Differentiating Indians from Whites?

B/c to 97% of the people watching, none would think that.

[deleted]

@VUP

East Indians have never been "white"-----that's just what white people want to call anybody who isn't of African descent. Y'all always assume everyone who isn't black must be white like you---how arrogant and stupid that is. I don't know where you get off claiming East Indians are "white" when they have their own unique culture which is completely different from white Anglo-Saxon culture. And no, most Spanish people aren't white---in Spain,maybe, but definitely not in the Caribbean, the U.S., or Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or Central/South America,where they are mostly people of color. Do your research,please.

In U.S., based on my decades of professional experience -- Indians (from India) have never been treated as "black" -- but in fact welcomed in the more scientific fields because of their perceived greater expertise in mathematical analysis.

On the other hand, "blacks" in America were usually treated as incapable of any mathematical ability leading to decades and generations of American "blacks' developing an (unwarranted) mathematical phobia that is only in recent years becoming finally undone.

One would find plenty of Indians (from India) in many of the scientific professions where you would not find a single "black."

Growing up in an academic family and being an academic myself -- I never thought of, and neither did anyone I know, think of Indians (from India) as "black."

However, when I was younger doing the customary summer travel through Europe, I was surprised about the constant references to "blacks' and the discrimination against them in England when I rarely saw any "blacks" (as we used the term in US for -in US - African Americans) in England at all, let alone enough to be discriminated against.

It came as a shock to my young eyes that British viewed Indians (from India) as "blacks" and treated them in the same disrespectful manner that the US treated African Americans - with comparable slurs, employment discrimination, ghettoizing and so forth.

So who is "black" is in the eyes of the cultural beholder. Indians are not "black in US but are (or at least were) in Great Britain.

With respect to Hispanics -- thought it was a term developed to characterize Spanish speaking populations in the Western Continents -- it was really coined to characterize individuals who were the lineal product of inter-marriage between the Spaniard (from Spain) settlers and the "Indians" (from North and South America) who spoke Spanish.

Culturally-speaking, people who were directly from Spain were (and are ) called Spanish or Spaniards and not Hispanic - though using the definition of being Spanish-speaking for Hispanics created a conundrum for U.S. when they meant the term to refer to Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Latinos etc but realized that technically, under the definition of Spanish speaking, people from Spain would have to be call Hispanic as well -- but that was never the intention of the term. The term was to capture another discriminated-against group who were different from "blacks" (African-Americans) but not to include any Europeans (in particular not to include the Spanish-speaking people from Spain - who were considered "culturally acceptable" Europeans.)

So who are the "inferior" groups are very much in the (cultural) eyes of the beholder.

(And I keep characterizing Indians from India because when the western continents were "discovered" by the European Explorers -- who did not know the western continents existed -- initially though they were landing in India, having sailed around the world "in the other (western) direction" to reach India "from the other side". They concluded therefore that the people they encountered living on these continents were Indians (from India).

Though eventually Europe realized its explorers had in fact discovered entire new continents, the term "Indians" stuck and remained so until the last 60 years or so -- when the term "Native Americans" was coined to acknowledge that the "Indians" who lived in the Western Continents were in fact indigenous to the areas in which they lived (live) and bore no relation to what is culturally thought of as "Indians" from India.

What amazes me- as I get on in years -- is that all of this history - which was pretty much well-known and not even questioned (except for the debates on how to define "Hispanic" and who counted as "African American") among those who came of age (i.e., age 18 or so) in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's has been pretty much "lost" culturally among younger generations.

But as amazing as it is to me -- that the origins of these terms and issues are being culturally "lost" among the Younger general population -- it also is gratifying. Because - though young people today may not think so -- it reflects a waning of racial discrimination. (And "waning" does not mean "gone" -- it just means that it is not as severe and pronounced and overt as it was 50 years ago.)

The battle against discrimination must still go on -- but it is gratifying for those of us (such as myself) who battled so hard against discrimination from the '60's & '70's forward- to see that our efforts did indeed have impact -- even tho there is much more to accomplish.

No they are not. They are asian.

Indians are not white however they are Caucasian since their facial features put them in the Caucasoid race as opposed to the Mongoloid or Negroid races. While these classifications may be politically incorrect, physical anthropologists can tell an East Indian from an African or Asian person based on skull features alone.

Just wow at this thread.

I honestly don't even know who's right or who's wrong, but the bigotry spewed is pitiful.

"White" in the American (and Western) sense means someone who's descended from indigenous Europeans or who looks typically European.

It's true that (East) Indians have basically the same facial structure and hair texture as Whites, as they basically look like colored Caucasians. And it's also true that the Indo-European languages family does suggest a common ancestry as well as the Aryan history of India's higher-castes of yesteryear.

BUT... Indians are now easily distinguishible from Europeans, and that's especially true of the southern Dravidians. So I would say that although they're racially closer to Whites than, say, black Africans, they're still not White.

As to that cleaning lady thing, I think she had in mind a Latina and not a Spaniard. Latinos in the American continents, although they speak Spanish, have considerable Amerindian and African ancestry, and so most of them aren't white.