The reason for this is that race is a made-up concept.
Race is a pure “us-vs-them” term. That’s why the term “race” was roughly equivalent to “nationality” in most European languages before the term fell out of use after WW2.
If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the “French race”, the “German race” or the “English race”. When the Nazis talked about the “uber race”, they didn’t mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)
In the USA, there weren’t enough people of one nationality to dominate the area, so they had to band together and create a “shared white identity”, so their us-vs-them became roughly equivalent to the continent of origin.
Since “race” doesn’t have any actual definition apart from us-vs-them, it can be adapted to whatever makes sense right now.
A “white person” can be someone who looks vaguely white. It could be someone where the majority of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world (e.g., excluding Ireland, Eastern Europe, North Africa, … even though they might look indistinguishable from people from e.g. Western Europe). It could be someone where every single one of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world. It could even be just people of a certain socio-economic group. You could even define that “true whiteness” requires a certain political affiliation.
Side note: while the term “race” fell out of use in most of Europe after WW2 and is now being reimported from the US with US meaning, the same is not true for the word “racism” that stayed in use in most European languages and is stilm used with the old European definition.
So to someone from the US, a French man hating all Brits is not a racist, but to someone from Europe, he is a racist.
If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the “French race”, the “German race” or the “English race”. When the Nazis talked about the “uber race”, they didn’t mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)
Downton Abbey has at least one instance of this, referring to the “German race” just slightly post WW2. It caught me off guard but now makes sense in light of your comment.
The reason for this is that race is a made-up concept.
Race is a pure “us-vs-them” term. That’s why the term “race” was roughly equivalent to “nationality” in most European languages before the term fell out of use after WW2.
If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the “French race”, the “German race” or the “English race”. When the Nazis talked about the “uber race”, they didn’t mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)
In the USA, there weren’t enough people of one nationality to dominate the area, so they had to band together and create a “shared white identity”, so their us-vs-them became roughly equivalent to the continent of origin.
Since “race” doesn’t have any actual definition apart from us-vs-them, it can be adapted to whatever makes sense right now.
A “white person” can be someone who looks vaguely white. It could be someone where the majority of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world (e.g., excluding Ireland, Eastern Europe, North Africa, … even though they might look indistinguishable from people from e.g. Western Europe). It could be someone where every single one of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world. It could even be just people of a certain socio-economic group. You could even define that “true whiteness” requires a certain political affiliation.
Side note: while the term “race” fell out of use in most of Europe after WW2 and is now being reimported from the US with US meaning, the same is not true for the word “racism” that stayed in use in most European languages and is stilm used with the old European definition.
So to someone from the US, a French man hating all Brits is not a racist, but to someone from Europe, he is a racist.
Downton Abbey has at least one instance of this, referring to the “German race” just slightly post WW2. It caught me off guard but now makes sense in light of your comment.