I understand that page protection was requested by the cabal mediator. The mediation cabal is not an official process and the mediator has no special rights to call for protection. This mediator is new to WP with about two months of significant editing -- not the experience level to take this case. This page got a bit out of control yesterday and protection was probably warranted; however, unprotecting should be affected as soon as things calm down, and not at the behest of unacceptable mediator. We already have several experienced admins on watch here. -- Kevin Murray 12:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
The solution here is not just to compromise between two points of view, but to apply the WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE, WP:NOR guidelines as has been established in other controversial articles. A mediator who views the goal as merely to find common ground between the parties may not understand the necessary issues. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 13:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Some pointers:
≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 14:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Has anyone done an RFC yet? If people have rejected the mediator it is indeed time. Kevin, I think you have bent over backwards to be conciliatory and constructive, but you are one of the people who rejected the MedCab mediators - do you want to put in the RFC? On this page and the MedCab page both I an Alun have explained what we think is the issue but I think Fourdee and Phrac think we are too biased. Or maybe SamBC - in a way you have been trying to act as informal mediator and I respect your intentions but I do not think they are working ... would you put in the RFC? Slrubenstein | Talk 16:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
(copied from above to begin a clearer conversation)
I think that we need to have some real discussion about the overall scope of the article and why it should or should not be merged with other related topics such as Europeans or Caucasians. There seems to be some underlying justification that this article needs to exist as a counterpoint or balance to the article “Black people” and I see that as unhealthy. -- Kevin Murray 14:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I've always thought a disambig page would be the best solution for this article, but this suggestion has been made several times before, I can't see it reaching consensus. Alun 15:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I demonstrated above that there is a considerable body of literature by scholars from some of the best universities in the UK, US, and Canada, writing about "Whiteness" or "White Studies" - i listed maybe fifteen book and believe me it is the tip of the iceberg. I think the existence of a body of scholarship justifies an encyclopedia article that provides a good account of it. So yes, i think there is a place for an article if not called "White people" then at least "White Studies." I agree that much of the current content of this article belongs either in an article on "Caucasion Race" or "European People." By the way, an excellent resource for anyone who wants to work on "European Peoples" would be Wolf and Cole's gem of a book, The Hidden frontier. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
there's already an article called Whiteness studies, I haven't read it though, so have no idea what it's like. Alun 16:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Where will we list what definitions are used in different places, ie: "Census and social definitions in different regions" section.... KarenAER 17:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
(ec):::Ramdrake is not the only one, or main one. This is how to gain consensus when there is a content dispute. It's nothing like voting. In fact, it is encouraged for content disputes by discussing the concerns of the article and how to make it better. This is the best thing to do, especially if others do not want to mediate. Let's talk it out without personal attacks, and pointing out other's political leanings. I've been guilty of doing that myself, so I'm not trying to be condescending. I just think fighting and getting frustrated only takes away from the project. As it has with me, and some others. - Jeeny Talk 20:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Above Karen makes two claims. I do not understand either one of them. First claim: "All of the Western definitions cited in the article agree, white=European, ie: Canada, Norway, UK." What does this mean? There are non-Whites in Canada and the UK. And many Latin American countries have White people. The Dominican Repbulic is filled with White people many of us would not call white - but an NPOV article needs to consider them as well. Moreover, the article itself makes clear (from the clinal map) that skin color is a function of latitude not nationality. And what do you mean vy "European definitions"? Do you mean definitions of European governmental census bureaus? Okay, but if so the point is not that these definitions are European as such, they are political. And they cannot possibly be all the definitions, so much of the literature on Whiteness comes from non-European countries. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Second, "And white is term which was founded by West." As I have pointed out elsewhere: The above is a meaningless sentence and not a helpful step forward. I have no idea which Egyptian definition you are referring to and would appreciate it if you could share it with us. Be that as it may, "white" wasn't "founded," whatever that means, by "Western Europeans" - the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Italians, did not "find" the word. It is an English word. 309-380 million people speak it as a first language. In other words, the vast majority of English-speakers are not from England, a country of under 50,000,000 people. English is the language of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes, of China Achebe, of Buchi Emecheta and Wole Soyenka, of V.S. Naipaul, of Salman Rushdie, of Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh - in other words, it is not the language of White people - it may be the language spoken by many White people, but many White people do not speak it and most people who speak it are not white (and donot say that the language has its roots in Europe - it does, if you go back part of the way. If you go back farther it has its origins in Asia, in the Indo-Persian steppes where Indo-European first developed). In any event, there is no reason why European definitions of English words should be more important should be more important than the definitions used by most English-speakers who are non-European. That said, I think we should turn to scholarly literature and it doesn't matter what color someone's skin or even native language: if they teach at a prestigious university and are published in peer-reviewed journals or books unpublished by academic presses, their views have an (not the only, but an) authority we must acknowledge. The contents of Wikipedia articles should be dictated by NPOV and research of top scholarly sources, not a racist or nationalist agenda. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
What occurs to me from reading all this discussion is that it might be worth making the page a sort of "enhanced disambiguation". That is, the article probably doesn't want to be the definitive point for much information, if any. Instead, it should sectioned (for example, as outlined above, by any of the outlines) and each section contain a "full information" wikilink, and a brief summary to help people find out if that is what they were really looking for. A lead section should cover the breadth of ideas meant by the phrase "white people", helping to illustrate just how non-specific the term is when taken from NPOV. SamBC( talk) 22:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Tea, you are misquoting policy here. We do not have to describe all viewpoints, only significant ones. See WP:NPOV ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
