White People - History of The Term

History of The Term

The notion of "white people" or a "white race" as a large group of populations contrasting with non-white or "colored" originates in the 17th century. Pragmatic description of populations as "white" in reference to their skin color predates this notion and is found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient sources.

Read more about this topic:  White People

Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or term:

    No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)