White people

White is a historical specification of skin color and a modern classification of race. Most often, it is applied to identify people of European origin, but the definition of "White" varies depending on context and points of view. Beyond racialization, the word simply denotes any person with light skin, typically carnation colored.

Descriptions of populations as "white" in reference to their skin color is occasionally found in Greco-Roman ethnography and in other ancient and medieval sources, but these societies did not have any concept of whiteness as a race nor of a pan-European identity. The modern racialized understanding that is "White race" or "White people" entered the major European languages in the late 17th century, when the concept of a unified White people achieved greater acceptance in Europe, particularly in the context of race-based slavery and social status in the world's European colonies. Scholarship on race distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions, which focused on physical complexion rather than on the idea of race. Prior to the modern era, no European peoples regarded themselves as "White" and instead defined their identity in terms of their religion, ancestry, ethnicity, or nationality.

Contemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a unified and distinguishable White race as a social construct with no scientific basis.

Physical descriptions in antiquity

The assignment of positive and negative connotations of White and Black to certain persons date to the very old age in a number of Indo-European languages, but these differences were not necessarily used in respect to skin colors. Religious conversion was sometimes described figuratively as a change in skin color.