@Dark Tea "Alun said that in the UK a white person means a white European." Actually I did not say any such thing. I cannot speak for all British people,, I cannot define what White people means to all British people and neither did I claim such a thing. What I said was that my perception of a White person is that of a White European and that I believe this is due to social conditioning. This may well be because the overwhelming majority of White people in the UK are British and therefore European (unsurprisingly), but it may well be that other British people do not see it like that. Furthermore the US census does not define White as Caucasian, the US census has a far broader definition of White, and indeed it was you that pointed this out some time ago. What I said is that I have the impression that in the US the term Caucasian is used a great deal (it is not used in the UK at all as far as I am aware) and has become almost synonymous with White. I even linked to Princeton Wordnet to illustrate my point, Princeton Wordnet has no connection to the US census whatsoever as far as I know. Here's the link again. I think you have misunderstood what I wrote. All the best. Alun 05:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
@Karen "All of the Western definitions cited in the article agree, white=European, ie: Canada, Norway, UK." There are only two definitions in the article, one from an American dictionary ( Merriam Webster): "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" and one from a British dictionary ( Compact Oxford English Dictionary): "to a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry". Both of these definitions are from dictionaries produced in industrialised countries with majorities of populations with a White European descent. Neither of these claims that White=European. The rest are not definitions of White but are definitions of census categories from various states, they are produced by and for bureaucrats, I don't really think they have any encyclopaedic value, unless someone wants to produce an article List of definitions of White for state censuses. But this list would have to cover all definitions by all state bureaucracies throughout the world to be comprehensive. All the best. Alun 05:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I want to thank Ramdrake, SamBC, Alun, and Jeeny for clarifying what I guess was a too abbreviated expression of my points. Just to add one more, from the science of biology: ever since Darwin mainstream biologists have rejected the model of species proposed by Linneaeus (although his model for nomenclature remains); Blumenbach's categorization of races is based on the same taxonomic principles as Linneaeus and is also rendered obsolete by Darwinian and post-Darwinian science. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I also want to respond to this:
Okay, I have read the source you specifically call attention to in note 12. It is co-authored by an Indian MD., which contradicts your insistence that you are supported by White definitions of Whiteness and your rejection of the views of non-Whites or non-Europeans be significant. Moreover, I quote from your - your - source: "Racial and ethnic nomenclature in the United States is dominated by the classification of the Office of Management and Budget, which was devised by a subcommittee of the Federal Interagency Committee on Education." The article itself calls attention to the sloppy ways words like "white," "Caucasian," and "European" are used to refer to heterogeneous groups, expresses skepticism that agreement on what the word "white" means or refers to will ever be achieved, and recommends that instead of using these or any other "administrative" (which in context I think is equivalent to "bureaucratic") categories, scientists use the terms "reference-", "control-" or "comparison- population" and then carefully describe the population's specific composition. Now, given that you think this article supports your position and somehow disproves mine, I have to ask you, "Can you not read the article?" You asked this question, and I can now answer, sincerely, "yes" - and having done so I have no choice but to ask you the exact same question. Maybe you did not read the very article you claim proves you right, but I am struggling to figure out how I can possibly take you at good faith. I want to. But you either did not read the article, or you are being disingenuous or downright hypocritical. Even assuming you really are well-intentioned, it is now evident that any time you make a point and refer to an article that supports your point, other editors are going to have to read those articles for themselves, because there is no reason to believe either that you read them yourself, or are accurately representing them. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:11, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I apologize for your claiming you suggested that White definitions of Whiteness have priority or more significance than other definitions of Whiteness - that was Dark Tea (inter alia I am glad to learn you disagree with her on that point). As to the remainder of my comment, I stand by it: the article you cite, which you say is about the UK, is not and refers extensively to the US; it also makes it very clear that white does not equal European; it also argues that it is bureaucrats who identify white with Caucasian with people from Europe or European decent; it argues that this is incompatible with scientific research e.g. research on health. Apparently, you still have not read the article, or are assuming most people will not. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
This discussion is too long and I dont have time to answer each and all of you. My refusal of disamguation was because:
1) So many concepts have no consensus for their definitions. But they are not Wiki disamb pages.
2) Definition of whiteness is not that disputed, for the most part.
3) If you are worried about too many census sources, find other sources.
4) If this page becomes disamb, where do we explain which definitions are used where?
I still maintain this position. KarenAER 17:01, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
@Karen "Definition of whiteness is not that disputed, for the most part." But the only definitions we have are the two at the top of this article, neither of which claim that White=European, which you persistently state. You have pointed to colloquial use (use in the UK or the US by state bodies, or use in different societies) as often identifying White=European. I do not dispute this, nor do I think this should not be mentioned. But these are not definitions they are colloquial usages. So maybe it is correct to claim that in the UK and some other countries the term White is synonymous with White European, but this is not the equivalent of a definition that incorporates all possible meanings of White people, which is, after all what a definition is. The only definitions we have that can be said to be universal definition do not exclude non-Europeans as White, "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" and "to a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry." I think we need to differentiate here between a definition and differential use of the term by social/state groups. As for your other comments, a disambig page should state that certain uses are used in certain palces and by certain organisations. For example when we state that White people can mean Caucasian, we simply disambiguate and state that in the US White is sometimes synonymous to Caucasian, also in the US White is sometimes synonymous with White European. This is not a problem, the point of a disambig page is that it removes ambiguity, it achieves this by stating when the different uses are applicable. You seem to be implying that a disambig page will lead to ambiguity, but the opposite is actually the case. All the best. Alun 05:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, my username is Singularity, and I have volunteered to be one of two mediators here.
