[Disclaimer] - I am not an American and I consider myself atheist, I am Caucasian and born in a pre-dominantly Christian country.
Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.
And I was always wondering how come Republicans are perceiving themselves as devout Christians while the political party they support is openly opposing those virtues and if this doesn’t make them hypocrites?
For them the mortal enemy are the lefties who are all about social justice, helping the vulnerable and the not so fortunate and peace.
Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.
Are you actually from the Caucasus, like Georgia, Armenia, etc, or do you use the word to mean “European or descendent of Europeans”? Because the USA likes to use the word to mean European-like, which is incorrect, as the caucasus is a very specific region in the border of Europe and Asia.
You’re right about where the Caucasus is, but the generally accepted meaning - both in the US and Europe - is white European ancestry, not just those from the Caucasus.
I am from Europe, and fluent in several European languages. In all of those Caucasian means person from the Caucasus. The usage to mean European is exclusively an USA thing.
Thank you for your assumption that I am not, in fact, European.
However, given I’m from one of the few European countries that speak English as their primary language, I can categorically say you’re wrong.
Alright, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Link me to a dictionary of your country’s version of English that lists “caucasian” with the exclusive meaning of “European or descendent of Europeans”, or something to that effect.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=caucasian+meaning
Oh wow, that first result sure does say exactly that
Edit: interestingly, lmgtfy actually gets a different response to googling it directly in the UK for me 🤔
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/caucasian#:~:text=Caucasian in British English&text=adjective-,1.,noun
Not a dictionary, thus not a credible source.
Let me help you out:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
“The Caucasian race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. […] In the United States, the root term Caucasian is still in use as a synonym for white or of European, Middle Eastern, or North African ancestry, a usage that has been criticized.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
I understand why you might think Caucasian to mean something else despite person from the Caucasus despite being European: the US version of English is influential, due to the size of the country and the popularity of their media. Some British people have started saying “TV series” instead of “programme”, for example, due to the influence of the US. You probably heard and read the adjective almost always in the incorrect US usage, because a) other nations don’t obsess over ethnicity and b) the actual Caucasus not exactly being a common topic in the media. Hence, when you do hear the word, it is used the way the USA does, incorrectly.
I additionally linked to the specifically British edition of Collins as well for your benefit, which is, in fact, a dictionary. Seriously, trust me, if you go up to 5 Brits and ask them what Caucasian means, they will almost certainly all answer “white”.
Wikipedia, also, is not a dictionary.
It’s also pretty damn rude to classify the American usage as “incorrect”, you’re not the arbiter of what “real” English is.
Well, they’re wrong. The Caucasus is where Georgia, Armenia and other countries are. Caucasians are people from the Caucasus.
Another academic source: “White, European, Western, Caucasian, or what? Inappropriate labeling in research on race, ethnicity, and health.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1509085
There is more: “Though discredited as an anthropological term and not recommended in most editorial guidelines, it is still heard and used, for example, as a category on forms asking for ethnic identification. It is also still used for police blotters (the abbreviated Cauc may be heard among police) and appears elsewhere as a euphemism. Its synonym, Caucasoid, also once used in anthropology but now dated and considered pejorative, is disappearing.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=_hZHAAAAMAAJ
The United States National Library of Medicine discontinued usage in favor of the more narrow geographical term European, which traditionally only applied to a subset of Caucasoids. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd03/nd03_med_data_changes.html
It reads like op used the common American euphemism for ‘white’. Which is the correct usage as he’s addressing an American audience.
That’s right, but I wasn’t aware of this either. Thanks for correcting me.
The usage of the word as it is common in the USA is incorrect. OP might not be aware of this, hence my comment.
Do you know why US-americans don’t use the appropriate word “European”? I’ve always wondered. They do say African, Asian, Latino, but not European, to describe ethnic origins.
It all started with a dude looking at skulls, he saw one that was the most symmetrical, the best looking skull he ever saw. He decided it must belong to a white European, as they are the best people (/s). He finds out that the skull was that of a person from the Caucus mountains.
Caucasian has been used to describe the ‘superior’ white Europeans since. So, OP is using the word correctly really. They say African, Asian, Latino because those are other races… with unpleasant skulls.
This is a gross oversimplification, but one of the modern excuses for racism and race superiority. Also, why ‘Caucasian’ is used to say white European.
Etymological prescriptivism is not really a tenable point in linguistics. You can argue that, for instance, in American English the Dutch word ‘rekening’ (bill) is abused as reckoning. And you can find literally thousands of examples like that.
I’m this case a non native speaker used the American English vernacular correctly. You argue that the word is used incorrectly in this vernacular, and it is very peculiar and steeped in the racial discourse of the country. However it’s usage was correct in this case.
I mean, sure, you Japanese person you. No silly, being called Japanese has nothing to do with being from Japan, why would you even think that?
You are not adressing my argument at all and being obtuse.
I am trying to demonstrate how absurd it is to use the demonym for one region of the world to refer to the inhabitants of a completely different part of the world
I understand that, and I don’t dispute that either. I only point out that that is how language works. Your free to discuss the intricacies and weirdness of how that term became to mean that.
However you can’t berate a language user (certainly a non native speaker) for using the term in it’s connotation. It’s like shaming someone calling the Magyar people ‘Hungarian’.
Two reasons spring to mind: