WHITE PERSON • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of White person

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noun

White person n. A person of the Caucasian race (). Note: In the time of slavery in the United States white person was generally construed as a person without admixture of colored blood. In various statutes and decisions in different States since 1865 white person is construed as in effect (as of 1913): one not having any negro blood (Ark., Okla.); one having less than one eighth of negro blood (Ala., Fla., Ga., Ind., Ky., Md., Minn., Miss., Mo., N.C., S.C., Tenn., Tex.); one having less than one fourth (Mich., Neb., Ore., Va.); one having less than one half (Ohio). Since the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960's and 1970's, the term has little legal significance for some purposes, as in filling out questionnaires, a person's race is whatever the person claims it to be.

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Etymology of 'White person'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"White person" Quotes from Famous Books

... also has a large shoe industry. In this line no negroes are employed. A short while ago a large steel plant employing foreigners in large numbers had a strike. The strike was settled but the management took precautions against its repetition. For each white person employed a negro was placed on a corresponding job. This parallel extended from unskilled work to the highest skilled pursuits. The assumption was that a strike, should it recur, could not cripple their industry entirely. About 80 per cent of the employes of the brick yards, 50 per cent of ...

— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... spite of all, a real noblewoman, which flattered him. He has not one dollar's-worth of moral delicacy in his heart. But he has an abundance of knavery.... Let us, too, strike out his wife. She is such a veritable slave whom the mere presence of a white person annihilates to such a degree that she dares not look her husband in the face.... It is not Hafner. The sly fox is capable of doing anything by cunning, but is he capable of undertaking a useless and dangerous piece of rascality? ...

— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... little hollow, where dwelt the goblin with which nurses, housemaids, hired men, and older sisters were wont to frighten refractory children into quietness. It was the grave of an old negro. Alas! that to his last resting-place the curse should follow him! Had it been a white person who rested there, not half so fearful would have been the spot; now, however, it was "the old nigger hole"—a place to run by if by accident you were caught out after dark—a place to be threatened with if ...

— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... for hour after hour through a perfect wilderness of such streets we saw not a single white person; it seemed as though I were the only Caucasian among the more than a million Asiatics, though this, of course, was ...

— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... her if he had to "set one foot in hell after her," cursing and swearing in a perfect foam; and said a thousand dollars should be doubled but what he would have her. As the streets were too well lighted, to give her the appearance of a white person through the veil, I called for a saucer of flour, with which I thoroughly powdered her face. Before her veil was adjusted she happened to look up and saw herself in the large mirror before her, and burst into a laugh over her white face and Quaker bonnet. I gave her ...

— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... these people look much alike, but some are very different in appearance. Name some of the different kinds of people whom you have seen. How do you distinguish a negro and Chinaman or Mongolian from a white person or Caucasian? Tell about their hair, skin ...

— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs

Words linked to "White person" : someone, white man, person, whitey, soul, Caucasoid race, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Aryan, Caucasian race, white woman, poor white trash, Kassite, honky, Circassian, Elamite, mortal, Caucasian, individual, white, honkey