Historical and Present Definitions
Definitions of who is "white" has changed throughout the history of the United States. At different times people of Italian, Irish and Eastern European heritage have been considered non-White, but are now generally considered White. Currently the question of whether people of Hispanic and non-Jewish Middle Eastern descent should be considered White is the topic of some discussion in the US.
Read more about this topic: White American
Famous quotes containing the words historical, present and/or definitions:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Oh! what a poor thing is human life in its best enjoyments!—subjected to imaginary evils when it has no real ones to disturb it! and that can be made as effectually unhappy by its apprehensions of remote contingencies as if it was struggling with the pains of a present distress!”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)