Whiteness is far, far from the amount of reflected sunlight. It's about the curl of your hair, the shape of your face, the accent, and a host of other clues.
There's no sharp line. It's however people choose to define you. If they identify you as non-white, you get treated as non-white. Which means automatic negative judgments that wouldn't apply if they identified you as white.
That doesn't mean whiteness by itself gets you into every corridor of power. But non-whiteness excludes you from a lot of places, or gets you treated with suspicion when you're allowed to be there at all. It's a permanent set of bricks in your briefcase, on top of all the other ones that affect everybody.
That's not whiteness, but culture fit. To get into important clubs in say China, one needs to look like them, speak like them, have common background. Same here.
The problem with blacks in America is that they don't want to change. Many in fact do the opposite, they fight the whites' culture, e.g. studying too much in school is "acting white". Some even try to bend the majority, I mean these attempts to shame whites, tell them to be "less white".
> But non-whiteness excludes you from a lot of places, or gets you treated with suspicion when you're allowed to be there at all.
Could you tell us about some of these places? I keep hearing there are such places but I never really get any concrete examples. Certainly no large business, nor any government entity, still qualifies for this. I want to know what White-exclusive operations there are that are still holding out.
There's no sharp line. It's however people choose to define you. If they identify you as non-white, you get treated as non-white. Which means automatic negative judgments that wouldn't apply if they identified you as white.
That doesn't mean whiteness by itself gets you into every corridor of power. But non-whiteness excludes you from a lot of places, or gets you treated with suspicion when you're allowed to be there at all. It's a permanent set of bricks in your briefcase, on top of all the other ones that affect everybody.