Before we intervene, we will see if this dispute can be solved internally between the parties. If nothing really comes up in a couple of days, then we will try to help find a middle ground. Singu larity 00:33, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps my editing will prove I'm not Fourdee! I wonder how many puppets Jeeny has... or perhaps she and Muntuwandi are Straw Puppets of mine... -- Phral 11:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
It was alleged on another talkpage, but it doesn't worry me. My response was a misguided attempt at humor -- Phral 11:58, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
This is clearly a POV fork of this article. It used to redirect to demographics of Europe but now it is a separate article. Nothing wrong with that but the problem is that much of the material that was rejected in this article has been moved to the European people article. Furthermore it has been racialized. My understanding of the term "European people" basically means citizens of European countries and not necessarily their race. Muntuwandi 16:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Alun, but note that there are ethnic groups in Europe, and I see no problem with an article on ethnic groups in Europe - I have mentioned it a few times but Cole and Wolf's The Hidden Frontier is one classic study of ethnic groups in Europe. Another good book is Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990 Certainly race and ethnicity are two different things. I have suggested here and on the talk page for Europe that a "people of Europe" page could look at the different nationalities and ethnic groups of Europe. A good article will look at this in relationship to the state, because historically there have been nationalities and ethnic groups that formed in tandem with state formation, or that are legally or politicially represented by states, and others that have been excluded or not recognized, and the article should cover the political and economic context as well as social negotiations that go into this process. The two books I mention are just two good case-studies that would provide a start, but there is a host of other stuff. Anyone who would want to research such an article will not have trouble keeping busy! Slrubenstein | Talk 09:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I will not answer all your points since you still clearly do not understand English =/= ethnic English. Those black men may be English, but they are not ethnic English. You are right about that it is hard to establish indigenousness but I'd say that native English are those that are white and Western European. Also note that there is no articles that deal with White Europeans, besides European people You claim that White people has different meanings so we cant turn this article into one. Ok. Then you claim ethnicity is based solely on culture (which is incorrect, it's also based on descent) so European people article should contain Pakistani British? What does that leave us with? Indigenous peoples of Europe ? Oh how nice. That article also gives info about Samis and other isolated groups. White European? I'm sure it'd be nominated for deletion just like White British. This is actually funny. You claim to be leftist [6]. They should, in theory, should support diversity and yet you deny any article on White Europeans. KarenAER 19:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I want to qualify the initial description of the conflict, which was as one between racists and anti-racists. It may well be a conflict between racist and anti-racist editors, but I do not believe it is a conflict between racist and anti-racist edits. I would suggest rather that it is a conflict between racist and non-racist edits. In other words, it is a conflict between POV edits and NPOV edits. Fourdee has admited he is a racist ( "I also wanted to say that while I am not morally opposed to "racism" and would even be proud to promote some varieties of it for some purposes") and that he is intent on pushing his own POV ( "My intent here is to prevent the article from having misleading material inserted which implies there is not a genetic cause for physical appearance, that these traits are not heritable, that these traits are not associated with certain ethnic groups, or that there are not differences in genetics between populations - because those are lies.") - and he admitted this even after I reminded him that our NPOV and V policies make it clear that the standard for Wikipedia articles is verifiability and not truth. He even admits that the people he is opposed to are not the other editors as such, but academics: in the same edit as the one just cited, he also wrote, "Sometimes lies (and other deceptions) are promoted in academia through various means as part of sometimes shadowy and nefarious and sometimes overt campaigns, and I fully intent to accurately portray any such lies or deceptions as the fringe theories." Note: his confederate Phral has used this argument to justify removing relevant content that expresses this point of view, clearly identifies the point of view, and provides a verifiable and reliable source [7]. The other editors involved in this dispute, e.g. Ramdrake, are not to my knowledge deleting, or demanding the deletion of, any content added by Phral, Fourdee, or others solely because they oppose that view. As far as i can tell they object only to material that violates our NPOV or NOR policies. So it is clear to me that the real issue here is POV-pushing versus NPOV. It so happens that the POV being pushed is racist, but as the above examples make clear, the actual edit conflicts have more to do with Phral and Fourdee deleting any mention of views other than their own from the introduction, and in some cases deleting discussion of views other than their own from the entire article. The other editors only want to ensure that the article is compliant with NPOV by including multiple points of view, and compliant with NOR by ensuring that any verifiable source is accurately represented in the article. They are not pushing a specifically anti-racist point of view, they are pushing for compliance with a neutral point of view. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with KarenAER on this point. The situation on this page (and talk page) has reached a point where there are people on both "sides" who are misbehaving, but nothing is going to be gained through mediation in assessing the behaviour of each editor. Might I suggest that people all calm down, start a new discussion from scratch and try to work out a set of goals for the article, and how to attain those goals, which is able to meet reasonable consensus. Hopefully informal mediation can make this easier. SamBC( talk) 00:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This is utter nonsense. I have repeatedly said that the material that slrubenstein and others are promoting can be included in the article however it should not overwhelm a topic with criticisms rather than a discussion of the actual topic and that I will be watching for anything that is willfully misleading, improprerly paraphrased, and arrangements of material that give undue weight to tiny minority views. There is nothing to mediate as slrubenstein has not introduced any material, I have not introduced any material, and all we have right now is a single vandal inserting the same negro nonsense he is being blocked for inserting on a number of articles that are not about negroes in conflict with quite a number of editors and administrators. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 01:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd just like to suggest that whether or not any particular editor is racist or not, or indeed subscribes to any particular belief, is of little or no practical importance. What's important is what people do and suggest, and I suggest drawing a line under discussions and actions so far and try to start our discussion with a clean slate. SamBC( talk) 01:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Given that the page has now been protected, much as I suggested on the article talk page earlier, does anyone object to the strategy I previously suggested, which I will now summarise. Any difference between what I say now and what I said before represents reconsideration, and what I say now is what I'm precisely suggesting and asking to be considered.
The page is protected, so let's all sit back and try to work out what the article should be like, ignoring its current structure and, to a certain extent, content. As this leads to more and more refined ideas as to new structure and outline content, we'll reach a position where the page can be unprotected and the new plan implemented. This will only work if everyone involved is willing to participate to ensure that the new plan is acceptable (if not ideal) to everyone. SamBC( talk) 01:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Mediator's note: This has been moved from the main case page to streamline discussion.
