I also think it's a stupid term because where do you draw the line?
I often hear "white" to basically mean "from Europe" or "with European ancestry", but some Italians, Spanish, Maltese etc are darker than the average Arab (and on the flip-side, some are as naturally blonde as scandinavians). My grandfather was Maltese, and in summer when he had a tan on he could easily pass for an Egyptian, his sister was naturally fair-skinned and they have no known recent northern European ancestry. Yet both were always "white" as "Europeans". It's like where do you draw a line on the world map, where the indigenous people on x side of the line are now "nope, not white". It's silly. It also proves how race is a social construct (not that racism doesn't exist, just race itself doesn't).
I often hear "white" to basically mean "from Europe" or "with European ancestry", but some Italians, Spanish, Maltese etc are darker than the average Arab (and on the flip-side, some are as naturally blonde as scandinavians). My grandfather was Maltese, and in summer when he had a tan on he could easily pass for an Egyptian, his sister was naturally fair-skinned and they have no known recent northern European ancestry. Yet both were always "white" as "Europeans". It's like where do you draw a line on the world map, where the indigenous people on x side of the line are now "nope, not white". It's silly. It also proves how race is a social construct (not that racism doesn't exist, just race itself doesn't).
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
