Apartheid’s 1951 white definition shifted from descent to appearance and social acceptance.

Evidence

So where whites earlier had been defined as being of “pure European descent,” now the definition becomes “those who in appearance obviously are, or who are generally accepted as, white persons.” — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 103

Categorization

• DEFINE: Documents the shift from a blood-based to a performative/social definition of whiteness under the Population Registration Act.
• XREF: Echoes the passage on Syrians being classed as white — racial membership defined by mutable social criteria rather than fixed essence. — connects to: Apartheid unified all whites as beneficiaries, not just Afrikaners, beyond mere demographic expediency — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1491

Related

• Apartheid unified all whites as beneficiaries, not just Afrikaners, beyond mere demographic expediency (similarity 0.83)
• South African racial classification was fourfold, not tripartite, from 1921. (similarity 0.78)