A significant drop in seeing oneself as white

General Social Survey participants were asked: "From what countries or part of the world did your ancestors come?" The answers listed in the table above include ethnicities with substantial numbers of white and non-white people (self-identified). The first column of numbers are the percent of the group who self-dentified as white when surveyed some time in the 1970s or 1980s, while the second column of numbers are the corresponding numbers for the past two decades. Finally, the last column is the difference between the first two. (Most of the categories have large sample sizes, with a few exceptions like Arabs in the earlier period having only 29).  

You can see that, with the exception of American Indians, fewer people now consider themselves to be white.

The drop over the two periods is substantial in all other groups. If American society is so racist against minorities, why is whiteness so much less desirable than 20 years ago? If whiteness carries with it so many advantages, why are fewer people trying to pass as white?  Liberal researchers tell us that living among white bigots forces minorities to give up trying to be white. For this to be the case, recent conditions would have to be dramatically worse than in the past. That is untenable.      

Caucasian not white

How strongly does race predict voting? Here is a multivariate model of six predictors:

Voted for Bush in 2004 (standardized OLS regression coefficients)

Black -.35
Other race -.10
Male .07
Years of education -.08
Income .09
Church attendance .22

All predictors are significantly related to the outcome variable--voting for Bush over Kerry or Nader. (The dependent variable is evenly split so I can get away with using OLS).  "Black" is a comparison of blacks versus whites, and is the strongest predictor in the model. Frequency of church attendance is next. "Other race" is in comparison with whites, and is about as predictive as sex, education or income. Another way of stating this is that whiteness is a relatively strong predictor of voting Republican. 

For those interested in getting more people to vote Republican, none of these predictors is easy to manipulate. For example, how do you get more people to go to church?  Setting aside the question of practicality, Republicans might benefit if more people saw themselves as white. If America embraced, say, a Coonian understanding of Caucasian, and focused on facial features rather than skin color, fewer Americans might be drawn to the party of people who feel like aliens--the Democrats. You know--feminists, homosexuals, immigrants, Jews, non-Christians, and non-whites.  

The use of the term "white" does not help since it brings some pasty dude to mind. This has always been a misleading term. My ancestry is 100 percent northern European, and I can give John Boehner a run for his money any day. One of my brothers looks a little like an Arab. A rough rule of thumb would go like this: "Forget the little groups around the world. Does he look like an East Asian? Does he look like a sub-Saharan African? Does he look like an American Indian? No? Then he's a Caucasian guy."     

Armenian Americans

Val Avery

Richard Bakalyan

Mike Connors

Ken Davitian

Michael Goorjian

Armenia can be considered part of Europe or Asia, but Armenians are another interesting test of white Americans' definition of whiteness. These are actors of Armenian descent. They all look white to me, but Ken Davitian (the manager from Borat) looks pretty exotic. I suspect an anthropological education has widened my definition of white.

I probably should mention that Kim Kardashian's father is of Armenian descent. (While we're at it, so is Cher's).