The fact that those on one 'side' claim that the disagreement is racist vs non-racist, while the other "side" say it's excessive PC vs neutrality indicates a common situation in principled disagreements: both sides believe that they are being neutral and just, while the other is pushing an unreasonable agenda. In such cases I have generally found that it's best if both sides can try to understand that neutrality can be subjective, and let go of any assumption of their own neutrality. SamBC( talk) 01:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Could everyone please try to keep this discussion civil, avoid personal attacks, and to use one of my favourite quotes, "consider that you may be mistaken". That goes for everyone. SamBC( talk) 01:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
It's funny that Slrubenstein tries to make such an issue of someone's politics when this guy he brought in is well known for ultra-extreme-far-left politics
[8] (anti-race, anti-capitalism, anti-nation etc.) which strangely seem to correlate with the material he is trying to insert. Nobody is neutral on this and the belief that this article should read as an attack on the very concept of race and a platform to introduce deceptive genetic arguments designed to mislead people into believing genetics are not the reason for differences in appearance - that is the real POV-pushing here. I'm just being honest that my beliefs are the polar opposite of Alun's whereas he has taken to hiding them.
SLRubenstein has also gone running to an administrator friend of his (who posts his essays on her user page) to try to stop me from editing the article for being a racist despite his significant violations of WP:CIVIL etc. You are right I am racist and unlike some of the other people who work on this I don't try to pretend I don't care about the issue. But the fact is Alun is not neutral, SLRubenstein is not neutral, they are promoting specific agendas and want to overload this article with tangentally-related material and the same old often-repeated attacks on race which are designed to mislead laypeople about genetics. This is as I have said all along an issue of how the article should be balanced to correspond to mainstream beliefs and what is on-topic for the article at all. I don't object to any of their material being mentioned, only it being phrased in a way that is misleading or being used to overwhelm the article.
There no way I can try to work on this if slrubenstein is going to keep trying to get me in trouble with administrators for failing to adhere to acceptable politics like the sort
Alun and
User:El_C are happy to promote on their user pages and through their edits, and if that behavior continues I will have little choice but to ignore him and his associates on talk pages. Aside from that I am willing to contribute to this mediation process but cannot accept any outcomes as binding. --
fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ
09:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This comic fairly well illustrates what is going on here. Expected racism from anyone who dare be white -- Phral 09:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this is about racists and non-racists as Ramdrake states, I don't think it's a left-right political issue as Phral states [9] and I don't think it's about afrocentricism (I can see no Afrocentric point of view in the article at all). The issue, as far as I can see it is about whether the term White people is universally identified as a specific race. I think that on the one hand certain good faith editors such as fourdee, Phral and Karen truly believe that it is self evident that the term White people applies exclusively to White Europeans. With this in mind they think that this article should concentrate primarily on this group of people. On the other hand there is another group of people, myself included, who view the term White people as much more amorphous and plastic. We tend to think that this term used to mean different things in different contexts. Both of these points of view are already expressed in the introductory paragraph where two definitions are given (a) "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" (b) "a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry". Neither of these definitions actually exclude people with ancestry that is not European. A person can have light coloured skin and have European ancestry and can also have ancestry from a different part of the world. My personal solution would be to include several sections in the article, one of these sections could deal with White people as a term used for people who perceive their descent as exclusively White European (this is a perfectly valid usage and point of view after all), other sections of the article can discuss use of the term when it is not applied to people of presumed exclusively White European descent. For example use of the term White people to mean Caucasian, or use of the term White people as it is used in the census for the USA, which I believe includes people from as far as the far east of Russia. There may well be other uses of the term White people that I am not aware of. Alun 09:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This may work. The page may look like this:
White people
But it should be noted that not all definitions are of same value. White is a term which is founded by West Europeans. So West European definitions should be more important than Egyptian definitions, for instance...
KarenAER
18:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I think white in the US means a celtic, germanic, slavic or very similar looking person but the government definitions and social ambiguities or niceties may differ. For example, who is routinely described by the mass media and police as white versus arab or hispanic? I think only certain ethnicities look like what is called "white". And what you would address someone as directly to their face, or in certain company, might differ - we should go by the "police & mass media" categories which are to use white exclusively to mean celtic, germanic or slavic looking people and use some other ethnic term like mediterranean or asian or negro for people with some distinct racial or ethnic trait. This is the main concept that the introduction and body of the article should cover - the prevailing concept in English of "white" meaning a purely european person of certain specific ethnicities. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 12:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing out that it was just a personal opinion Slrubenstein - I was just trying to give us something to work from and clarify whether there is really a distinction in usages between the US, UK and Europe. Sorry Ramdrake, by "celtic" I did mean French and northern Spanish; perhaps a sloppy use of the term. And clearly many Italians and Greeks would be called white, but equally many if not more would not be, so for these I meant they would fall under "very similar looking person". Again, just my personal take - there is something strongly similar about the appearance of a "white" Spaniard that makes him largely indistinguishable from other whites but very distinguishable from a mediterranean person, and my impression is that "white" is largely classified by that distinctive appearance in facial features (coupled with specific skin tones and lightness of skin but not hair or eye color). -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 23:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
