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This article was nominated for deletion on March 3, 2007. The result of the discussion was Speedy keep.

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This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed. Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.

This article needs to be cleaned up.

We absolutely need more emphasis on the social significance of this topic, and much less bloat consisting of regional definitions of whiteness. This article is severely cluttered with the latter. Alexander Shipfield (talk) 12:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Missing countries

Lots of missing countries in the census information. Germany, and many others. Request for those to be added in please. 184.57.56.79 (talk) 03:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Germany has a problematic history with racial classification. At least according to Wikipedia, such information is not collected by today's German government. Really, that whole section is a mess, not least because of the unresolvable problem of differing definitions of "white people". The article would arguably be better without the section. CAVincent (talk) 04:41, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can we fix the percentages of African countries?

The percentages in African countries are way off. For example Kenya says 42,800 White people is 2% of the population. This would imply Kenya only has a population of 2 million people. Malawi and Morocco are also inaccurate (0.06% and 0.03% respectively) Can we change the percentages of these? Or possibly remove it for being such a small portion of these countries populations? Otterstone (talk) 04:16, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Questionable map

The main map placed in the page is very inconsistent and inaccurate for specifically Latin America. Places such as Jalisco and the north of Mexico are shown with almost no European ancestry even though the ancestry of the region is comparable to the southern cone of South America and Costa Rica. Not only that, one state would have predominantly European ancestry whereas a bordering state has almost none which makes no sense considering the demographic history of Latin America, even more so for Mexico where 1/3-2/5 (30-40%) of the population are European descended. I am also not sure how Chiapas and Yucatán have more European ancestry than the central north region of Mexico. For Colombia as well I see it’s very inaccurate as Nariño and the southern Andes of Colombia are somehow predominantly European even though the people there are indistinguishable from Ecuadorians, and your basis being that “40% are white in Colombia and 47% are mestizo” despite the fact that those numbers are made up and aren’t proven by any source and most sources state in fact that 20% are European, 50-60% re mestizo and the rest are ethnic populations, I recommend reading into the sources in Race and ethnicity in Colombia and adjusting the map from that. There are also other places in the world that have European ancestry that the map doesn’t show. ElMexicanotres (talk) 23:56, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And this is based from several sources across the specific Wikipedia pages related to these ethnic groups. I recommend you view Ethnic groups in Latin America instead as it provides a better insight to the actual demographics of the region. ElMexicanotres (talk) 00:14, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The over-arching problem here is WP:OR, specifically WP:SYNTH. Images from Commons are not a hack to bypass the need for reliable sources. That's what this map represents. Further, the map has a very, very long list of qualifications in its description at Commons:File:European Ancestry Large.svg, including a paragraph that starts "This is NOT a map of the White race, just an "European ancestry" map." None of this context was included, it was just presented as if it were an accepted bland fact.

Unlike many of these racial/ethnic maps on Commons, this one at least appears to be made with good intentions... or maybe not. There is a lot of racist junk science on Commons, so it's hard to tell. This map would need far, far, far more context and many reliable sources before it would belong in this article, and especially in the lead. Grayfell (talk) 00:23, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Page European emigration also has this exact map, what shall we do with it for now? ElMexicanotres (talk) 01:52, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for mentioning that. I have removed it and started a discussion at that article: Talk:European_emigration#European_Ancestry_map. Grayfell (talk) 04:07, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just adding two cents: I'd agree that the recently removed map is a mess of OR and SYNTH. Given differing definitions of whiteness and even "Europeanness", this would likely be an irresolvable problem for *any* map attempting to display a global distribution of white people. Also, a lengthy set of qualifications would defeat the purpose of a simple at-a-glance map graphic, and without qualifications the map is more misleading than informative. The article is fine without it. CAVincent (talk) 04:28, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 19 November 2024

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In the 'Republic of Ireland' subsection, change the word 'ideontified' to 'identified' Eisenstein Integer (talk) 10:43, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks for catching that. CAVincent (talk) 12:11, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Large population tables

This is regarding these edits, which I have reverted.

There are a lot of major problems here. Some of which are similar to what has already been discussed at #Questionable map above.

One problem is that this table would combine many wildly different sources with wildly different methodologies and definitions of 'white people' and present them all as being directly comparable.

Another major issue is that many of these sources are not reliable. Sources need to be WP:RS, and other Wikipedia articles are not reliable sources, per WP:CIRC.

Finally, combining these statistics at all is a form of original research. We use sources to form conclusions, not editors. Please do not restore this table until consensus has changed. Grayfell (talk) 21:33, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Domen von Wielkopolska: Hello. This is the place to discuss these edits. Nothing about Joshua Project's website indicates that it has a positive reputation for accuracy, fact-checking, or peer review. Further, the site doesn't consistently use the term 'white', so any interpretation of this source for this article would be original research. But again, it doesn't appear to be a reliable source in general. Grayfell (talk) 21:39, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the term 'white' is defined by this article itself ('White people') as 'those of mostly European ancestry'. So I just summed up the numbers of all native European ethnic groups listed in each Joshua Project country article. Anyway, how about I just restore the table for European countries as this table doesn't use Joshua Project among its sources (it is based on census counts and official estimates)? Of course I will use reliable sources directly instead of linking to other Wikipedia articles (per the WP:CIRC policy). Domen von Wielkopolska (talk) 21:59, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But I do think that the Joshua Project website is accurate and reliable for the purpose that it serves, namely: counting ethnic groups. I noticed only one obvious inaccuracy when researching their data, the number of White Australians in Papua New Guinea. But it looks just like an error in adding one extra zero (it should be 13,900 instead of 139,000). This source confirms that they are "over 10,000": https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/papua-new-guinea/australia-papua-new-guinea-engagement . Domen von Wielkopolska (talk) 22:32, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]