*TW* To think the terms “Caucasian” and “white” race are problematic?

[LetsCombatRacism]

Hi all,

So I’m not hoping for this to be antagonistic, but this is something that does affect me.

I’m by the way considered “Caucasian” and I’m fair skinned. However I’m neither European nor “white” according to what the terms refer to.

After I traced my DNA and found that a chunk of it came from the Caucasus region, I started looking into the origins of the word Caucasian..

I passed through the idea that the “origin” of beauty is from there. And that Noah’s arc descended there.. and that every other form of beauty is somewhat considered steering away from the perfect creation of god.

Even more so, that this very concept has its rooted in encouraging slavery.. in that apparently Noah’s Son had been cursed by his father to beat offspring that are “dark and primitive” and... that the northern Africans contributed greatly towards history because they have been blessed with beinf mixed with the whiter race and so watered down the curse.

Now... I’m not reading this from a controversial source.

I’m quite disgusted and appalled that knowing this is the origin of the words and they’re still being used today.

I think a real attempt at tackling racism should start from those terminologies.

Im quite shaken by what I’ve read. It’s not because I’m naive. I didn’t grow up learning European history because I’m not European by heritage.

But I AM, by DNA partly from the Caucasus.. and I am of “semetic” descent, so those theories don’t only not make any sense to me... but they absolutely make me angry..

I feel like I need to say something.. I know we all know it’s irrational to connect the theory to the terms used today but the words we use do define our culture abs for something to have originated in something this DISGUSTING should be uprooted.

I am a woman of Abrahamic faith, and I totally respect the story of Noah but not the racial adaptations that came of it.. in my narrative there was no reference to skin tone in that story and the purpose of it’s narration was to remind everyone that they’re all servants of GOD and so such narrative indicates to me that European scholars at the time had totally used this religious story as a tool to nurture the ideology of superiority of the blond hair blue eyes and that everything steering away from that is merely contaminated.

In fact, there is NO box for me to tick anywhere for my cultural heritage..

Why?! Because people of my ethnicity don’t have their own category.

Why?! Jesus, Abraham and Noah had my regional heritage.

Why? Because I am meant to tick white Caucasian?! But I’m not, I don’t adopt the terminology. I don’t have things in common with the European culture.

My culture wnd that if my entire region descended from Speakees of semetic languages, and traditions and cultures.. we had total different historic journey...

But I need to accept that Jesus was blond and blue eyes and so he is considered “Caucasian” and so am I?! Because otherwise the average European won’t be able to relate?

Why? Is it because it would be hard to comprehend that Aramaic Jesus might be somewhat contaminated from the “perfect creation of god” which is meant to be white and blue eyes?

Was that historically threatening to the narrative that white hair blue eyes is superior in the eyes of god?!

This terminologies are all deeply routed in total hijack of faith figures and imposing racism into it.

And so this is why as a woman of faith I’m appalled.. it was a total historic hijack of crusade Europe which totally disrespected the Christian faith and decided to utelise it for horror.

And then... for those who don’t believe in faith, I wonder how the use of those terminologies and the way people were categorised this way... is justifiable rationally ??

So am I justified in wanting to start a petition to completely obliterate the use of these terminologies and classifications which have any reference to skin tone or “origin of perfect human race”?!!

Instead, say “European heritage”, “”African heritage”, “Middle Eastern heritage”... etc

Can we just put all the religious people on one island and let them fight it out?

Your comment put me in mind of the Dave Allen joke, the punchline is Catholics, due to Dave Allen's upbringing, but the joke works equally well with all or any religious group.

A man goes to heaven, and St Peter shows him around. They go past one room, and the man asks: "Who are all those people in there?" "They are the Methodists," says St Peter. They pass another room, and the man asks the same question. "They are the Anglicans," says St Peter. As they're approaching the next room, St Peter says: "Take your shoes off and tiptoe by as quietly as you can." "Why, who's in there?" asks the man. "The Catholics," says St Peter, "and they think that they're the only ones up here."

I don’t understand your point, sinful. I was asking about the change from Caucasian to white.

I consider the vast majority of the Spanish and Italian populations to be white, as do they.

The Americans use categories white hispanic and white non Hispanic because Hispanic people can be of any ethnic group as well as being Hispanic.

