Whites, Blacks and Caucasians

 

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?