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Comment by lozenge | Hacker News Reader

Race is a social construct, news at 11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th... - many groups that used to be called non-white, are now called white.

You are not putting enough focus on the "American" in the title. The software makes them "sound American", and sound like a specific group of Americans. It doesn't make them "sound white" and sound like a specific group of whites. The concept of whites has no meaning outside of a particular society's definition of it (in this case the US).

And yes, if you're born in the US and grew up there your accent will be closer to your school/general society than your parents, in my experience. If the school isn't high percentage Indian, then you will "sound white [American]".

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On point. What does "white" mean anyways? In Spain for example there's a mix of iberian-celtic tribes, fenicians, greeks, romans, visigoths (which were germanic tribes), arabic (Al-Andalus califate lasted around 700 years and controlled more than half the iberian peninsula), etc and more recently instead of conquest, there's inmigration from South America, Africa, Asia...

Much like everywhere in Europe, the Spanish population is stable since the Bronze Age. Subsequent invasions are anecdotal. Considering the European population is generally very young and homogeneous compared to that of other continents, it does make sense to consider it as one ethnic block (whatever you call it, "white" or not, is of little interest).

How do we even know that a population hasn’t shifted since the Bronze Age?

Sampling of DNA from buried bodies from the eras?

> many groups that used to be called non-white, are now called white.

Like which ones?

Add Jews to the list other commenters have provided here.

“The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter covers this idea in depth.

Anti-semites still don't think jews classify as "white" people. For a lot of americans, "whiteness" has nothing to do with skin pigmentation.

The Irish:

https://www.theroot.com/when-the-irish-weren-t-white-1793358...

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/where-the-irish-are-not-quit...

Eastern Europeans, Poles, Slavs, Hungarians:

https://andscape.com/features/white-immigrants-werent-always...

I'm sorry but I don't see how your links support the case than these groups were considered non-White. They faced prejudice, sure. But the idea that they were considered non-White is historical revisionism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Southern Europeans who live by the Mediterranean sea. Italians, Spanish, Greeks

Another commenter posted this link, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... , but it makes the convincing case that that was never true. Italians, Spaniards and Greeks we're always considered white in the ways the actually mattered in the US. They could drink from "whites only" drinking fountains. They could marry folks of British descent and nobody considered this an "interracial marriage". They could join unions that had "whites only" membership policies.

It often depends on whether the speaker considers "white" to be good or bad and whether they like the person they're talking about.

Who you marry and have children with and where you choose to raise them is a social construct too.

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