A lot of Americans don't consider countries in South America to be part of "The West".

Which is wild, cause Americans also love Rome and it's influence in western culture, and Latin America literally speaks languages that are direct descendants of Latin.

That’s why both Australia and South America were supposed to be integral part of the Western world. Only recently South America has become kind of unwelcome due to its political and economical misalignment.

People on HN regularly argue that Spaniards are not part of the west and it has nothing to do with direction nor culture. It is because a lot of mumbo jumbo that tries to imply but not openly say that they are not white enough.

> "The West" is Western Europe and it's colonial/cultural derivatives.

Yep. This is the definition I use.

I think you got their point exactly backwards. Their country is western by the standard you described, but people tell them it’s not because it’s not Western Europe, or the North America.

Oh shit I wasn't aware that this was the definition. Does this definition then include Philippines being from "The West"?

Absolutely! On the globe all countries lie to the west of something and simultaneously lie to the east of something.

Until just a few centuries ago most of the world population was split between Europe (West) and East Asia (East).

Plenty of people genuinely believed that if you were to navigate to the West of Europe you would fall off the border of the world (well, some still do).

> It gets unconfusing if you realize it just means White.

It definitely does not. Russia, for example, would be considered "White", but is decidedly not part of "the West".

It's no different than the South in the US which does not include Texas, New Mexica, Arizona, or any other states that are geographically South in the modern day US. Once you understand the historical aspect of the naming it makes sense. The category itself, regardless of its label, is useful.

In terms of Latin America being a part of the West or not, that's more interesting. I'm currently reading Samuel P. Huntington's "A Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" and in it he talks a lot about civilizations which he defines as the highest cultural grouping of people short of what makes us human. Language, law, and religion in Latin America largely derive from Europe, although there are other aspects like economics that tend can differ. Some people consider Latin America as part of the West, others believe it's peripheral to the West or its part of its own civilization as Huntington does.

As others have pointed out Russia is not part of the West and at least according to Huntington would be placed in the Orthodox Civilization. Interestingly Huntington also argues that Greece, despite being the center of Classical Civilization which is the bases for Western Civilization, is not a part of the West, rather they too are Orthodox.

Regardless of whether you agree with these groupings, I think distilling it down to skin color is incorrect and not useful. The West itself is not even remotely homogenous in this aspect. You wouldn't go to sections of the Deep South in the US and declare it as not being a part of the West anymore than you would include Belarus as part of the West.

Geographically "The West" only makes sense in Europe and Asia. Once you expand your scope, compass directions are meaningless and the term "The West" refers to certain philosophies, political, and cultural similarities. And even then, it also refers to a certain time frame.

> The West only makes sense in the Northern Hemisphere.

It doesn't even make sense there. It's not really a logical group of things that are geographically West of anything. The abstract cultural idea of "Western Civilization" or "the West" are poorly named.

What about Australia?

I’m not sure there is one simple & correct definition of “the West”.