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Category:White Americans

[edit]
See also: Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2017/10#"White_Americans".

Discussion about the appropriateness of this category and its daughter categories was started at Commons:Village_pump#.22White_Americans.22 KTo288 (talk) 22:35, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BEGIN INITIAL DISCUSSION COPIED FROM Commons:Village_pump#"White_Americans"

Category:White Americans seems very problematic to me. I had never noticed it until today when someone added it to a couple of photos I'd uploaded.

The main reason it seems problematic is that unlike, say, Serbian ancestry or sub-Saharan African ancestry, "whiteness" is a very contentious concept. The contentiousness can easily be seen by the fact that subcats include Category:Arab Americans‎, Category:Central Asian diaspora in the United States‎, Category:European Americans‎, Category:Genetic studies on European American‎ (shouldn't that just be a subcat of Category:European Americans‎?), Category:Middle Eastern diaspora in the United States‎, Category:North African diaspora in the United States‎. With the possible exception of European Americans‎, considerable numbers of members of these groups would neither consider themselves white nor be considered so by others.

But also: what purpose does this category serve, and are we really ready to face the consequences of using it consistently? Are we really going to put this on every photo or category of a phenotypically "white" American for whom we don't know a more specific ancestry? - Jmabel ! talk 19:33, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would delete that category. Indeed problematic and I don't see it as useful. Gestumblindi (talk) 22:07, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It's apparently a topic with a long an complicated history in the US. There's a White Americans Wikipedia article, and apparently the United States Census Bureau still uses the term. --ghouston (talk) 02:01, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The U.S. Census requires overt identification, typically by the individual but at least by a member of the household. Identifying (for example) all Arab Americans as "white" is a very different matter; so is looking at a photo and deciding the person is "white". - Jmabel ! talk 02:36, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I would delete it, too. In the past, under Jim Crow laws in the South (Southern Continental US), only "White Americans" were allowed to vote or own property, in continuation from the enslavement of African Americans for some 400 years. The term is used to fuel white supremacist bigotry, and it has no place in our categorization system.   — Jeff G. ツ 03:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If we are going to eliminate the category completely, there is quite a bit of work to do. Also, because removal of a category is hard to reverse, I'd want to make sure there was a pretty solid consensus for that. That would also presumably mean removing Category:White Americans in California‎, Category:White Americans in Maryland‎, Category:White Americans in Washington, D.C.‎, and Category:White Americans in West Virginia‎, right? - Jmabel ! talk 15:30, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I proposed redirecting the category to another existing one which is not contested, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. But for the sake of the argument, how would that differ from the situation with Category:African Americans? How do you determine an image should belong in that category? FunkMonk (talk) 20:57, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In general, I've used Category:African Americans only when either (1) it has already been used by an archive describing that image (E.g. I upload a lot of images from the Seattle Municipal Archives, and they've been known to use it in the description or tags), (2) I know that the individual in question has that self-identification (e.g. in some self-description or official bio/CV), or (3) I have it at the level of citability I'd need for WP (e.g. newspaper articles, etc. referring to them that way). Pretty much the same standard I'd use for any other ethnicity (e.g. Irish American, Serbian American). I agree that "African American" is also a bit problematic, but (I think) less so.
Again, what brought me here was having someone slap the category on a photo presumably based on nothing but appearance + the fact that the photo was in the U.S.
And, for the record, I'd have no problem with redirecting to Category:European Americans, which would also then presumably mean simply removing it from (for example) Category:Arab Americans. - Jmabel ! talk 23:19, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The African American category has the same problem with random photos of random people, see for example[2][3]. But seems we pretty much agree then. FunkMonk (talk) 23:43, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to know what seperates this from other defined diaspora categories? It's a mirror of the category on English Wikipedia. - Bossanoven (talk) 01:42, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]


END INITIAL DISCUSSION COPIED FROM Commons:Village_pump#"White_Americans"

BEGIN PROPOSAL AND POLLING COPIED FROM Commons:Village_pump#"White_Americans"
Proposal: completely eliminate Category:White Americans, Category:White Americans in California‎, Category:White Americans in Maryland‎, Category:White Americans in Washington, D.C.‎, and Category:White Americans in West Virginia‎. Rationale is explained above. In some cases, one or more of the parent categories may need to be used as a substitute. - Jmabel ! talk 15:30, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

END PROPOSAL COPIED FROM Commons:Village_pump#"White_Americans", continuation of polling can follow here