And because Mexico is culturally a Hispanic country and borders the US.

@KathleenTurnerOverdrive that made me laugh.

I'm guessing the OP is from the USA?

The term Caucasian is one I know from American telly but was never in use here that I've come across in my nearly 50 years.

Why are we getting so many USA people coming and sort of. Assuming the UK is the same? Same words and history? We have different words and history. We share a language to an extent but culture, values, history very different.

It's a bit weird isn't it?

The bickering over who is 'white' is unhelp6 too tbh.

And the UK is a massive Mish mash, we've been invaded etc so many times. I mean. Who gives a toss TBH.

I am super white. Blonde. Viking? Who the fuck knows. Do I get a medal or something?

Claptrap.

I wish I hadn't read this thread. I have a headache.

Race truly has become unfathomably complex.

I recommend fucking it all off and declaring yourself to be some sort of alien race. Done and dusted. Next!

Maybe the OP is right then NiceGerbil and we should abandon white as well as Caucasian.

I'm lost

@user1471565182 sorry to be thick on this but what do you mean? I am seriously asking for you to educate me. I have 4 citizenships one of which is American although I’ve not lived there in nearly 20 years so I’m quite ignorant about what’s the procedure on race these days. I do remember on job applications a drop down box that was quite limited in those days with no provision for mixed race nor one for native Americans but I do recall only one choice that simply said “white”.
When I first came here I remember there being multiple choices for white. White British, white Irish white something else I can’t remember and lastly white other. I think my confusion came initially from not understanding the difference or combination of white (which seems to be about skin) and then identifying a country like white Irish or British we to me seems about Nationality.

One of my personal scenarios is being Monégasque, where we consider all races but the primary population is white.

I think an easy way to solve this is just have a free text box under race and you can write in how you personally identify.

@AccidentallyOnPurpose

This is the Jesus I grew up with

Jesus has a sister?

@NiceGerbil I agree most Americans particularly the ones who have never left the country and sadly even their home state think arrogantly of the U.K. as baby America, seemingly unaware that America was established like a week ago (ok there is 425 years of having a Presidency) and the U.K. is thousands of years old and therefore if anything America is like the long lost cousin 200 times removed from the U.K.

Adding to my citizenship/ race dilemma is both my parents were from different countries and my mom was born in the second year that Israel had nationality capability 1950. Israelis consider that word to indicate race, nationality and of course points at religion.
So I’m all for a free text box to write in

I very confused by this thread. We were taught these basic groups as based on common looks but mainly common biological features. If you look at a skull you can usually say by deatures which of the groups is it. There was nothing racist about them. Europoids are many different colours/shades, so are the other groups. It's simply 3 basic anthropological groups.
Whether people like it or not there are physical differences when we take skin off.

Maybe it's because I grew up in non religious country I simply never heard of this Noah and beautiful people thing. It was a science, nothing personal. That's how it was taught.

@user1471565182

Well the Nenets live in asia. They're one of those central/eastern siberian groups thats moved (not so far in their case compared to the others) like the Sammi and Innuit and native americans. You can hear the similarities in their language and singing.

Many Nenets live in the Kola peninsula next to Finland and well tl the west of the Caucasus mountain divide. I mentioned them to challenge the OP's dogmatic assertion that European equates with "white". Whatever "white" means.

The Sami speak a language which is unrelated to Inuit or Nenets.

All have faced problems of ancestral lands and livelihoods being stolen from them by "white European" incomers, and this is very much a current issue, and all live on the continent of Europe.

Sorry ignore last post it was rubbish as I totally misread the post I quoted!

I didnt actually know about the origins of the word "caucasian". I always thought of it as a more neutral/unloaded term. So that is interesting.

It is problematic, because amost all of the language available to describe race is both innacurate (technically we are all one race, technically we are all of African descent, no-one is actually white but maybe pinkish, hardly any-one is actually black maybe very dark brown at most) and deeply charged because of the history of those terms. Any word has problems. But you cant not use words to describe race at all because, due to the same history, the race and ethnicity people have can have a bearing on how they are treated and we need to be able to record/monitor that. Therefore knowing the maternal mortality rate of "black" versus "white" women (for example) or whether the death rate from Covid is higher in BAME communties matters. It can also be useful to instantly identify someone. e.g is the missing child tall/short for his age, fair skinned/dark skinned.

