white man, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

white man n.

[SE white/white adj. (2); modern use usu. ironic]

1. (UK/US, also white fellow, ...guy) an honourable person; a devotee of ‘honourable’ standards.

[1786		J. O’Keeffe Wicklow Mountains 35: In Antrim I was a heart of steel, in Clonmel I was a white boy].
1865		Atlantic Monthly Apr. 405/2: After spending the night at a ‘white man’s’ hotel in Buffalo, the next morning found her standing [...] before one of the world’s great wonders [DA].
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 11 Sept. 4/4: As thery say in Northern Queensland, the luckyh litrigant is evidently a ‘White man’.
1885		C.A. Siringo Texas Cow Boy (1950) 61: Charlie, his brother, was a white man.
1894		H. Lawson ‘The Lost Souls’ Hotel’ in Roderick (1972) 157: I’d get some ‘white men’ for trustees.
1903		‘Dads Wayback’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 26 Apr. 1/8: ‘Ther only man wot really scores in any deal is ther white man, the man wot goes straight. You may think you’ve bested him in a deal an’ pouched his coin, but he’s scored in character and you’ve lost.
1915		J. Buchan Thirty-Nine Steps (1930) 13: I haven’t the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you’re a white man.
1924		‘Digit’ Confessions of a Twentieth Century Hobo 66: That doctor was a real white man.
1924		S. Scott Human Side of Crook and Convict Life 103: There’s good brassies, an’ bad brassies — mostly bad fer us, but a few of ’em’s white fellers.
1931		R.E. Howard ‘Sign of the Snake’Action Stories June 🌐 ‘No kickin’, gougin’, or bitin’ [...] Let it be a white man’s fight.’ And a white man’s fight it was, [...] both of us stripped to the waist, with no weapons but our naked fists.
1938		(con. 1900s) J.B. Booth Sporting Times 177: Now, honest injun, — white man to white man — what’s your form at golf?
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 310: You think you’re the only white man in the outfit?
1947		I. Shulman Amboy Dukes 17: You’re a white guy, Mike.
1963–74		B. Humphries Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 22: Blanchie, you’re a white man.
1992		G.P. Pelecanos Firing Offense 127: Lazarus brought a glass out of the cupboard and placed it next to my can. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Drink it like a white man’ .
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 44: There’s boys who say Wayne Junior’s a white man, and there’s boys who say he’s a weak sister.
2004		B. Parris Making of a Legionnaire 171: ‘Just a word of warning boys. Some of the troops [...] are getting the impression that you lot are a bit cocky, gobbing off. Pack it in and play the white man’.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 29: ‘You’re a white man in my book’.

2. (W.I.) an albino.

1952

cited in Cassidy & LePage Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980).

SE in slang uses

In compounds

white man’s burden (n.) [Kipling’s poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’, in which the task was the ruling of the ‘new-caught sullen peoples/Half-devil and half-child’]

work; the matter in hand.

1954

Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 82: Here is Percy Gorringe all ready and eager to take up the white man’s burden.

white man’s chance (n.) [as opposed to the treatment of non-whites]

(US) a fair chance.

1845		W.T. Porter Big Bear of Arkansas (1847) 37: To give him a white man’s chance, I proposed alternatives to him.
1880		A.W. Tourgée Bricks without Straw 349: It was right and fair to free the niggers and let them have a fair show and a white man’s chance [DA].
1979		Maledicta III:2 174: white man’s chance n [DA 1845] Decent chance; allusion to Chinaman’s chance.

white man’s disease (n.)

(US black) the relative inability of Caucasians to jump, a term of derision almost exclusively used in a basketball context.

1986–7

Maledicta IX 61: white-man’s disease n Relative inability of Caucasians to jump; blacks’ term of derision usually used in a basketball context.