Serious, not / pol/, But how do people in the past define if

>>2841725

How far in the past? Like yesterday?

>>2841744
Not OP but I'd assume he means 1492-1776ish

>>2841725

That distinction arose primarily in the Americans, where the identity of "Whiteness" was used to contract with the enslaved "blackness" or mixed Mestizo.. Before that, "White" is very much a secondary identity, behind nationality and ethnicity.

So at the very start, the people primarily identified themselves as white were people of European origin who were not enslaved in the Americans and not the child of a mixed marriage.

>>2841757
This. Everything wrong with society is down to the American cancer that infects all Western cultures.

>>2841757
>secondary
>after two things
kill yourself

>>2841762

I made a typo, it shouldn't be Americans, but rather "Americas", which includes the Caribbeans as well as Central and South America.

The point remains the same. The idea of "Being White" was created as a contrast to the lower class African Blacks and indigenous Amerindians, and the degree to which it happened depended on the proportion of Europeans to non-Europeans.

In the American North and Canada, where the majority of the population was European, and colonies of multiple nationalizes were annexed by the English, people identified themselves by nationality.

In the American South, where African slaves formed a significant minority, the identity of "white" became distinct even before independence.

In Mexico, the Amerindians outnumbered the Spanish. A 3 tier caste system emerged, with Europeans at the top. Mixed race Mestizos below them, serving as skilled labor and lower management. Amerindians were at the very bottom, as slaves in all but name. Over time, the distinctions blurred, as Europeans, Mestizos, and Amerindians blended together over the generations.

In the Caribbean colonies, the native population was too small to fulfill the labor needs of the plantations, and African slaves were imported. Europeans formed a small minority in these colonies, and European women did not immigrate with the men. Inter-race offspring (not marriages, as the slave owners rarely married Africans) were commonplace. Mixed children of the were given household work and overseer positions, while children of only African parentage worked the fields. Over time a multi-tier caste system based on skin color emerged; the whiter you were, the more you had European parentage, the more opportunists you had, and the higher up your were on the totem pole. There are multiple words in Caribbean lingo to describe people of fractional parentage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta has more details.

>>2841777

Those things could be considered as one in those days, as many eternities did not have their own ethnostates. ex. Irish in America were nominally British, since the Irish state didn't exist, but they referred to themselves as Irish. Poles didn't refer to themselves as Austrian, Prussian, or Russian, but rather "Polish". However, people with their own ethnostates did refer to themselves by the state of origin.

>>2841725
"Whiteness" didn't exist in ancient times. It's relevantly modern and the ideas about it are constantly changing.

>>2841725
>muh white

>>2841725
>But how do people in the past define if a person is "White" or not?
It didn't exist?

>>2841754
>Not OP but I'd assume he means 1492-1776ish

You mean in the colonies? Not being a negro or a redskin would make you white.
White is a negative identity, if you don't fit into other boxes then you're white.

>>2841754
Depends on whom you ask I think. Germans, Mediterraneans, and Nordics weren't considered white by the English.

File: TyVrA[1].png (102KB, 440x367px) Image search: [Google]

102KB, 440x367px

>>2843262
The wogs begin at Calais

>>2841725
Whatever was advantageous
Hence why French, Irish and Finns weren't defined as white at certain times

If I remember correctly Herodotus in "The Histories" refers to different ethnic groups as "races" and some people as "pale" so they noticed differences but it wasn't too big a deal. Terminology about race back i around 400BC was quite ambiguous.

Skip ahead a few hundred years to Rome and look at someone like Strabo or Tacitus who refers to people as pale and points out their hair colour, but compared to their tribal or ethnic group i,e Belgic or Germanic it really isn't as significant.

>>2841762

but whiteness but invented by the Spaniards and Portuguese, not the Anglos.
it comes from them being the first colonizers, the first to import black slaves through the atlantic, and may be influenced by their blood purity laws against people with muslim or jewish ancestors.

the cristiano viejo idea