Whiteness now pretty much boils down to what people look like.
Stalin is a great example how inane the racist constructs are: he was observably white, if you show his picture to someone who would not know who he was the answer for the question “was he white?” would be 100% “yes”. In US terminology whites are even called “Caucasian”*. But during his life, and even today sometimes, Caucasians in Russia were called literally “black asses”, and Stalin surely heard that many times in his life, in the face. Which didn’t mean they think he was literally black, but the racist concepts differ in various countries.
*If you think a little on it, they say “caucasian”, but they really want to say “aryan” since the US concept of whiteness is close to nazi one and both came from the same places and the same people. Also both are nonsense if you think that is supposed to be some idealised version of “indoeuropean” which don’t include like 90% indoeuropeans. If anything, US version is stricter and more exclusive.
Was Julius Caesar white?
About the same as Italians are nowadays. Again, mostly depend on which construct was internalized by the people you ask.
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Stalin is a great example how inane the racist constructs are: he was observably white, if you show his picture to someone who would not know who he was the answer for the question “was he white?” would be 100% “yes”. In US terminology whites are even called “Caucasian”*. But during his life, and even today sometimes, Caucasians in Russia were called literally “black asses”, and Stalin surely heard that many times in his life, in the face. Which didn’t mean they think he was literally black, but the racist concepts differ in various countries.
*If you think a little on it, they say “caucasian”, but they really want to say “aryan” since the US concept of whiteness is close to nazi one and both came from the same places and the same people. Also both are nonsense if you think that is supposed to be some idealised version of “indoeuropean” which don’t include like 90% indoeuropeans. If anything, US version is stricter and more exclusive.
About the same as Italians are nowadays. Again, mostly depend on which construct was internalized by the people you ask.