One of the most idiotic things in the English
language is the custom of referring to the White race as "Caucasian".
The people who use that term have obviously never seen actual Caucasians.
For those who don't know, Caucasia is a region
north and south of Caucasus mountains where, geographically speaking, Europe
meets Asia. It's between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, north-east of
Turkey, north-west of Iran, south-east of Ukraine, south of Russian heartland.
I hope something from that rings a bell.
Now, Caucasians do technically belong to the
White race all right, but only in the broadest possible meaning of the word.
When an average person thinks about the White race, he would imagine people
like English, German, Scandinavian or Russian. Most Caucasians look clearly
darker than that. In fact, in Russia, as well as in my country Estonia, and
surely some others, Caucasians are called Blacks. That's right, the Russian
word чёрный (chornyi), which is the regular word for the colour
"black", also means a person of Mediterranean-Middleeastern-Caucasian
race. (As far as I understand, the corresponding term in English is
"Dago".)
I have not studied the use of that word in
other languages, and that is not really the point. The point is that many
millions of White people obviously perceive the Caucasians so non-White that
they have taken to calling them "Blacks".
A classmate of mine who went to study in the
USA back in the 1990's told me later how he was greatly confused when asked
about his race in a form he had to fill out, as he couldn't identify with any
of the choices given. He reflected that he was obviously not Black (which, of
course, he knew meant "Negroid" in English), obviously not Asian,
obviously not Mexican, and so the only choice left was Caucasian. I think many
an East European in the USA has found it puzzling.
It is more than confusing and inaccurate. To
call us Caucasians is an insult. We are not Caucasians any more than Incas are
Apaches. From the scientific point of view, we may technically belong to the
same race as the Caucasians, but to suggest that we ARE Caucasians is really
very offending.
I have heard of a case when an American from
Missouri took offence when called a Yankee. And you have the nerve to call us
Caucasians?
To give you a comparison – the scientific name
for the so-called yellow race may be "Mongoloid", but you never
refer to the Indonesians or Vietnamese as "Mongols". Because they
aren't, are they?
Caucasia is an obscure region whose
inhabitants barely qualify as White. Whoever came up with the ludicrous
thought that the Caucasians could somehow be considered representative of the
White race?