There are four pictures of black people in the article but only one picture of a white person (John Kerry). Frankly, it is childish to make examples of black people and tell the reader that they are not white. The purpose of the article is to describe what white people are, not what they are not. MoritzB 01:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I think those images are nothing more than spam (POV-pushing disruption) and are the central issue causing edit disputes. The addition of material about alternate interpretations or constructions of whiteness is not really disputed - we can readily compromise on that. It's this insertion of pictures of people who are not white at the top of the article that is the real problem. The God article doesn't start with a picture of the devil. The black people article doesn't start with pictures of white people. The spacecraft article doesn't start with pictures of jet fighters. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 07:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry I've read this article a couple of times and I just can't see a reason for its inclusion in Wikipedia beyond being a disambiguation page. What could possibly justify its existance? AlanD 22:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I understand that page protection was requested by the cabal mediator. The mediation cabal is not an official process and the mediator has no special rights to call for protection. This mediator is new to WP with about two months of significant editing -- not the experience level to take this case. This page got a bit out of control yesterday and protection was probably warranted; however, unprotecting should be affected as soon as things calm down, and not at the behest of unacceptable mediator. We already have several experienced admins on watch here. -- Kevin Murray 12:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
The solution here is not just to compromise between two points of view, but to apply the WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE, WP:NOR guidelines as has been established in other controversial articles. A mediator who views the goal as merely to find common ground between the parties may not understand the necessary issues. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 13:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Some pointers:
≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 14:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Has anyone done an RFC yet? If people have rejected the mediator it is indeed time. Kevin, I think you have bent over backwards to be conciliatory and constructive, but you are one of the people who rejected the MedCab mediators - do you want to put in the RFC? On this page and the MedCab page both I an Alun have explained what we think is the issue but I think Fourdee and Phrac think we are too biased. Or maybe SamBC - in a way you have been trying to act as informal mediator and I respect your intentions but I do not think they are working ... would you put in the RFC? Slrubenstein | Talk 16:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
(copied from above to begin a clearer conversation)
I think that we need to have some real discussion about the overall scope of the article and why it should or should not be merged with other related topics such as Europeans or Caucasians. There seems to be some underlying justification that this article needs to exist as a counterpoint or balance to the article “Black people” and I see that as unhealthy. -- Kevin Murray 14:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I've always thought a disambig page would be the best solution for this article, but this suggestion has been made several times before, I can't see it reaching consensus. Alun 15:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I demonstrated above that there is a considerable body of literature by scholars from some of the best universities in the UK, US, and Canada, writing about "Whiteness" or "White Studies" - i listed maybe fifteen book and believe me it is the tip of the iceberg. I think the existence of a body of scholarship justifies an encyclopedia article that provides a good account of it. So yes, i think there is a place for an article if not called "White people" then at least "White Studies." I agree that much of the current content of this article belongs either in an article on "Caucasion Race" or "European People." By the way, an excellent resource for anyone who wants to work on "European Peoples" would be Wolf and Cole's gem of a book, The Hidden frontier. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
there's already an article called Whiteness studies, I haven't read it though, so have no idea what it's like. Alun 16:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Where will we list what definitions are used in different places, ie: "Census and social definitions in different regions" section.... KarenAER 17:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
(ec):::Ramdrake is not the only one, or main one. This is how to gain consensus when there is a content dispute. It's nothing like voting. In fact, it is encouraged for content disputes by discussing the concerns of the article and how to make it better. This is the best thing to do, especially if others do not want to mediate. Let's talk it out without personal attacks, and pointing out other's political leanings. I've been guilty of doing that myself, so I'm not trying to be condescending. I just think fighting and getting frustrated only takes away from the project. As it has with me, and some others. - Jeeny Talk 20:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Above Karen makes two claims. I do not understand either one of them. First claim: "All of the Western definitions cited in the article agree, white=European, ie: Canada, Norway, UK." What does this mean? There are non-Whites in Canada and the UK. And many Latin American countries have White people. The Dominican Repbulic is filled with White people many of us would not call white - but an NPOV article needs to consider them as well. Moreover, the article itself makes clear (from the clinal map) that skin color is a function of latitude not nationality. And what do you mean vy "European definitions"? Do you mean definitions of European governmental census bureaus? Okay, but if so the point is not that these definitions are European as such, they are political. And they cannot possibly be all the definitions, so much of the literature on Whiteness comes from non-European countries. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Second, "And white is term which was founded by West." As I have pointed out elsewhere: The above is a meaningless sentence and not a helpful step forward. I have no idea which Egyptian definition you are referring to and would appreciate it if you could share it with us. Be that as it may, "white" wasn't "founded," whatever that means, by "Western Europeans" - the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Italians, did not "find" the word. It is an English word. 309-380 million people speak it as a first language. In other words, the vast majority of English-speakers are not from England, a country of under 50,000,000 people. English is the language of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes, of China Achebe, of Buchi Emecheta and Wole Soyenka, of V.S. Naipaul, of Salman Rushdie, of Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh - in other words, it is not the language of White people - it may be the language spoken by many White people, but many White people do not speak it and most people who speak it are not white (and donot say that the language has its roots in Europe - it does, if you go back part of the way. If you go back farther it has its origins in Asia, in the Indo-Persian steppes where Indo-European first developed). In any event, there is no reason why European definitions of English words should be more important should be more important than the definitions used by most English-speakers who are non-European. That said, I think we should turn to scholarly literature and it doesn't matter what color someone's skin or even native language: if they teach at a prestigious university and are published in peer-reviewed journals or books unpublished by academic presses, their views have an (not the only, but an) authority we must acknowledge. The contents of Wikipedia articles should be dictated by NPOV and research of top scholarly sources, not a racist or nationalist agenda. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
What occurs to me from reading all this discussion is that it might be worth making the page a sort of "enhanced disambiguation". That is, the article probably doesn't want to be the definitive point for much information, if any. Instead, it should sectioned (for example, as outlined above, by any of the outlines) and each section contain a "full information" wikilink, and a brief summary to help people find out if that is what they were really looking for. A lead section should cover the breadth of ideas meant by the phrase "white people", helping to illustrate just how non-specific the term is when taken from NPOV. SamBC( talk) 22:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Tea, you are misquoting policy here. We do not have to describe all viewpoints, only significant ones. See WP:NPOV ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