  •  Support per above. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:35, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to Category:European Americans, per discussion above. FunkMonk (talk) 23:43, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose deletion of this category, Opppose redirect to Category:European Americans if it is decided to delete this category. It is hard to be a dissenting voice in this debate, but a dissenting voice I must be. Yes, there is a moral and ethical issue with the categorising of people by their skin colour, or more precisely by their perceived skin colour as can be seen in a photograph. It is a moral issue which we must address in society and in our own lives, but Commons is not here to be anyones moral guardian, we are a repository of files that serve our sister Wikimedia projects, and as a resource to others. To that end we have files of nudity and sexuality which some say do not belong here, we cause distress to others with cartoons which some say are bigoted and offensive, we host flags and maps which have others fuming. As a project we have no problem with leaving moral considerations to end users. en wikipedia, and about 20 sister Encyclopedias have a White American article, that we find it problematic as to how we populate the corresponding category here should not mean we give up. Redirecting to Category:European Americans is a fudge and a bad one. Straight forwardly put the White American label is and has always been about skin colour not ethnicity. Such a move may seem logical, but a quick exercise will show that the two are not the same, for exampe if one's mother is old stock American of English and Irish descent, that would of course make you a European American would it not? so Barack Obama is quite rightly categorised as an European American through being an Irish American. If the logic White Americans=European Americans were correct, then the opposite would also hold true i. e. European Americans= White Americans, and if need be we could delete the European American category and redirect it to White Americans. The redirect option also fails because it conflates white with European to think that the only white people in the world are from Europe is the height of ignorance, there are people of North African and Middle East and Central Asia who would be considered white. Deleting this category is the wrong thing to do; redirecting this category is the wrong thing to do. The only alternative I can offer is to maybe add an introduction asking for caution when adding the category.--KTo288 (talk) 11:24, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
White and European American are not synonyms, as I stated above, yet it could be argued that white American is a subset of European Americans. Yes, Barack Obama can still be categorised as European American if white American redirects there, because a white American is by definition a European American (if we ignore the Middle East grey zone.) FunkMonk (talk) 11:47, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@KTo288: I partly agree with you - i.e. I don't think it would be a good idea to redirect to Category:European Americans. But I still support deletion of the category "White Americans" (without leaving a redirect). As the subcategories of Category:European Americans clearly show (with one exception), it's a clearly structured category for American individuals of a specific, known European ancestry, like Category:Greek Americans. It is not a category for all Americans perceived (by some viewer) as "white". Therefore, a redirect would be wrong. The exception to the clear structure of Category:European Americans that bothers me is Category:White supremacy in the United States as a subcategory which doesn't make sense, in my opinion. However, I see that this is a very recent change and I'd propose to revert to the previous categorization of that subcategory (it fits better under Category:European-American society). - I disagree with your reasoning for keeping the category because there is an important difference between a Wikipedia article and a Commons category, as the name "category" says. Ambiguous terms such as "White Americans" can be explained with all their various meanings and nuances in an encyclopedic article; the purpose of a Commons category, on the other hand, is to put a specific label on an individual image. I don't see it as helpful to put photos like File:Girls at Columbia University.jpg into that category (by the way, it was recently categorized by the same User:Dash9Z who put "White supremacy in the United States" under "European Americans") - in the particular case of this example, we don't even know whether the three girls are actually all "Americans", the might just as well be guest students from elsewhere. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:48, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, I reverted the change of Category:White supremacy in the United States's categorization, so Category:European Americans now again can be defined as a topical category containing subcategories for specific European-American ancestries. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:47, 26 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oh... I only now notice that there is no longer a Category:European-American society - User:Dash9Z, who's apparently quite active in this subject area as of late, had moved it to the present Category:European Americans. I still think that "White supremacy in the United States" should be removed from that category, maybe into Category:European diaspora in North America (where there is already a subcategory "White nationalism in North America‎")? Gestumblindi (talk) 11:12, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A problem for Commons is that "White Americans" is ambiguous, as can be seen at en:White Americans and en:Definitions of whiteness in the United States. An option would be to retain the category (for linking with Wikipedias) and make a subcategory "White Americans (US Bureau of the Census)" which in turn contains the subgroups that are defined by the US Bureau of the Census to be part of their "White Americans" classification. There may also be material relating to other historical classifications in Commons. --ghouston (talk) 00:11, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

 Oppose Just have it mirror English Wikipedia. If it can be clearly defined there, why couldn't it be clearly defined here? - Bossanoven (talk) 22:53, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem, as I see it, is that "White people" is a based in the pseudoscientific concept of racial categories that we shouldn't be using but which the United States government still does use. There should be some category to acknowledge its continued use in demographics etc, but we shouldn't ourselves be categorizing individuals according to a debunked and racist categorization scheme. (en:Aryan race exists on Wikipedia, but we don't use it to categorize people.) So, I support getting rid of this category (if necessary, moving individuals into a geographic origin category - European Americans or whatever is most appropriate) but something should be retained. Category:White American demographics or something to that effect. - Themightyquill (talk) 07:45, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Geo Swan has astutely pointed out at Commons:Categories for discussion/2013/12/Category:Irish Americans that Category:Muhammad Ali is a subcategory of Category:Irish Americans, a sub-category of Category:European Americans, a sub-category of Category:White Americans. Certainly, someone of partial European descent is not necessarily considered "White" in the United States by anyone. I propose to categorize graphs, etc, in Category:White Americans, but not people or anything that categorizes people. - Themightyquill (talk) 13:21, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for the heads-up Themightyquill. In addition to the excellent points raised by Jmabel, a category like this, even more than Category:Irish Americans where I first raised this point, desperately requires a hatnote that specifies who does or doesn't belong in it. For Irish American I suggested people should only be included if they held both Irish and American citizenship.

