Because "white" is a category of exclusion, defined by being not not-white. It is vague and historically flexible - it may or may not include Italians, Spaniards, Irish, Greeks or Poles depending on who you ask and where & when you happen to be at the time of asking.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 months ago

Amusingly, quite a lot of people still excuse Armenians and Azerbaijani people, despite them literally living in the Caucasusn and being the definition of Caucasian

[–] nifty@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

Also may not include Latin Americans, Slavs or mixed race people

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 months ago

Russians and Germans historically tend to exclude each ofher.

I started using non-whites as a broad category of every race / ethnicity that is excluded by the US mainstream, specifically the transnational white power movement.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 months ago

While technically correct, saying it's a category of exclusion kind of makes it sound negative, when it's exclusive quality is basically defined by privilege. Whether Italians, Spaniards, Irish, Greeks, or Poles counts basically entirely depends on how normalized and privileged they are in any given greater subsect.

[–] brown567@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

That makes a lot of sense! I've wondered why sometimes white just feels like a non-race