Talk:White Americans

Can we rephrase this part?

Why does the admixture part say "...This phenomenon was explained by the fact that, in early American history, white males were the "most aggressive" colonizers"? You can easily rephrase that part, even just changing the quotation marks to be "most aggressive colonizers" would be better. Harrytinkle40 (talk) 09:45, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Definition should include some non-subjective criteria but I expressed this awkwardly

The first sentence said basically "white people are people who identify as white people". This is clearly overly exclusive, as there may be some white people who do not personally choose to identify as white but would be correctly identified as such (by others). In other words, a person can be wrong about whether or not they are white. For example, if Joe Biden were to declare tomorrow that he is not white anymore, that would not change the fact that he is and has always been white. So I modified the (almost circular) definition "identify as white" in the article's first sentence to include (in effect) those other people who would meet certain CRITERIA of being white as explained ELSEWHERE in this article. But this is awkward!

I can't yet think of a better way of making sure to include people who may not personally identify as white even though they are. I also considered changing it so that white people would include people who "identify as white or are considered white by others", but that seems clearly wrong - because other people don't necessarily know whether or not a person is really white (in the social category of white people)! Many people of partly white and partly Black ancestry identify as Black and would never consider themselves would never identify as white. It would be wrong to call Walter White "white", for example; I speak of a founder of the NAACP, anti lynching activist, who was blond and blue eyed and appeared so white to most people that he was able to serve as a spy against the KKK in the 1910s-20s .

And lastly I thought to include the phrase "in a social context" but that is too ambiguous, because we're not talking about, like, partying/socializing, but about "society", and unfortunately the phrase "social context " is therefore not clear.

One good thing about the lead of the article is that it did immediately go on in the second sentence to provide the official US census definition, which is broader than self-identity. But it is also constantly subject to change, and in fact may be changing soon to exclude people of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry. But the first sentence itself, which only included self-identification, seemed just... wrong.

I would welcome comments here or simply thoughtful edits by others within the article. David Couch (talk)