    Well, for this category, the American aspect of inclusion has a clear test - American citizenship. But the "white portion" just too subjective.

    PBS broadcast a documentary, over a decade ago, about the living descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the slave who was a half-sister to his deceased wife. An attempt was made to trace all the men who had an unbroken male line to one of Hemings sons, to see if they shared the same Y chromosome as Jefferson. As the study was underway some commentators said a share Y chromosome might only mean Jefferson visiting uncle, or visiting nephews sired a son with Hemings. An exclusive club composed solely of Jefferson's descendants decided to broaden its membership to anyone descended from someone who lived on Jefferson's properties, avoiding a law suit. The documentary showed a friendly ceremony where some Hemings descendants joine.

    But the most interesting thing for me was some cousins in a town in, um Ohio. Hemings descendants on one side of town identified as white. One 18 year old girl reached the age of 18 without learning she had black cousins on the other side of town. When she met the cousins who identified as black they were friendly and welcoming.

    I think this anecdote shows the subjectivity in deciding who is or isn't "white".

  • Further, consider how much work it would be to fully populate this category. If the criteria for inclusion were "most of this individual's ancestory can be traced from Europe..." Are we going to look at the millions of images we have of Americans to guess at whether their ancestry primarily trace to Europe? That would be tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of hours of work, for no discernable advantage.
  • Consider smart and charming AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When Trump critized her and her squad I was surprised to hear her identify as a person of colour. If I had agreed to classify Americans into Category:White Americans, based on their names and appearance, I would have figured she as a hispanic American and included her.
  • So, (1) currently this category is undefined; (2) even if it were defined it would be too much work to fill it. Therefore I think it should be deleted. Geo Swan (talk) 18:39, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Largely agree with Geo Swan's latest here, except for "Irish American" requiring dual citizenship. Tons of Americans identify as Irish American without holding dual citizenship. Many (though not all) would be eligible for Irish citizenship—I have a few in my acy of quaintance who have obtained it at some time in the last 20 years—but most don't bother. - Jmabel ! talk 19:02, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's probably very little that legitimately belongs in a "White American" category. Category:European Americans surely doesn't. E.g., Ayaan Hirsi Ali is Dutch and American, that makes her European American, but does anyone call her "White American"? --ghouston (talk) 22:38, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure deletion makes sense, since it's a term used by the American government and it seems appropriate for an image like File:White_American_by_state_in_the_USA_in_2010.svg. - Themightyquill (talk) 15:16, 9 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I mentioned that file above. I suppose we can just take the definition from enwiki "White Americans are an ethnic group of Americans who are descendants from any of the indigenous peoples of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, or in census statistics, those who self-report as white based on having majority-white ancestry." That may address the original complaint that the definition is contentious, but I don't know whether User:Jmabel would agree. --ghouston (talk) 01:58, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose the category might have its uses, but I'm very uncomfortable with what seems to me to be the inevitability of it being slapped on files on simple basis of appearance rather than self-identification. Please look again at the conversation where this started. - Jmabel ! talk 03:54, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It would share that problem with all of the subcategories of Category:Ethnic groups in the United States. I'd say people should only be added to such categories if there's a reliable external reference, but unfortunately, category additions don't take reference statements, and there isn't a police force to patrol it. --ghouston (talk) 04:36, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if I understand. Is anyone specifically opposed to using this category to categorize images referencing "white americans" as a demographic category, but removing subcategories related to culture/ethnicity and any sub-categories for individual people? - Themightyquill (talk) 08:01, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Themightyquill: Yes, see my posts above.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:08, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Jeff G.: Unless I've misunderstood, one post of yours above suggests deletion, the other suggests a category redirect to Category:European Americans. In the case of the former, what do you propose to do with images like File:White_American_by_state_in_the_USA_in_2010.svg? In case of the latter, don't you think it's problematic since "White Americans" as a legal category includes non-Europeans? - Themightyquill (talk) 12:13, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Themightyquill: These included "White Americans" who are "non-Europeans", where are they from?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 20:28, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The Middle East and North Africa. Also, not all Europeans are "white", e.g., Ayaan Hirsi Ali as I mentioned above. --ghouston (talk) 22:03, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Jeff G.: Yes, according to en:White Americans: The United States Census Bureau defines white people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa." - Themightyquill (talk) 08:16, 16 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral notice given at [4] on Village pump in an effort to get this discussion revived or resolved. - Jmabel ! talk 17:04, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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