White

• Published in: The Critical quarterly Vol. 66; no. 3; pp. 106 - 111
• Main Author: Mehl, Seth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-10-2024
• Subjects: English language; Linguistics; Semantics
• DOI: 10.1111/criq.12775
• EISSN: 1467-8705
• ISSN: 0011-1562

It is the ongoing malleability of white in reference to a category of human beings – and its propensity to be shiftingly employed for inclusion or exclusion, with deadly results – that renders it a keyword. White as a category of human beings has, over the centuries, been defined in practice in multiple, ever-changing ways, including a wide range of physical attributes well beyond (skin) colour; geography; (mythical or biological) lineage; simple habit or custom; or genetics. Often, these definitions have been at odds with each other. White has cognates across Indo-European languages, referring to light colour or brightness. White in this sense could be used absolutely – referring strictly to the colour of snow, for example – and as an absolute term did not have synonyms in OE. From OE, white could describe light-coloured skin as a mark of illness or cowardice, alternating with wan, blake, pale, dead, and bloodless from ME (with no synonyms in OE). White alternated with fair from OE to indicate light-coloured skin as a mark of femininity and beauty; white could, in this sense, signify an unfavourable femininity in men. To describe a typical, healthy skin colour, white was uncommon: instead, red and bright were common from OE; ruddy from C13. Crucially, red in OE subsumed what we might now call purple, pink, red, orange, and brown.