Whiteness?

I was just pondering for a moment on what it was to be "white", for I am "white" and it seemed pertinent. I have never really considered what it is to be deemed "white". The word describes a colour that both is and is not a colour, but it carries with it a host of other connitations, from an Anglo-centric point of view. I surpose from a eurocentric one too, but i'm monolingual so I can't say for sure. The Oxford English dictonary has dozens of definitions of the word white, too many to go into here, but many of the definitions would be easy to brainstorm,. Ideas of goodness, purity, cleanleness, spirituality, reason, rightiousness abound. All of these a freely associated with white. The problem is when one attributes the word "White" to a group of lighter skinned persons, there is an unconsious (to some at least) conection here between the superfical naming and the deeper meaning of "white". When one further devides persons as "non-whites", "Blacks" or "Coloureds" from a lingistic point of view, there is a semantic inferance of the opposite of pure, etc. Persons, groups and cultures that are "non-white" are, purely as a function of language, "tainted" at the least and "evil" at the worst.

I don't know if all this relevent, but i would like to know if the coulour white has similar meanings in other languages, especially those languages from cutures outside of europe. I could be over-analysing but it seems the very notion of a "white"  has with it a sense of superiority built into it lingustically, even before it gets used by light skinned people with power, money and imperilistic tendancies. The irony of the whole "white" skin colour thing is when I go into a resene paint shop stick my arm next to the white paint sample, my skin pigment looks nothing like it. So if one has to devide "race" by skin pigment, it should be done with a little more acuuracy.