to keep trying to get me in trouble with administrators for failing to adhere to acceptable politics like the sort Alun and User:El_C are happy to promote on their user pages and through their edits, and if that behavior continues I will have little choice but to ignore him and his associates on talk pages.

The mediator who offered to handle the case is a new editor without the experience necessary to be any help at all. In fact, I don't see why we need mediation or the article to be protected. There's no reason we can't work through this on the talk page, perhaps with the help of someone very experienced with wikipedia rules and precedents for controversial articles. The rest of this stuff - calling for mediation, page locks, running to administrator friends to silence opposing views, one-sided civility warnings, voluminous diatribes against race which is largely off-topic or tangetal - seems to be gameing the system just to disrupt the compromise and work that was already being attempted. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 09:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get hysterical. For one thing, i didn't do much running. I left messages at several people's talk pages, including several people I do not know. Whether I know them or not, I went to them because their record at Wikipedia either demonstrated a throough familiarity with our content policies (NPOV and NOR which as I have stated I believe are at issue here), or who have expertise in the life sciences. I do not care what little tags or boxs Alun has on his user-page. He has advanced degrees in biological sciences and a thorough unerstanding of many of the sources (e.g. Tang et. al, and the research on MtDNA and Y chromasome haplotypes) that are being used here. I contacted other people with degrees in the life sciences as well - that is the common denomenator, not who they support in th US presidential elections - and I also left messages with people who seem knowledgable on the social science literature. When people have conflicts over the interpretation of policy, or life or social science research, it seems reasonable to ask othe editors with experience in these matters to comment. Your investigation of me and Alun was pretty superficial - if you dug further you would have learned that he and I were involved in a lengthy and vitriolic edit war many months ago, and I had no reason to believe he would agree with me now. But he knows his stuff and has commented in a reasonable, well-informed, and appropriate manne. That should be the only issue that concerns us. But perhaps since you cannot respond to the substance of what he wrote, you turn instead to character assassination. How brave of you. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I find that you are persistently intentionally and directly rude to other editors (for example "bullshit artist", "hysterical") and tend to accuse others of your own behavior (use the label "racist" like it disqualifies an editor but find that Alun/Wobble having ultra-left-extremist agenda against everything from race and nation to private property and editing to back that up is not a problem). I wish that there were some way to avoid seeing further comments from you on talk pages. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 13:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also my problem is not with Alun with whom I also have some experience and find to be a reasonable and fair-minded person despite that his politics appear to be the literal polar opposite of mine. It's your behavior that I find disruptive, or at any rate improper and hypocritical. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 13:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if my concern for the integrity of the article makes it difficult for you to work here, I guess you have three choices: (1) learn to live (in the virtual world of Wikipedia) with people who do not agree with you, (2) file a complaint against me at ArbCom, or (3) go away. I am gussing youwill opt for (1) which si fine by me. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

General comment[edit]

This comment is from the mediation cabal case, I was asked to post it here by Phral, so I have. I don't think this is about racists and non-racists as Ramdrake states, I don't think it's a left-right political issue as Phral states [10] and I don't think it's about afrocentricism (I can see no Afrocentric point of view in the article at all). The issue, as far as I can see it is about whether the term White people is universally identified as a specific race. I think that on the one hand certain good faith editors such as fourdee, Phral and Karen truly believe that it is self evident that the term White people applies exclusively to White Europeans. With this in mind they think that this article should concentrate primarily on this group of people. On the other hand there is another group of people, myself included, who view the term White people as much more amorphous and plastic. We tend to think that this term used to mean different things in different contexts. Both of these points of view are already expressed in the introductionary paragraph where two definitions are given (a) "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" (b) "a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry". Neither of these definitions actually exclude people with ancestry that is not European. A person can have light coloured skin and have European ancestry and can also have ancestry from a different part of the world. My personal solution would be to include several sections in the article, one of these sections could deal with White people as a term used for people who perceive their descent as exclusively White European (this is a perfectly valid usage and point of view after all), other sections of the article can discuss use of the term when it is not applied to people of presumed exclusively White European descent. For example use of the term White people to mean Caucasian, or use of the term White people as it is used in the census for the USA, which I believe includes people from as far as the far east of Russia. There may well be other uses of the term White people that I am not aware of. Phral makes the point that this article should not include general material about the concept of race, and I tend to agree with him. If someone is interested in general about race as a social or biological construct then they can read about it on the race article. The same applies to Race and genetics. I tend to think this article should concentrate on the various ways that the term White people is applied and perceived, rather than worrying about whether White people are a race or not. Alun 10:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What the page should contain/look like[edit]

In order to accomodate multiple verifiable points of view (as indicated by WP:NPOV), I would suggest the following:

  1. The article as a whole not assume that "white" is a racial term; however, as that use seems to be dominant, greater 'weight' should be given to this by most of the article working on that premise.
  2. Top-level sections for each of the common definitions as a racial term, and one for use as a non-racial term. Possibly one for the racial term historically (place for things like coverage of the one-drop rule).
  3. Pictures: there seems no reason for the article to contain no images of non-white people, but the images should either illustrate the 'definition' of white for the section they're in, be used for comparison to help understand a certain definition, or in the lead to summarise definitions of white.
  4. Matters of the "existence" of race should be mentioned tangentially with a link to relevant articles.
  5. Similarly for race relations etc.

Other matters, such as diversity within white populations etc, should be subject to further (and seperate) discussion.

What do people think? SamBC(talk) 10:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first problem we need to deal with is that of user:Muntuwandi. Look how calmly we are managing to talk, as soon as that Afrocentric troll returns, this will all go to hell again. There is hardly any point in discussing how to construct this article, when all he is going to do is destruct it and scream racism at anyone who dares challenge him. No doubt resulting in bitching on the Admin notice board. --Phral 10:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First, of all, Phral, please refrain from personal attacks. Comment on contents, not on the editors. This last commetn is clearly both incivil and a direct personal attack.--Ramdrake 11:07, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Allow me to rephrase. Muntuwandi's edits are consistent with that of a troll. Until we silence trolls who insert Afrocentric content, there is no point in proceeding. --Phral 11:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While your initial comment is inappropriate in a number of ways, Phral, and your newer comment is still not entirely constructive, I will try to address the underlying concern.
  1. If everyone else can agree how to act and proceed, that minimises the trouble any potential troublemakers may be able to cause
  2. Addressing problem behaviour is not the first thing we need to deal with. Charting a course is necessary first, so that if anyone does disrupt a consensus-based direction then ANI or arbcom can deal with it much more readily, without the same risk of counter-accusations and bickering.
  3. It's possible that Muntuwandi's views are shared by some reliable sources. If that is the case, then they should be included as appropriate to their relevancy and general degree of acceptance in the relevant field(s).
I hope that this makes sense. It would be most useful now, IMO, to try to drop any accusations related to past behaviour and move forward assuming good faith from those who engage in a sensible process of consensus-building and attempting to document all relevant points of view. SamBC(talk) 11:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find MW brings some great info and sources, but I also think that he has a bit of an agenda and overstates in some cases. I'd like to see us all temper the propaganda and debate. This is an encyclopedia, not a point-counterpoint editorial. --Kevin Murray 12:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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