@NiceGerbil You have plainly never been scolded for referring to someone as "African" when apparently I should have referred to them as "African-American". Despite the referee in question being from Africa and never having even visited America. Because African-American is the preferred term in America it must be thus everywhere.

Biblically, Noah's arc is said to have ended up in Mount Ararat which is in the lesser Caucasus. Some of the descendants of Japhet are traditionally believed to have gone to the greater Caucasus and be the forbearers of multiple European groups which is how Caucasian came to mean white even though most people in either are not white. It is an issue and a term that is dying in most places, though some of the US still slings to it as it erases modern day actual Caucasian people rather than anything to do with Bible.

Abraham and Jesus are Biblically descendants of Shem, not Japhet. All of Noah's descendants can be considered in the same 'region' if region is defined widely enough, but no, Biblically, the latter two are in a separate group and come under separate heritages and even wider cultural no, as while there are Semetic people in the Caucasus, many actual Caucasian people are not Semetic either. Just like with nations, you cannot take millions of people and assume they're all of the same heritage. It's just as rude and just as much untrue to categorize all Caucasian people as Semetic as it is to categorize all white people as Caucasian.

Yes, individuals and nations are more complex than our categories. Our categories are constantly changing and we're unlikely to come up with anything perfect. Having categories can help with discussing health, equality, and other issues, but it's never going to fit things individually and yes it can make certain systemic issues worse if we too heavily rely on them.

I'm mixed race. I am mostly of American Indigenous and European descent in a very gap-filled family tree. That tells you nothing of which nations - past or present - I have heritage from, what my skin colour is, health risks, and so on. There are over 600 American Indigenous nations, and it's little different to me if you put in a box with all of them and all Europeans and all of everyone else I have a mix of than in a box with a bunch of people I share a similar skin tone or racial features. Also 'Middle East' is a European term and not a universally used one - many also call that region Western Asia (though some of the refer to ex-Soviet countries as 'the New East' even though some of it is to the West of Western Asia - regional categories are in flux too).

The Crusades were wars. Wars are horrors. The Christian side committed atrocities -- and so did the Islamic side (some of the Crusades can be argued to have been started from the Islamic side committing certain acts, it wasn't just Christians being assholes). I'm not sure what that has to do with anything as Caucasian wasn't a term for white people until after the crusades. It was more a thing with what is now called the scientific racism of the enlightenment and used alongside the story of Noah to excuse race-based slavery (the whole curse of Ham thing with Cannan's descendants being forever slaves because Cannan's father Ham castrated a drunk and naked Noah - Noah wasn't actually a role model, he's was Biblically just the best of a bad bunch). Sure, terms rooted in that time period have some issues, there are many of us who end up using things like refering to the lightness or darkness of our skin because we don't fit into any of the thing neatly, but that doesn't mean the white has no value in communicating a particular demographic.

Removing words from the language to prevent other people having the thoughts that you think they evoke. Where have I heard that before? Ah yes Orwell's newspeak.

Or maybe something lighter ? Douglas Adams ""Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing"

I vote we make all zebra crossings grey.

Or maybe... just maybe... directly teach our children that all people matter and none are 'special' just because some old religion/custom says so.

Scientific race is either caucasian, mongoloid or negroid. Nobody uses mongoloid or negroid in everyday language so YANBU to expect the same for caucasian.

Thank you !

For those thinknt this is all in my head, please read the background of the word Caucasian and it’s links to racism here :

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

@Gothamgirl1970 for a start in the US italians, Greeks and other southern europeans often arnt considered white. The whole Caucasion thing in the US comes from their dodgy race politics and science which lead directly to Jim Crow, which was also copied directly but Hitler for his racial Nuremberg laws. Its not a culture we want to imitate.

Nenets may have moved there but they're siberian (in asia) until relatively recently. Sammi language has developed seperately for thousands of years and has also been reinvented often in the same way as modern Hebrew. The similar origins are pretty obvious when you hear their music, see their clothes and the shamanic forest spirit stuff.

So what is used instead?