White Latin American : Ask Biography

Home | Ethnic Group | White Latin American

White Latin Americans are the people of Latin America who are either classified as or self identify as white in the racial classification systems used in individual Latin American countries. Persons who are classified as White in one Latin American country may be classified differently in another country. Generally being "White" is socially desirable in Latin American countries, because it is associated with high socio-economic status. The colonial rule in Latin America kept strict track of the blood purity of its subjects, considering Christian (i.e. European) blood to be purest. This has meant that in contrast to racial policies in the US which have generally encouraged segregation, Latin American countries have often had racial policies of miscegeneation, since even small amounts of European ancestry could entail significant upwards social mobility. This also means that Latin American people who are used to being classified as racially White in Latin America may be surprised to find that they are classified differently when arriving in the quite different racial classification system of the US.

Throughout Latin America people who are classified as White identify with heritage from European settlers arriving in the Americas throughout the colonial and post-independence periods, although many of them also have significant amounts of non-European genetic ancestry. Many of the earliest settlers were Spanish and Portuguese, and after independence, Italians have led numerically among the millions of immigrants. The Spaniards and Portuguese round out the top three. Notably large immigration occurred as well by Germans, Poles, Irish, British, French, Russians, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, Croats, Swiss, Greeks and other Europeans. In at least some countries, the white population also includes Middle Easterners/Southwest Asians. The majority are Christian Arabs of Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian origin, but there are Armenians, Maghrebi Jews (most Jewish Latin Americans are Ashkenazi), and others.

Composing about 33% or 36% of the population according to some sources, White Latin Americans constitute the largest ethnic category in the region, an ethnic category meaning a demographic grouping based on externally imposed criteria with no internal cohesion or selfidentification with the grouping. Nevertheless, White is the self-identification of many Latin Americans in some national censuses, as seen further on in this article.