ext_12863 ([identity profile] james-nicoll.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] james_davis_nicoll 2011-06-18 05:52 pm (UTC)

Precious few Canadians are white, if we use the definition Ben Franklin preferred. In fact, it might be worthwhile to use a time-trawl to haul him out of the past just to watch the apoplectic fit he'd have being associated with the people currently claiming to be white. Anything that causes brain fever in ancient bigots is worth tying up a nuclear reactor or two to power.

From "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc."


Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.


Note that's English as in just the Anglo-Saxons, not British including everyone. Celts need not apply and Canada is overrun with them.

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