@Dark Tea "Alun said that in the UK a white person means a white European." Actually I did not say any such thing. I cannot speak for all British people,, I cannot define what White people means to all British people and neither did I claim such a thing. What I said was that my perception of a White person is that of a White European and that I believe this is due to social conditioning. This may well be because the overwhelming majority of White people in the UK are British and therefore European (unsurprisingly), but it may well be that other British people do not see it like that. Furthermore the US census does not define White as Caucasian, the US census has a far broader definition of White, and indeed it was you that pointed this out some time ago. What I said is that I have the impression that in the US the term Caucasian is used a great deal (it is not used in the UK at all as far as I am aware) and has become almost synonymous with White. I even linked to Princeton Wordnet to illustrate my point, Princeton Wordnet has no connection to the US census whatsoever as far as I know. Here's the link again. I think you have misunderstood what I wrote. All the best. Alun 05:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
@Karen "All of the Western definitions cited in the article agree, white=European, ie: Canada, Norway, UK." There are only two definitions in the article, one from an American dictionary ( Merriam Webster): "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" and one from a British dictionary ( Compact Oxford English Dictionary): "to a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry". Both of these definitions are from dictionaries produced in industrialised countries with majorities of populations with a White European descent. Neither of these claims that White=European. The rest are not definitions of White but are definitions of census categories from various states, they are produced by and for bureaucrats, I don't really think they have any encyclopaedic value, unless someone wants to produce an article List of definitions of White for state censuses. But this list would have to cover all definitions by all state bureaucracies throughout the world to be comprehensive. All the best. Alun 05:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I want to thank Ramdrake, SamBC, Alun, and Jeeny for clarifying what I guess was a too abbreviated expression of my points. Just to add one more, from the science of biology: ever since Darwin mainstream biologists have rejected the model of species proposed by Linneaeus (although his model for nomenclature remains); Blumenbach's categorization of races is based on the same taxonomic principles as Linneaeus and is also rendered obsolete by Darwinian and post-Darwinian science. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I also want to respond to this:
Okay, I have read the source you specifically call attention to in note 12. It is co-authored by an Indian MD., which contradicts your insistence that you are supported by White definitions of Whiteness and your rejection of the views of non-Whites or non-Europeans be significant. Moreover, I quote from your - your - source: "Racial and ethnic nomenclature in the United States is dominated by the classification of the Office of Management and Budget, which was devised by a subcommittee of the Federal Interagency Committee on Education." The article itself calls attention to the sloppy ways words like "white," "Caucasian," and "European" are used to refer to heterogeneous groups, expresses skepticism that agreement on what the word "white" means or refers to will ever be achieved, and recommends that instead of using these or any other "administrative" (which in context I think is equivalent to "bureaucratic") categories, scientists use the terms "reference-", "control-" or "comparison- population" and then carefully describe the population's specific composition. Now, given that you think this article supports your position and somehow disproves mine, I have to ask you, "Can you not read the article?" You asked this question, and I can now answer, sincerely, "yes" - and having done so I have no choice but to ask you the exact same question. Maybe you did not read the very article you claim proves you right, but I am struggling to figure out how I can possibly take you at good faith. I want to. But you either did not read the article, or you are being disingenuous or downright hypocritical. Even assuming you really are well-intentioned, it is now evident that any time you make a point and refer to an article that supports your point, other editors are going to have to read those articles for themselves, because there is no reason to believe either that you read them yourself, or are accurately representing them. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:11, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I apologize for your claiming you suggested that White definitions of Whiteness have priority or more significance than other definitions of Whiteness - that was Dark Tea (inter alia I am glad to learn you disagree with her on that point). As to the remainder of my comment, I stand by it: the article you cite, which you say is about the UK, is not and refers extensively to the US; it also makes it very clear that white does not equal European; it also argues that it is bureaucrats who identify white with Caucasian with people from Europe or European decent; it argues that this is incompatible with scientific research e.g. research on health. Apparently, you still have not read the article, or are assuming most people will not. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
This discussion is too long and I dont have time to answer each and all of you. My refusal of disamguation was because:
1) So many concepts have no consensus for their definitions. But they are not Wiki disamb pages.
2) Definition of whiteness is not that disputed, for the most part.
3) If you are worried about too many census sources, find other sources.
4) If this page becomes disamb, where do we explain which definitions are used where?
I still maintain this position. KarenAER 17:01, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
@Karen "Definition of whiteness is not that disputed, for the most part." But the only definitions we have are the two at the top of this article, neither of which claim that White=European, which you persistently state. You have pointed to colloquial use (use in the UK or the US by state bodies, or use in different societies) as often identifying White=European. I do not dispute this, nor do I think this should not be mentioned. But these are not definitions they are colloquial usages. So maybe it is correct to claim that in the UK and some other countries the term White is synonymous with White European, but this is not the equivalent of a definition that incorporates all possible meanings of White people, which is, after all what a definition is. The only definitions we have that can be said to be universal definition do not exclude non-Europeans as White, "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" and "to a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry." I think we need to differentiate here between a definition and differential use of the term by social/state groups. As for your other comments, a disambig page should state that certain uses are used in certain palces and by certain organisations. For example when we state that White people can mean Caucasian, we simply disambiguate and state that in the US White is sometimes synonymous to Caucasian, also in the US White is sometimes synonymous with White European. This is not a problem, the point of a disambig page is that it removes ambiguity, it achieves this by stating when the different uses are applicable. You seem to be implying that a disambig page will lead to ambiguity, but the opposite is actually the case. All the best. Alun 05:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, my username is Singularity, and I have volunteered to be one of two mediators here.
