Word of the Day: xanthochroi

xanthochroi (n)

Fair-skinned white people.

"The Xanthochroi (fair whites) and the Melanochroi (dark whites) of Britain are, speaking broadly, distributed, at present, as they were in the time of Tacitus; and their representatives on the Continent of Europe have the same general distribution as at the earliest period of which we have any record."
--William Gregory Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Folklore Sketch (1902)

I've always wondered why the "aliens" in science-fiction films and TV shows are most often portrayed as, well, xanthochroi -- if they're not green. Real aliens, if you believe they exist and are visiting us, are said to be "greys". But Vulcans and Kryptonians and even E.T. are, it seems, white folks. I'm sure it has more to do with employment practices in Hollywood than with exobiology. Why do we accept that white actors, or even white puppets, can portray aliens but black actors would be unbelievable? Because we generally think of "aliens" as mirrors of ourselves, and we still live (here in the US) in a majority xanthochroi culture. That's my sociology lecture for today.