*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

Surely where you live any ethnicity survey would have groupings appropriate to that location? They are not universal.

Sure, in the UK you wouldn't have a separate category for Palestinian because that is too small a subdivision in this country, whereas we do tend to distinguish between, say White British, White Irish, White Other.

In, say, Syria, I bet they'd not bother with the White Irish subdivision as it would be too small there, they might choose to distinguish between, say, White European and White American though and they'd likely have multiple subdivisions for Middle Eastern peoples that you would recognise.

OP:
If terms like “negro” had been omitted for the heavy racial connotations it holds, why shouldn’t something like “Caucasian” that holds a divisive biblical narrative be scrutinized in the same way?

But it has been. Caucasian is not in common use now.

Jesus wasn't blonde/blue eyed & was/is never depicted as such in religious art I've seen: he's usually brown eyed , pale olive skin, brown hair.. One theory is that the blonde/blue eyed beauty ideal really started & took off in the beginnings of the US film industry (Jean Harlow etc) , then spread to wider popular culture via film & media. However I'm no expert so would welcome other posters knowledge as it's interesting . I think definitions of beauty are changing & that's a good thing. The UK only uses white when defining ethnicity , but the US does still use both . I think the religious references aren't helping your clarity.

Beginning in the 19th century, scholars generally classified the Hamitic...
So in my view such classifications had indeed contributed to the slave trade....

OP, these classifications were invented AFTER the abolishment of the slave trade, so could not have contributed to it.

Because historically levantinians and middle eastern (Jews) were given the right to be recognised as different from the people of colour and so have the right to queue up with the whites.. That “right” still holds. It’s a privilege that we managed to receive and not be treated as sun human. Because we aren’t dark enough for it.. But my cousin, with the same heritage as me, who is brown with an Afro, but is indeed 100 percent leventinian.. would probably be denied that “privilege”.

I’ve lost you completely. How can you say that Jews by looking white have received a privilege to not be treated as subhuman when they are globally for most of history and even today the one ethnicity that suffers the highest rate of hate crime per capita than any other ethnicity?

Umm, in reality Noah probably didn't exist & the Ark was just a story like the rest of the bible.

I don’t know if you know this OP but the story of Noah did not originate in the bible. When Abraham, being a nomadic goat herder, lived in Ur, he adopted a local Sumerian myth that had been first written down a thousand years before about Noah and revised it extensively before adding it to Genesis.
www.ancient.eu/Eridu_Genesis/

The reason the story of Noah does my head in is that he saves all the animals in the Ark... then when the flood is over he sacrifices some of them to praise God for saving them!
That just doesn't make sense at all to me.
Unless the animals he kills had chance to make babies first?
Maybe I'm overthinking it.

@Tehmina23

The reason the story of Noah does my head in is that he saves all the animals in the Ark... then when the flood is over he sacrifices some of them to praise God for saving them! That just doesn't make sense at all to me. Unless the animals he kills had chance to make babies first? Maybe I'm overthinking it.

My daughter pointed out the other day that in the flood story, god wiped out all land animals (apart from the ones that Noah took on the Ark) but seemed quite happy to let anything that lives underwater off. So there were no evil dolphins then? but all those aardvarks, wallabies and bandicoots must have done something really awful to piss his lordship off. And if you really want to overthink it, what about all those animals that are quite happy to stay at sea for a long time. Albatrosses, penguins, seals, and turtles and the like? I would bet most of them could go 40 days (and nights) without needing to stretch their legs on shore. No, the Noah story is just that. A story. And one with more plot holes than a Jeffery Archer novel.

@TheSandman that's a very good catch😁

Tick whatever box you like.

You're thinking too much about this op, don't drive yourself to despair over it.

@mumnowformerrockstar

Tick whatever box you like.

You're thinking too much about this op, don't drive yourself to despair over it.

To add , you can identify anyway you like.

I think the trigger warning is fair enough. I haven't yawned like this in years.