Before we intervene, we will see if this dispute can be solved internally between the parties. If nothing really comes up in a couple of days, then we will try to help find a middle ground. Singu larity 00:33, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps my editing will prove I'm not Fourdee! I wonder how many puppets Jeeny has... or perhaps she and Muntuwandi are Straw Puppets of mine... -- Phral 11:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
It was alleged on another talkpage, but it doesn't worry me. My response was a misguided attempt at humor -- Phral 11:58, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
This is clearly a POV fork of this article. It used to redirect to demographics of Europe but now it is a separate article. Nothing wrong with that but the problem is that much of the material that was rejected in this article has been moved to the European people article. Furthermore it has been racialized. My understanding of the term "European people" basically means citizens of European countries and not necessarily their race. Muntuwandi 16:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Alun, but note that there are ethnic groups in Europe, and I see no problem with an article on ethnic groups in Europe - I have mentioned it a few times but Cole and Wolf's The Hidden Frontier is one classic study of ethnic groups in Europe. Another good book is Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990 Certainly race and ethnicity are two different things. I have suggested here and on the talk page for Europe that a "people of Europe" page could look at the different nationalities and ethnic groups of Europe. A good article will look at this in relationship to the state, because historically there have been nationalities and ethnic groups that formed in tandem with state formation, or that are legally or politicially represented by states, and others that have been excluded or not recognized, and the article should cover the political and economic context as well as social negotiations that go into this process. The two books I mention are just two good case-studies that would provide a start, but there is a host of other stuff. Anyone who would want to research such an article will not have trouble keeping busy! Slrubenstein | Talk 09:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I will not answer all your points since you still clearly do not understand English =/= ethnic English. Those black men may be English, but they are not ethnic English. You are right about that it is hard to establish indigenousness but I'd say that native English are those that are white and Western European. Also note that there is no articles that deal with White Europeans, besides European people You claim that White people has different meanings so we cant turn this article into one. Ok. Then you claim ethnicity is based solely on culture (which is incorrect, it's also based on descent) so European people article should contain Pakistani British? What does that leave us with? Indigenous peoples of Europe ? Oh how nice. That article also gives info about Samis and other isolated groups. White European? I'm sure it'd be nominated for deletion just like White British. This is actually funny. You claim to be leftist [6]. They should, in theory, should support diversity and yet you deny any article on White Europeans. KarenAER 19:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I want to qualify the initial description of the conflict, which was as one between racists and anti-racists. It may well be a conflict between racist and anti-racist editors, but I do not believe it is a conflict between racist and anti-racist edits. I would suggest rather that it is a conflict between racist and non-racist edits. In other words, it is a conflict between POV edits and NPOV edits. Fourdee has admited he is a racist ( "I also wanted to say that while I am not morally opposed to "racism" and would even be proud to promote some varieties of it for some purposes") and that he is intent on pushing his own POV ( "My intent here is to prevent the article from having misleading material inserted which implies there is not a genetic cause for physical appearance, that these traits are not heritable, that these traits are not associated with certain ethnic groups, or that there are not differences in genetics between populations - because those are lies.") - and he admitted this even after I reminded him that our NPOV and V policies make it clear that the standard for Wikipedia articles is verifiability and not truth. He even admits that the people he is opposed to are not the other editors as such, but academics: in the same edit as the one just cited, he also wrote, "Sometimes lies (and other deceptions) are promoted in academia through various means as part of sometimes shadowy and nefarious and sometimes overt campaigns, and I fully intent to accurately portray any such lies or deceptions as the fringe theories." Note: his confederate Phral has used this argument to justify removing relevant content that expresses this point of view, clearly identifies the point of view, and provides a verifiable and reliable source [7]. The other editors involved in this dispute, e.g. Ramdrake, are not to my knowledge deleting, or demanding the deletion of, any content added by Phral, Fourdee, or others solely because they oppose that view. As far as i can tell they object only to material that violates our NPOV or NOR policies. So it is clear to me that the real issue here is POV-pushing versus NPOV. It so happens that the POV being pushed is racist, but as the above examples make clear, the actual edit conflicts have more to do with Phral and Fourdee deleting any mention of views other than their own from the introduction, and in some cases deleting discussion of views other than their own from the entire article. The other editors only want to ensure that the article is compliant with NPOV by including multiple points of view, and compliant with NOR by ensuring that any verifiable source is accurately represented in the article. They are not pushing a specifically anti-racist point of view, they are pushing for compliance with a neutral point of view. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with KarenAER on this point. The situation on this page (and talk page) has reached a point where there are people on both "sides" who are misbehaving, but nothing is going to be gained through mediation in assessing the behaviour of each editor. Might I suggest that people all calm down, start a new discussion from scratch and try to work out a set of goals for the article, and how to attain those goals, which is able to meet reasonable consensus. Hopefully informal mediation can make this easier. SamBC( talk) 00:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This is utter nonsense. I have repeatedly said that the material that slrubenstein and others are promoting can be included in the article however it should not overwhelm a topic with criticisms rather than a discussion of the actual topic and that I will be watching for anything that is willfully misleading, improprerly paraphrased, and arrangements of material that give undue weight to tiny minority views. There is nothing to mediate as slrubenstein has not introduced any material, I have not introduced any material, and all we have right now is a single vandal inserting the same negro nonsense he is being blocked for inserting on a number of articles that are not about negroes in conflict with quite a number of editors and administrators. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 01:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd just like to suggest that whether or not any particular editor is racist or not, or indeed subscribes to any particular belief, is of little or no practical importance. What's important is what people do and suggest, and I suggest drawing a line under discussions and actions so far and try to start our discussion with a clean slate. SamBC( talk) 01:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Given that the page has now been protected, much as I suggested on the article talk page earlier, does anyone object to the strategy I previously suggested, which I will now summarise. Any difference between what I say now and what I said before represents reconsideration, and what I say now is what I'm precisely suggesting and asking to be considered.
The page is protected, so let's all sit back and try to work out what the article should be like, ignoring its current structure and, to a certain extent, content. As this leads to more and more refined ideas as to new structure and outline content, we'll reach a position where the page can be unprotected and the new plan implemented. This will only work if everyone involved is willing to participate to ensure that the new plan is acceptable (if not ideal) to everyone. SamBC( talk) 01:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Mediator's note: This has been moved from the main case page to streamline discussion.
