[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.
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
What happened to “show me one dictionary”?
Looks like your goalposts have grown legs.
So, the common usage in both the country with the greatest number of English speakers AND the country the language originated in is incorrect? Because crispy_kilt says so?
Language is a socially negotiated system, so what the word means to the people who use it is what the words mean.
That paper is about what terminology should be used in academic work, who gives a fuck for people talking on lemmy?
The scale of annoyingness:
Pedants -> incorrect pedants -> incorrect pedants who insist they’re right, regardless of the evidence in front of them
----------------------------------------------------| you are here
I was honestly surprised with it listing the term with its common, but incorrect meaning, without as much as a hint to that end. You got me there!
No. Please refer to the three academic sources I provided.
That’s like arguing “could of” to be correct English just because some people do it. Correctness is thankfully not what some believe, but something that has to be demonstrated with some rigour. If you discredit academic sources in favour of a popular misconception then I guess we will never agree.
I mean, I provided several sources for my claim