Learn English – Did “white” in “decent white folk” originally refer to race

'Decent white folks' in Google Books

The earlier and more common wording of the phrase seems to be "decent white folks" (plural folks), as this Ngram chart of "decent white folk" (blue line) versus "decent white folks" (red line) suggests:

A quick look at the related Google Books search results Google strongly suggests that the word white in the phrase has always referred to "white race." The earliest instance of either phrase in the search results is from Edmund Kirke, A Merchant's Story, serialized in The Continental Monthly (November 1862), which uses the phrase in the context of a starkly racist comparison:

'I shall go when I please—not before,' said Mr. Gaston.

'You'll please mighty sudden, then, I reckon. A young man of your edication should be 'bout better business than gittin' inter brawls with low groggery keepers, and 'sultin' decent white folks with your scented-up niggers. Yer a disgrace ter yer good ole father, and them as was afore him. ...'

The next-earliest match for either phrase is from Benjamin Lloyd, Lights and Shades in San Francisco (1876):

When once they have planted themselves in a building, the Chinese rapidly take root; and although they do not manifest any stubbornness by refusing to vacate the premises, experience proves that they make themselves masters of the situation, and are seldom dispossessed. They simply make the building uninhabitable for decent white folk. Their manner of living accomplishes this, without any extra precaution on their part. They will divide the rooms into numerous diminutive compartments by unsightly partitions, and the smoke and rank odor from their open fires and opium pipes, discolors the ceilings and walls and renders the whole building offensive, both to sight and smell, so that the expense of renovating it would not be offset by the rental receipts for six months or a year.

And the third-earliest match is from Joseph Jones & May Wade, John's Alive: Or, The Bride of a Ghost, and Other Sketches (1883):

"Now, I'll stick you with opening the door, won't I! Go home, I tell you! If you was any kin to decent white folks you'd be ashamed to disturb anybody so. But you may stand there and bawl till you're tired. I'll not let you under my roof, that's what I won't."

This last excerpt is from a story set in northern Florida, and the old woman who speaks the quoted lines later accuses the marshal and his deputies (whom she is refusing to admit to her house) of being "white Ingin devils."

So in the earliest three Google Books matches we have "decent white folk[s]" being cited in contrast to blacks, Chinese, and mixed-race Native American Indian/white people.

'Decent white folks' in old newspapers

A search of the California Digital Newspaper Collection finds a slightly earlier instance of "decent white folks" than the first of the Google Books matches cited above. From "Letter from New York" (July 16, 1860), printed in the Sacramento Daily Union (August 2, 1860):

An ominous silence fell upon the party [of gentlemen including Dr. Bradford] as Lawrence [friend of a man whose wife Bradford had insulted] stepped into the ring. There was good reason for it, since his first act was to face Dr, Bradford and remark to him, with a number of expletives more energetic than pleasant superadded, that he (Bradford) was a villain, etc., etc., and it would give him (Lawrence) sincere pleasure to blow him to that sulphuric region for which he (Lawrence) considered him much fitter than for a residence among decent white folks.

The Library of Congress's Chronicling America newspaper database finds three matches between 1863 and 1872. From the Daily Evansville [Indiana] Journal (September 18, 1863):

There are several things wanting on the O. & M. [train line]—a better laid track—cars that will do for decent white folks to ride in, in lieu of the present most loathsome ones, and, I was going to say, better conductors and regulations, but this would throw things out of proportion.

"McClellan Democracy," in the [Marysville, Kansas] Big Blue Union (May 28, 1864) has this rather blatant forgery attributed to a political enemy:

The Erie Gazette says, an enthusiastic Democrat, determined to make General George Mellen, Muller, or McClellan President, had the following handbill posted in one of the lower counties. The orthography is admirable, and to gratify a "constant reader" it is given verbatim in the columns of the Gazette:

PUBLIC NOTIS

A meeting will be held in the tavern of James Keeler Phoenuckvil for to go in faver of Gen Geo Mclelan for to be president next election and in favor of stopping the war all in favor of stopping abilitions from kilin decent white folks are specially invited to be present on the occasion as several speakers will be present Rally Democrats and show the abolitioners that we are bound to put Mellen (gim Mellen) through.

And from "Advice to the Colored People," in the Donaldsonville [Louisiana] Chief (July 6, 1872):

One thing the colored people must learn if they intend to stand on the same platform with white folk, and that is, that dishonesty degrades a man. The negroes must quit selling themselves for money. ... The colored people know who their managers are, and they know that these men can be bought and are bought as often as necessity for their purchase arises. This is not only disgraceful in those who sell themselves, but it is disgraceful in those who support the man who allows himself to be bought. When a white man gets that low in his conduct decent white folks refuse to have anything more to do with him.

In all of these examples, "decent white folks" seems primarily to be used as a point of comparison to other white folks who may be less savory. There isn't the same comparison between "decent white folks" and people of other races that animates the three Googles Books quotations—although there is something deeply ironic in the Louisiana newspaper editor's attempt to instruct black readers, less than a decade after emancipation, about the importance of not "selling themselves for money" (to say nothing of the irony of instructing them on how to behave "if they want to stand on the same platform with white folks," shortly before segregation became the de facto law of the Southland).

In any case, "decent white folks" seems to have referred from the outset to Caucasians/European Americans/white people, and not figuratively to white in a sense such as "virginal" or "sanctified."