3 August 2021
The color white has long been associated with purity and goodness, and in the latter half of the nineteenth century a slang use of white began to be used to mean honest and gentlemanly. To be treated white was to be treated well and fairly. And by 1900, the phrase that’s white of you was in place to acknowledge such treatment. But along the way, these senses, especially the slang ones, acquired a racial connotation. Fair, honest, and gentlemanly treatment was white, as opposed the assumed behavior of people of color.
The use of white as a metaphor for purity and sinlessness in English dates to the Old English period. For example, there is this from one of Ælfric’s homilies, written in the closing years of the tenth century:
þæt gedafenað toforan eallum oþrum þingum þæt ælces mannes heorte beo wið ealle leahtras hwit & clæne, swaswa ge gewilnigeað þæt ge to ciercean becumen mid hwitum reafum & mid clænum
(That it is fitting above all other things that the heart of each man be white and clean of all sins, so that it both strives for it and comes to the church with white and clean garments.)
Of course, such early uses had no racial connotation. That would come later, but exactly when is debatable. But by the later Middle Ages, skin color began to be used as a metaphor for purity and goodness. For example, the romance The King of Tars (c.1330) has a Muslim sultan converting to Christianity and having his skin color change from black to white as a result. And the modern conception of race, based on skin color, came with the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a justification for the enslavement of Africans. It’s often difficult to determine if any particular usage was and is deliberately intended to be racist, or if it just reflected the racism that has been endemic throughout European and American society. But there is no doubt that by the nineteenth century, if not earlier, the association of the word white with racist ideas was widespread and deeply and inextricably embedded.
There is this from London’s Bell’s Weekly Messenger of 11 December 1836, which echoes Ælfric’s duality of white heart and white clothing:
Your conduct must vite there, my fine fellows—no blackguards admitted there; and not only must your conduct be vite, but your neck-handkerchief must vite too, on ball nights.
And in the United States, there is account from Timothy Cooley’s 1837 Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes:
There is a man of my acquaintance who feels that he owes much, under God, to the preaching of Mr. Haynes while at Torrington. He was disaffected that the church should employ him, and neglected meeting for a time. At length curiosity conquered prejudice so far that he went to the house of God. He took his seat in the crowded assembly, and, from designed disrespect, sat with his hat on. Mr. Haynes gave out his text, and began with his usual impassioned earnestness, as if unconscious of any thing amiss in the congregation. 'The preacher had not proceeded far in his sermon,' said the man, “before I thought him the whitest man I ever saw. My hat was instantly taken off and thrown under the seat, and I found myself listening with the most profound attention.”
In the latter half of the nineteenth century the verb phrases to be white and to treat white in reference to persons started to appear. These formulations clearly express a racially stratified society where white people are socially superior to people of color. One of their earliest appearances is in a glossary of West Point cadet slang that accompanied the 1878 autobiography of Henry Ossian Flipper. Born into slavery, Flipper was the first Black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Flipper gave no indication that the terms were overtly racist, but the fact that he included them in his autobiography is telling:
“To be white,” “To treat white.”—To be polite, courteous, and gentlemanly.
The verb phrases were not limited to West Point, as can be seen in an article in the National Police Gazette of 3 May 1890:
When the home had been turned inside out, the two robbers held a whispered conversation, and then turning to Bradrick asked: “Say, are you certain you have no more cash?” An affirmative response was received and one of the wretches said: “Lookey here pardner, we’re goin’ now, and if you squeal we’ll come back and do you up. We’ve treated you d—d white I think.” This opinion was too much even for the solemn occasion, and Bradrick could not repress a smile as he responded: “I am under many obligations for this courteous treatment. I should like to meet both of you again, but next time I would prefer you call at some more appropriate hour.”
And we seen a clearly racial use of the word white in the obituary of Peter Jackson, the Black championship boxer from Australia in the Sydney Sportsman of 17 July 1901:
He was black in skin, but a whiter man than Peter Jackson never lived.
And there is this passage form Chauncey M’Govern’s 1907 account of serving as an American soldier in the Philippines that expresses surprise that Filipinos could treat someone white:
Well, sir, they treated us white did them gu-gus in that pueblo. They didn't spare neither the rice or the fish and the cocoanut oil. They even boiled up half a dozen manuks for me and Clarke, and laid out the bottles of red beno as if it was as common as mud on the back of a carabao.
The phrase that’s white of you is recorded by 1900, although it is undoubtedly older. From David Dwight Wells’s 1900 His Lordship’s Leopard:
“I tell you what it is, Marchmont, that subeditorship is still vacant, and if you put this through, the place is yours.”
The reporter grasped his chiefs hand.
“That's white of you, boss,” he said, “and I'll do it no matter what it costs or who gets hurt in the process.”
And the next year, from Hamlin Garland’s Her Mountain Lover:
Hastings himself developed much admiration for the mountaineer. “You must let me see you in London,” he said several times. “I’ll put you down at my Club; and then, the governor will want to see you in the country.”
Jim had no idea of what was involved in being put down at a Club, but he consented. “That s mighty white of you, old man, but I don t know where I shall make down.”
Of course, there are many non-racist uses of white. But that cannot be said for phrases like to treat white or that’s white of you. Even if the speaker has no deliberate racist intent, such phrasings arise out of a racist context. Any use of white as metaphor for purity and goodness must be interrogated, and in many cases a better metaphor should be sought and used.
Sources:
Brotanek, Rudolf, ed. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Altenenglischen Literatur und Kirchengeschichte. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1913, 19. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Paris, Bibliothèque National MS lat 943, fol.165v–166r.
Cooley, Timothy Mather. Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1837, 73. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Flipper, Henry Ossian. The Colored Cadet at West Point. New York: Homer Lee, 1878. Johnson Reprint, 1968, 54. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Footpads on Deck.” National Police Gazette, 3 May 1890, 6. ProQuest Magazines.
Garland, Hamlin. Her Mountain Lover. London: William Heinemann, 1901, 38. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. white, adv., white, adj.
M’Govern, Chauncey. By Bolo and Krag. Manila: Escolta Press, c.1907, 50. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2015, modified June 2021, s.v. white, adj. (and adv.) and n., white man, n.
“Peter Jackson ‘Outed.’” Sydney Sportsman, 17 July 1901, 1. Trove.
Wells, David Dwight. His Lordship’s Leopard. New York: Henry Holt, 1900, 15. HathiTrust Digital Archive.