In my opinion, “the West” is (nearly) a synonym of “the imperial core”. I have met a lot of non-white people who live in “the West” and embody a lot of what I hate about “white people” (the selfishness, for example). My point is that apart from people who actively fight against it (most leftists, for example), people who live in the West in general adhere to, follow, promote, etc, Capitalist Ideology. This is less the case for those living in the Global South (in my experience).
I've always found it interesting how Latin American countries are often seen as being non-western. We speak a Western language and predominantly practice a Western culture. That alone should count them us being a part of the West, and yet we're talked about like we're a separate entity.
Yeah, couple of random things about that: i seen a couple of times in the chilean sibbredit that we are living in a western culture because “the east doesnt represent us”
Also once i saw a chilean youtuber saying “that sort of weird things are allowed in france because they dont have the same western sensitivities as us”
A good book about the geographic invention/development of "the west" is The Myth of Continents.
yeah I don't know how it is in your country but here in Honduras we all consider ourselves western, white people are people with white skin colour, and the most important distinction is usually between who is a gringo and is not one. From what it seems to me gringo is anyone who hails from a protestant or non-romance western country. Black americans are gringos, Germans are definitely gringos, but french probably aren't. and the Palestinian community here usually isn't lumped into gringo. This whole western, white, first world vs third world, etc split always comes off as something that only makes sense in america.
I meant how the NATO countries seem to see us as being non-western.
time for some theory about "the west". start from Part I if you want the relevant stuff
Eastern Europe I guess? The West (and esp "the imperial core") generally excludes eastern Europe (esp Russia), but eastern European countries are predominantly white
Good point.
Part of the difficulty is that both terms are constantly being defined and redefined. I remember somebody here predicted that in 100 years or so, some Hispanics could be deemed "white" people.
I also remember reading about how Germans weren't considered "white" until the 1900s or so (not 100% sure about that, I may be misremembering).
I remember somebody here predicted that in 100 years or so, some Hispanics could be deemed “white” people.
There is no such thing as a hispanic race. There are many white "hispanics". The people that most picture in their minds as "hispanic" are mestizos, but a very, very significant percentage of people living in many latam countries and who are still considered "hispanic" are not mestizos, they are just white, or black, or whatever. Americans get confused usually because Mexico is almost entirely mestizo and that's most of the latam people they know, but for instance Uruguay is almost 90% white people, and Argentina is also predominantly white Europeans.
So the prediction is wrong because it is already the case.
Yes, both whiteness and "the West" are primarily political terms and who is counted varies. I think on the flip side, Japan is sometimes counted as Western.
Sometimes I use westerners, sometimes white people, and sometimes just Anglos (when talking about monolingual English speakers). For me each term covers a slightly different (though overlapping) group of people/idea
yeah, honestly, in different contexts, both "white people" or "westerners"/"West" essentially only refers to the bourgeoisie.
Not exclusively to the bourgeoisie. It also includes the petite bourgeoisie, and most importantly in the context of my post, it refers to the labor aristocracy.
yeah but i feel western proletariat are victims of propaganda more than anything.
it is to the extent that colour in itself is second to the europeans values and the idea of preservation of that because "white people" is always in the american sense of the word in my experience being from the american backyard
As sailorfish pointed out, not all of European culture. Eastern Europe isn't always included in "the West", which is instead taken to mean (mainly) Western Europe, the U.S. & Canada, and Australia.
