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Westermarck effect
The Westermarck effect, or reverse sexual imprinting, is the hypothesized sexual aversion between people raised together in early childhood, proposed by Edvard Westermarck in 1891, opposed by Freud, and tested through Taiwan minor marriages and Israeli kibbutzim.
Western Confederacy
The Western Confederacy, also called the Northwestern Confederacy and the United Indian Nations, was a coalition of Native American tribes formed in 1785 to resist US settlement.
Western European marriage pattern
Western European marriage pattern, or European marriage pattern (EMP), is the Hajnal-described regime of late female marriage (~25), high celibacy (>10%), and low illegitimacy west of the Hajnal line (St Petersburg–Trieste) from the 16th century to WWI, linked to Malthusian preventive checks and economic development debates.
Western values
Western values: a contested set of norms, individualism, human rights, secularism, liberal democracy, traced to Greek, Roman, Jewish-Christian, and Enlightenment roots, criticized as Eurocentric and challenged by Asian-values and civilizationist debates.
Western world
Western world: cultural-geographic term for western Europe and its settler-colony nations (North America, Australia, New Zealand); also an economic label for richer Western countries; no official definition; classifications differ (WENAO vs Huntington).
Wet and messy fetishism
Wet and messy fetishism (WAM, sploshing) is a sexual fetish for slimy or messy substances like food, mud, or gunge applied to body or clothing, excluding body fluids; named partly after the 1989 British magazine Splosh!.
Wet feet, dry feet policy
Wet feet, dry feet policy: 1995-2017 U.S.-Cuba migration rule under which Cubans intercepted at sea were returned to Cuba while those reaching U.S. soil could stay and apply for permanent residency after one year under the Cuban Adjustment Act; ended by Obama January 12, 2017.
Wet T-shirt contest
Wet T-shirt contest: bar and spring-break event, also called wet T-shirt competition, in which women in soaked white T-shirts are judged on appearance; originated in 1970s America, declined after the 2000s, persists in northern Australia.
Wetback (slur)
Wetback is an offensive slur for Mexican or Latino people, from wading the Rio Grande to enter the U.S.; dated to the 1920s and used officially in the 1954 Operation Wetback deportations.
Whaling in the Faroe Islands
Whaling in the Faroe Islands (grindadráp): community drive hunt of long-finned pilot whales and dolphins, documented since 1584, regulated by law since 1832, contested over animal welfare, mercury contamination, and sustainability.
What Is a Woman?
What Is a Woman? is a 2022 Daily Wire documentary directed by Justin Folk, hosted by Matt Walsh, asking interviewees to define "woman"; released June 2022, it reached 170 million Twitter views in 2023 after Musk lifted restrictions.
Whataboutism
Whataboutism, also called whataboutery, is deflecting criticism by counter-accusing the critic of similar or worse misconduct; associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda, related to tu quoque, first recorded 1975–80.
Wheel-well stowaway
A wheel-well stowaway is a person who hides in an aircraft's landing gear compartment to travel without a ticket, facing fatal cold and oxygen deprivation at cruising altitude.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade
English proverb advising that setbacks can be turned into something good; earliest traced instances are anonymous American items from 1907, later used by Elbert Hubbard and popularized via Dale Carnegie's 1948 book, with exact modern wording appearing on a 1971 bumper sticker.
Which Way Western Man?
Which Way Western Man? is a 1978 white nationalist book by William Gayley Simpson, published by Yeoman Press and later the National Alliance, arguing a Jewish conspiracy caused Western decline; its title became a far-right meme.
White Africans of European ancestry
White Africans of European ancestry, including Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans, descend from European settlers, chiefly from the 1652 Dutch settlement at Table Bay; South Africa's white population fell from 11% (1996) to 7.3% (2022), about 4.5 million.
White Americans
White Americans are U.S. residents identifying as White on the census, a self-reported, socially defined category. In 2020 they numbered 191.7 million non-Hispanic (57.8%); the 1790 Naturalization Act limited citizenship to free white persons.
White Argentines
White Argentines are Argentines identifying or classified as white, central to the national myth of a European-descended Argentina ("los argentinos descendemos de los barcos"), supported by massive 1880–1930-era immigration yet qualified by genetic admixture and recent census counts of Afro-descendant and Indigenous populations.
White Australia policy
The White Australia policy, centered on the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, excluded non-European migration via a 50-word dictation test and companion Pacific Islander laws, reshaping Australia's demographics until its dismantling from 1958 to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.
White Brazilians
White Brazilians (brancos) are Brazilians self-identifying as white in the IBGE census: 88.2 million, 43.5% in 2022, concentrated in the South, mostly of Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and German immigrant descent, with persistent income gaps versus pardos and pretos.
White British
White British is the UK census ethnic group category "White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British"; 74.4% of England and Wales residents identified with it in Census 2021, down from 87.5% in 2001.
White Chileans
White Chileans: Chileans who identify or are identified as white or of European descent. Also a socially constructed whiteness produced by state whitening policy, Nicolás Palacios's homogeneity myth, European immigration, and everyday racial hierarchy; roughly 88.9% identified as white or non-indigenous in 2016.
White Cubans
White Cubans (blancos) are the self-identified white majority of Cuba's population, about 64 percent in the 2012 census, and roughly 86 percent of Cuban Americans; they hold disproportionate access to remittances, travel, and private-sector income.
White flight
White flight: departure of white residents from U.S. urban neighborhoods and schools as nonwhite presence grows, first named after World War II; explains 34–50 percent of early 20th-century segregation growth and persists in middle-class suburbs.
White Fragility
White Fragility: term coined by Robin DiAngelo in a 2011 paper and her 2018 Beacon Press book on defensive reactions of white people to racial stress; bestseller for 155 weeks, ~1.5 million sales, widely debated for testability and training effectiveness.
White genocide conspiracy theory
White genocide conspiracy theory: false white supremacist and antisemitic claim of a Jewish-led plot to erase white populations; popularized by David Lane, related to the Great Replacement, and cited in Christchurch, Buffalo, and other attacks.
White Hispanic and Latino Americans
White Hispanic and Latino Americans identify as Hispanic or Latino (an ethnicity, not a race) and as White. Counts fell from 26.7M White alone in 2010 to 12.6M in 2020, largely due to census question and coding changes.
White Latin Americans
White Latin Americans identify as white within Latin America's census and survey categories of White, mestizo, pardo, Black, and Indigenous; shares vary widely, prominent in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, about 13-17% in Mexico surveys, with whiteness tied to skin color, status, and inequality measurement.
White Mexicans
White Mexicans: people in Mexico identifying or perceived as white, with European-associated features. Also blanco; roughly 15-20% self-identification; shaped by colonial casta hierarchy, mestizaje ideology, and "money whitens" class effects.
White Namibians
White Namibians: citizens of European descent from German colonial and South African settlement eras; about 1.8% of the population in the 2023 census, speaking Afrikaans, German, or English.