Who is White?

This question of “who is white” is often the first question that a newly awakened or racially conscious man asks himself. It is also one of the first questions addressed to the movement as a whole, both by honestly curious persons and cynical enemies. Therefore, it is important to have a clear understanding of this term.

Superficially, it is easy to know who is and isn’t “White”. We all have an instinctual understanding and can sort people accurately into the categories of “White” or “non-White” at a moments’ glance. But what exactly are we recognizing when we make this positive identification? Is it simply white skin as the term itself implies, and as our enemies often claim proves the shallowness of the distinction?

The most comprehensive and honest study of this question I’ve found was done by Madison Grant in his book The Passing of the Great Race, published in 1916. Grant was the most important figure in what I call the Progressive Eugenicist movement. This movement was composed of northeastern “WASP” Americans who strove to scientifically study and promote a biological understanding of race in the early 20^th century. They were very successful in thier undertaking–for a time–owing to the fact that they were a part of the traditional elite that once ruled this country. To further their aims, they founded several large, well respected organizations, many of which counted Ivy-league deans and chairmen as members (something that would be unthinkable today). Their crowning achievement was the passage of the 1924 National Origins Act, that limited immigration to the United States by heavily favoring northwestern Europeans.

The history of immigration into the United States in general and why the Progressive Eugenicist movement in particular ultimately failed, is story unto itself. Let’s return to the initial question posed; “Who is White”. First, it is helpful to brush away competeing terms that serve to confuse the matter. Grant writes:

The term “Caucasian race” has ceased to have any meaning except where it is used, in the United States, to contrast white populations with negroes or Indians, or in the old world, with Mongols. It is, however, a convenient term to include the three European subspecies when considered as divisions of one of the primary branches or sub-genera of mankind. At best, it is a cumbersome and archaic designation…

The phrase Indo-European race is also of little use if it has any meaning at all it must include all three European races as well as members of the Mediterranean race in Persia and India. The use also involves a false assumption of blood relationship between the main European populations and the Hindus, because their possession of common Aryan speech.

Grant goes on to say that the term “Aryan” must also be discarded as it is now essentially a linguistic term. The actual people who were called “Aryans”–the invaders of India and other parts of western Asia–are completely extinct.

Another popular term used today in place of white is “European”. This comes closer but is still too anchored to geography. An Australian is not a European. Use of the this term inevitably results in awkward and clunky designations like “European-American”. In reality, we are just Americans. There is no such thing as a non-white American.

For Grant, “White” was the combination of the three major sub-races of Europe (really west asia). In this sense, there is no “White race” as an undivided whole, but rather it is a unification of three similar but distinct parts. This was his major insight. The three sub-races he named will be familiar to most. They are the Nordic, the Mediterranean and the Alpine, roughly corresponding to Northern, Southern and Central/Eastern Europe. As one can see from the map posted above, these sub races are not confined to particular nations—their blood runs across national boundries in Europe and beyond.

Though Grant was concerned with the future and health of this “White race” broadly defined, he was particularly interested in the Nordic part of it. He regarded Nordics as the “white man par excellence” and credited then with the creation of not only our current Germanic civilization but also the earlier Grecco-Roman one. Therefore “Western civilization” as people understand it today, is the creation of Nordic man.

A definition of White begins to emerge from this scheme. White is absolutely a racially classification, but it also has important cultural and historic limitations. A North African or Syrian may be racially Mediterranean and look very similar to an Italian, but he is not part of the Western cultural zone. A racially Alpine Afghani may have green eyes and look somewhat White, but again he exists entirely outside of our civilization. These extra-European “Whites” were not subject to the important historic development that occurred on the continent (which most likely had biological implications as well).

Delving deeper into the strictly European population groups, we see another hierarchy emerging. Those who retain the most Germanic blood can be said to be the most “White”–Germanics being a Nordic people who form the basis of our current civilization. Therefore, a Spanish peasent may be White, but he has almost nothing left of the old Gothic Germanic blood left in him. Likewise a blond Italian from Milan retains most of his Germanic blood received from his Lombard ancestors. Looking north, a Welshman like Tom Jones looks entirely Mediterranean, but he has blue eyes (no doubt received from Saxon ancestors). To complicate things further, not all Nordic people are Germanic. An “Aryan” looking Russian is not as close to us as a dark-looking Frenchman. The Frenchman is Western and Germanic, while the Russian is eastern and Slavic.

One could go on for pages looking into the racial history of each people to determine how White or Nordic or Germanic they are. And likewise, each person is just as complex. Grant again:

Every human being unites in himself the blood of thousands of ancestors, stretching back through thousands of years, superimposed upon a prehumen inheritance of still greater antiquity, and the face and body of every living man offeran intricate mass of hieroglyphs that science will someday learn to read and interpret.

So to answer the question original question; A White person is someone descended from the amalgam of the three major European sub races. And a White person is a Westerner to the extent that they retain that original Nordic Germanic blood.