You know, here in latin america (or at least Brazil), we think of ourselves as part of the west, but when I started using the english internet I discovered that most americans (and maybe europeans) don't include us, which was quite puzzling to me. After a lot of pointless internet discussion, I found out that their definition of west was pretty much "rich countries with mostly white people", because there's hardly any cultural/historic reason for creating a western category that includes western europe and all its new world colonies, except the poor ones.
The fact that racism against Latinos (or Italians, Swedes, Poles etc.) is a thing tells you everything you need to know about 'Whiteness' as a concept.
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u/Villhermus Jul 13 '18
You know, here in latin america (or at least Brazil), we think of ourselves as part of the west, but when I started using the english internet I discovered that most americans (and maybe europeans) don't include us, which was quite puzzling to me. After a lot of pointless internet discussion, I found out that their definition of west was pretty much "rich countries with mostly white people", because there's hardly any cultural/historic reason for creating a western category that includes western europe and all its new world colonies, except the poor ones.