The fact that those on one 'side' claim that the disagreement is racist vs non-racist, while the other "side" say it's excessive PC vs neutrality indicates a common situation in principled disagreements: both sides believe that they are being neutral and just, while the other is pushing an unreasonable agenda. In such cases I have generally found that it's best if both sides can try to understand that neutrality can be subjective, and let go of any assumption of their own neutrality. SamBC( talk) 01:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Could everyone please try to keep this discussion civil, avoid personal attacks, and to use one of my favourite quotes, "consider that you may be mistaken". That goes for everyone. SamBC( talk) 01:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
It's funny that Slrubenstein tries to make such an issue of someone's politics when this guy he brought in is well known for ultra-extreme-far-left politics
[8] (anti-race, anti-capitalism, anti-nation etc.) which strangely seem to correlate with the material he is trying to insert. Nobody is neutral on this and the belief that this article should read as an attack on the very concept of race and a platform to introduce deceptive genetic arguments designed to mislead people into believing genetics are not the reason for differences in appearance - that is the real POV-pushing here. I'm just being honest that my beliefs are the polar opposite of Alun's whereas he has taken to hiding them.
SLRubenstein has also gone running to an administrator friend of his (who posts his essays on her user page) to try to stop me from editing the article for being a racist despite his significant violations of WP:CIVIL etc. You are right I am racist and unlike some of the other people who work on this I don't try to pretend I don't care about the issue. But the fact is Alun is not neutral, SLRubenstein is not neutral, they are promoting specific agendas and want to overload this article with tangentally-related material and the same old often-repeated attacks on race which are designed to mislead laypeople about genetics. This is as I have said all along an issue of how the article should be balanced to correspond to mainstream beliefs and what is on-topic for the article at all. I don't object to any of their material being mentioned, only it being phrased in a way that is misleading or being used to overwhelm the article.
There no way I can try to work on this if slrubenstein is going to keep trying to get me in trouble with administrators for failing to adhere to acceptable politics like the sort
Alun and
User:El_C are happy to promote on their user pages and through their edits, and if that behavior continues I will have little choice but to ignore him and his associates on talk pages. Aside from that I am willing to contribute to this mediation process but cannot accept any outcomes as binding. --
fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ
09:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This comic fairly well illustrates what is going on here. Expected racism from anyone who dare be white -- Phral 09:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this is about racists and non-racists as Ramdrake states, I don't think it's a left-right political issue as Phral states [9] and I don't think it's about afrocentricism (I can see no Afrocentric point of view in the article at all). The issue, as far as I can see it is about whether the term White people is universally identified as a specific race. I think that on the one hand certain good faith editors such as fourdee, Phral and Karen truly believe that it is self evident that the term White people applies exclusively to White Europeans. With this in mind they think that this article should concentrate primarily on this group of people. On the other hand there is another group of people, myself included, who view the term White people as much more amorphous and plastic. We tend to think that this term used to mean different things in different contexts. Both of these points of view are already expressed in the introductory paragraph where two definitions are given (a) "being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin" (b) "a human group having light-coloured skin, especially of European ancestry". Neither of these definitions actually exclude people with ancestry that is not European. A person can have light coloured skin and have European ancestry and can also have ancestry from a different part of the world. My personal solution would be to include several sections in the article, one of these sections could deal with White people as a term used for people who perceive their descent as exclusively White European (this is a perfectly valid usage and point of view after all), other sections of the article can discuss use of the term when it is not applied to people of presumed exclusively White European descent. For example use of the term White people to mean Caucasian, or use of the term White people as it is used in the census for the USA, which I believe includes people from as far as the far east of Russia. There may well be other uses of the term White people that I am not aware of. Alun 09:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This may work. The page may look like this:
White people
But it should be noted that not all definitions are of same value. White is a term which is founded by West Europeans. So West European definitions should be more important than Egyptian definitions, for instance...
KarenAER
18:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I think white in the US means a celtic, germanic, slavic or very similar looking person but the government definitions and social ambiguities or niceties may differ. For example, who is routinely described by the mass media and police as white versus arab or hispanic? I think only certain ethnicities look like what is called "white". And what you would address someone as directly to their face, or in certain company, might differ - we should go by the "police & mass media" categories which are to use white exclusively to mean celtic, germanic or slavic looking people and use some other ethnic term like mediterranean or asian or negro for people with some distinct racial or ethnic trait. This is the main concept that the introduction and body of the article should cover - the prevailing concept in English of "white" meaning a purely european person of certain specific ethnicities. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 12:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing out that it was just a personal opinion Slrubenstein - I was just trying to give us something to work from and clarify whether there is really a distinction in usages between the US, UK and Europe. Sorry Ramdrake, by "celtic" I did mean French and northern Spanish; perhaps a sloppy use of the term. And clearly many Italians and Greeks would be called white, but equally many if not more would not be, so for these I meant they would fall under "very similar looking person". Again, just my personal take - there is something strongly similar about the appearance of a "white" Spaniard that makes him largely indistinguishable from other whites but very distinguishable from a mediterranean person, and my impression is that "white" is largely classified by that distinctive appearance in facial features (coupled with specific skin tones and lightness of skin but not hair or eye color). -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 23:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
There are four pictures of black people in the article but only one picture of a white person (John Kerry). Frankly, it is childish to make examples of black people and tell the reader that they are not white. The purpose of the article is to describe what white people are, not what they are not. MoritzB 01:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I think those images are nothing more than spam (POV-pushing disruption) and are the central issue causing edit disputes. The addition of material about alternate interpretations or constructions of whiteness is not really disputed - we can readily compromise on that. It's this insertion of pictures of people who are not white at the top of the article that is the real problem. The God article doesn't start with a picture of the devil. The black people article doesn't start with pictures of white people. The spacecraft article doesn't start with pictures of jet fighters. -- fourdee ᛇᚹᛟ 07:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry I've read this article a couple of times and I just can't see a reason for its inclusion in Wikipedia beyond being a disambiguation page. What could possibly justify its existance? AlanD 22:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)