An ethnic category that refers to all peoples who can trace their ancestry to peoples of Africa, Asia and the Americas living in the period before the Age of European Voyages of Exploitation. Whites, using a similar line of reasoning, are those peoples who can trace their ancestry to peoples of the European peninsula before the Age of European Voyages of Exploitation. In the U.S. context, blacks generally refers to U.S. African Americans, and whites refers to U.S. Euro-Americans.