Play the white man is a term used in parts of England meaning to be decent and trustworthy in one's actions.
The origin of the phrase is obscure. The term carries with it a reference to an obligation which outnumbered English civil administrators in the latter years of the British Empire might have considered themselves to be under: that is, the obligation to uphold respect for their county abroad by maintaining personal standards of behavior and fairness which darker-skinned native peoples could respect. The act of calling upon someone to remember his personal moral obligations in this way is expressed in Rudyard Kipling's poem The White Man's Burden. On the other hand, the racially neutral color white has long been associated with pureness and virtue.
A similar expression in the United States is "That's mighty white of you", meaning, "Thank you for being fair". Among African Americans, this phrase is said in response to being patronized or told what to think.
Famous quotes containing the words white man, play the, play, white and/or man:
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)
“Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
—Hugh Latimer (1485–1555)
“We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It’s not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don’t write very differently from white men.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“A man in love is incomplete until he has married—then he’s finished.”
—Zsa Zsa Gabor (b. 1919)