The Nazis wouldn’t have qualified by the standards at the time of the American Revolution in Benjamin Franklin’s eyes. Nor even the Italian side of Bovino’s family.
[W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.
Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.
I have always been labeled as white—by myself and others. Yet not according to Ben Franklin. My ancestors are the exact people he sees as a threat to whites. They came from Germany and swarmed into Franklin’s beloved Pennsylvania. My father is a 6th generation German-American. And even after five generations in Pennsylvania they still spoke German. My grandfather did not learn English until he went to school. According to Franklin I am not white, but a swarthy German—a threat to the ways of whiteness.
It is common place to observe that most of those who complain about immigrants today are part of ethnic groups that once were slandered and scorned in similar ways. Franklin’s comments reinforce that important observation. Important, but not new for me. What was new for me was the realization that there was a time when some people would not have seen me as white.
“White” is a surprisingly mutable term over time as social norms change.
EDIT: I’d also add that you can also watch, over the course of America’s history, “Protestant” morph into “Christian” and then morph into “Judeo-Christian” in political speeches and the like among people complaining about traditional American values being under threat.
But they are not of those noble Saxon roots, are they? As we all know the miraculously only white complexion among all those swarthy German tribes. That is because that would be awkward if they hadn’t been, given that they were a key group forming the English master race I suppose. The only truly white people on earth. /s
I mean, low melanin is a thing. Having to slather on the factor 50 before even thinking about leaving the house is a thing. I used to think that was what white meant. Then I met The Americans and their really odd ideas.
“Recently” is a nicely intangible term that can cover some bandwidth of meaning, depending on one’s intention.
The concept of whiteness is roughly 400 years old and a very important part of western cultural history after the middle ages. It exists as a cultural phenomenon that needs to be studied critically.
Why would that matter? The cultural concept of whiteness began in the 17th century. Definitions and categorizations have shifted but what different makes the exact time when italians were considered white and when not? Different dates would not chance the fact that whiteness is a cultural concept and an important one in modern (as in “post middle ages”, not as in “right now”) western history.
What are you even trying to argue, what is your point?
It matters because people that consider themselves white today were only “granted” whitenessrecently (to use the term again).
To say that the concept has existed for 400 years but that somehow it doesn’t matter that the definitions of the concept have changed is to lose the plot.
I agree that whiteness is a concept. However, I would say it is forced into culture, rather than being a part of it. Bovinos parent’s would not have been considered white in America when they were growing up, and the fact that he considers himself to be white now is proof that it is recent, but also meaningless as a label.
There is no such thing as white culture, or food, or music, or any other thing that one would call culturally relevant to being white. With one exception, one must and that is white surempisism.
I don’t know why you’re arguing with me then. I started this with the examples of irish people not being considered white in the US for a time. It was exavtly my point that not all pale faced europeans where considered white all the time. You then contended the historicity of that and started bullshitting around.
Historically, even the “whiteness” of Irish was not always a thing in the US.
The Nazis wouldn’t have qualified by the standards at the time of the American Revolution in Benjamin Franklin’s eyes. Nor even the Italian side of Bovino’s family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_Concerning_the_Increase_of_Mankind,_Peopling_of_Countries,_etc.
https://www.profmarkbaker.com/blog/2017/6/3/whiteness
“White” is a surprisingly mutable term over time as social norms change.
EDIT: I’d also add that you can also watch, over the course of America’s history, “Protestant” morph into “Christian” and then morph into “Judeo-Christian” in political speeches and the like among people complaining about traditional American values being under threat.
Racism usually is just the outer face of xenofobia.
Sorry what? I literally can’t even. And that’s not hyperbole.
But they are not of those noble Saxon roots, are they? As we all know the miraculously only white complexion among all those swarthy German tribes. That is because that would be awkward if they hadn’t been, given that they were a key group forming the English master race I suppose. The only truly white people on earth. /s
Historically, whiteness doesn’t exist.
Biologically whiteness does not exist. Culturally, some asshole came up with it and was adopted widely.
I mean, low melanin is a thing. Having to slather on the factor 50 before even thinking about leaving the house is a thing. I used to think that was what white meant. Then I met The Americans and their really odd ideas.
Rich landowners to get poor Europeans to fight against the newly freed slaves.
Only just recently
“Recently” is a nicely intangible term that can cover some bandwidth of meaning, depending on one’s intention.
The concept of whiteness is roughly 400 years old and a very important part of western cultural history after the middle ages. It exists as a cultural phenomenon that needs to be studied critically.
400 years ago, were Italians (like Bovino) considered white?
Why would that matter? The cultural concept of whiteness began in the 17th century. Definitions and categorizations have shifted but what different makes the exact time when italians were considered white and when not? Different dates would not chance the fact that whiteness is a cultural concept and an important one in modern (as in “post middle ages”, not as in “right now”) western history.
What are you even trying to argue, what is your point?
It matters because people that consider themselves white today were only “granted” whiteness recently (to use the term again).
To say that the concept has existed for 400 years but that somehow it doesn’t matter that the definitions of the concept have changed is to lose the plot.
I agree that whiteness is a concept. However, I would say it is forced into culture, rather than being a part of it. Bovinos parent’s would not have been considered white in America when they were growing up, and the fact that he considers himself to be white now is proof that it is recent, but also meaningless as a label.
There is no such thing as white culture, or food, or music, or any other thing that one would call culturally relevant to being white. With one exception, one must and that is white surempisism.
I don’t know why you’re arguing with me then. I started this with the examples of irish people not being considered white in the US for a time. It was exavtly my point that not all pale faced europeans where considered white all the time. You then contended the historicity of that and started bullshitting around.