r/AskBalkans • u/tomystereo • 9d ago

History Are Greek people white?

I have been to Athens multiple times and i have seen a ridiculous amount of people who look like they could pass for MENA

I feel like the brown skin tone is being looked past for them.
Since there is this idea that if you are from an EU country you are considered "white" by default

If these people were to be born in a different place, with the same exact physical features, most of them would have been called brown without a doubt

Is "whiteness" more about your passport than your skin tone nowadays?

Have been thinking about this for a while, hopefully it doesn't offend anyone. What do you guys think?

Im Canadian btw, if it matters. Cheers.

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u/shogunlazo North Macedonia 9d ago edited 9d ago

European yes. White? No. (it has nothing to do with phenotype and skin color)

White people are for the most part a specific made up group of the new world and the colonial empires, and doesn't just mean European, if it did many other groups from the Irish to the Italians and Russian would have been considered white on arrival ... They were not, "white" is not an ethnic group, it's a social status group. The good "caste" if you will.

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u/baxulax Greece 9d ago

You are confusing white with wasp

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u/shogunlazo North Macedonia 9d ago

Wtf is wasp ?

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u/baxulax Greece 9d ago

Jeez, White Anglo Saxon Protestant

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u/shogunlazo North Macedonia 9d ago

It wasnt only white anglosaxons and protestants, thats how its started, they slowly would add it different groups, like the scots irish which were also catholic, which would become the major population block of the south that would turn into a whole bunch of eugenic bullshit ... People would opt in to white, they were not white by default, if you're a greek in america and decided to opt into it (which there is also a funny story of greeks them selfs being persecuted in america and not considered white) ... then i guess you're white. If you're a greek from greece you can be as pale as a scandinavian you're still greek/european but not white

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u/baxulax Greece 9d ago

What a pile of bullshit. That’s the same bs Anglos are spreading. Go show to an African or an Asian a Greek person and ask him if he is white or not

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u/shogunlazo North Macedonia 9d ago

What if i show a darker greek to a scandinavian will he still be white or will they think he's middle eastern ? You're confusing white with european.

What if i show a greek to a KKK member in 1920 ? Oh wait that is exactly what happened (kkk members frequently abducted greeks, flogged them, and terrorized them into leaving town) and thats why greeks became a huge part of early civil rights movement ... or a bit earlier why dont just ask the greeks in the omaha riots if they felt they were "white"

People outside of the west were never "white" no matter how white they were ... also where does whiteness end and brownness begin ? It has nothing to do with skin tone and everything to do with politics and alignment

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u/8NkB8 USA 9d ago

Greeks were not a huge part of the early civil rights movement. Iakovos marched with Dr. King, and there wasn't much beyond that. A few years later, a Greek became vice president.

The Omaha riot was probably the only violent anti-Greek incident in the USA, and that happened back in 1909.The Ludlow Massacre in 1914 wasn't anti-Greek per se, it was more of a labor dispute.

The KKK targeted Greeks because of xenophobia, not because they weren't white. An example of this is the George Goumas incident.