Is there a difference between "ethnic whites" and "white people"?

[Col. Roosevelt]

If so, would you consider ethnic whites (Catholic, Italian, Irish, Eastern European whose families arrived here within the last century, etc) as a different racial or cultural grouping from "whites" (meaning those of German, English or Danish origin who are Protestant and whose families go back centuries in this country)?

And then, if so, what is the difference between an ethnic white, and a Hispanic person?

I'll give you an example of what I mean:


This is my grandfather and his sister circa the 1940s. Would they have been considered white then? Would you guess by appearance alone that they might be white now?

[Bigby]

Different ethnicities, sure, but they're still under the same racial umbrella. Slavs and Mediterranean people may be darker on average, but they are no less white than Germanics. Besides, the two groups are more closely linked than you'd expect thanks to interbreeding. Many Italians north of Rome are blonde and blue-eyed, for example, thanks to the Germanic Lombards.

[Torie]

Ethnic whites have some identification with their ancestors' national origin, or can be so identified, while those without such lose the adjective. I am mostly English by ancestry, but do I identify as English American or am so identified? No. Thus I am not an ethnic white. That's my version of the difference anyway. I do sort of identify as WASP, even though I don't really identify with a religion, but that's a codicil.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Don't all people have an ethnicity of some sort?

[Vosem]

This is an answer entirely in the American context, but I do believe the answer is "yes". For some white Americans, the knowledge of where their families are originally from is lost in the seas of time -- non-indicative English/Irish last names may have been original, or perhaps they were Anglicized when they came in. Alternatively, they may remember what their ancestry is, but it is so jumbled from different European countries and nationalities that they cannot reasonably claim to be any one of those nationalities/ethnicities. Who knows. They have no identity to fall back on besides being white Americans.

Others do remember which European country or nationality they are originally from. When last names are not Anglicized and are distinctively of one culture or another, this is easiest (though that does not guarantee anything, of course; sometimes those names are simply passed on). These people may not speak the language of that country any longer, but they may identify with some traditions, and at least nominally still adhere to the original faith. These people are "white ethnics".

"Hispanics" (those that don't appear to be black, at least) are a very, very distinctive subset of "white ethnics"; they are probably far and away the largest group of these, and their immigration is comparatively recent and they be on average significantly poorer than other white ethnic groups, which sets them apart.

For instance, as a child of recent immigrants from Europe, who speaks his parents' language, I'm a fairly good example of a white ethnic. My friend with an Irish last name, whose ancestors were all white Americans as far as her family remembers except for a Cherokee great-grandmother, is not.