The biblical adulterated version has a lot of plot holes. In the original story, Noah sacrifices an animal to thank the Sun God for stopping the rains causing the Great Flood so that the waters would subside. The Great Flood was caused by two other gods, An and Enlil. Think of them as most powerful bullying gods in the pantheon at the time. They hatched the plan to destroy all humanity and brought the great flood, not because humans were bad, but because they thought there were too many of them. Other gods did not agree including Tiamat who birthed the humans, but couldn’t stop them from doing the Flood, so Enki the god closest to humans (he had given them writing and fire) was chosen to sabotage their genocidal plan. He is forbidden by oath to tell any human that a great flood is coming, so he goes to Earth and says “hey reed wall” knowing Noah is behind the wall and listening. He tells the wall the plans of An and Enlil to bring a great flood and destroy all humans. He tells Noah (he has different name btw in Sumerian myth) to build the ark and rescue the animals and his clan/family. Flood comes and humans die. An and Enlil spot the ark and are incandescently outraged. They want to zap the ark with lightening and kill these last few survivors. But the other gods were mutinous, the sun god refused to hide himself any longer, it was the sun god Utu that Noah first saw on sunlight beams and how he knew he’d be allowed to live. Worth a sacrifice. (The animals only being 2 of each, Rainbows, doves with twigs were all fanciful additions later).

Utnapishtim was his name.

Whenever it rains heavily my Dad says he feels like Utnapishtim.

Yes! That’s the name they give him in Epic of Gilgamesh as Gilgamesh travels to paradise to get the fruit of the tree of immortality and finds Utapishtim living there with his wife.
But he’s also got other names, Ziudsura is earliest one I think.

Ffs op get a grip. Ridiculous

I had tick my ethnicity on the consent form for the Covid Pfizer vaccine.
I think 'White, Other' would most suit you OP from your self description.

Caucasian was not an option & ive never seen it on UK forms.

In the OP it sounds like a DNA test showed links to Caucasian DNA, but it could be from ancestors from centuries ago.

I mean I have a couple of ancestors who were Jewish in the 1820s but I wouldn't think of myself as Jewish much less worry about what ethnicity box to tick because of it.

I feel that you @LetsCombatRacism are a little bit obsessed with this subject & it's not healthy.

I'd totally understand if you were Black for example & faced racism every day but i don't really get what the problem is here?
It's lockdown and it's easy to get over invested in things especially when you're stuck inside on your own.

I really do not want to be patronising or offensive but I've been overly paranoid or obsessive about certain things myself in the past then looked back and thought, what was I like??
I could be completely wrong and you may be enjoying this thing if so, I apologise.

The forms only have the most common wider ethnicities on but there’s an ‘other’ box. Just tick that.
Boxes in the U.K. will be different from boxes in Australia and USA so it’s not a ‘Caucasian’ thing. There’s white British, white Irish, gypsy/Roma, black African, Pakistani, British Pakistani, indian and other on our boxes at work. The other has a space to write in as the person chooses to describe their ethnicity because after all it’s up to no one else but that individual.

@Tehmina23

The reason the story of Noah does my head in is that he saves all the animals in the Ark... then when the flood is over he sacrifices some of them to praise God for saving them! That just doesn't make sense at all to me. Unless the animals he kills had chance to make babies first? Maybe I'm overthinking it.

And that's why there's no Nunaks or Quadgpires running around the jungles / desserts anymore

@Indecisive12

The forms only have the most common wider ethnicities on but there’s an ‘other’ box. Just tick that. Boxes in the U.K. will be different from boxes in Australia and USA so it’s not a ‘Caucasian’ thing. There’s white British, white Irish, gypsy/Roma, black African, Pakistani, British Pakistani, indian and other on our boxes at work. The other has a space to write in as the person chooses to describe their ethnicity because after all it’s up to no one else but that individual.

Absolutely this

After I traced my DNA out of interest, how did you identify ethnically prior to the DNA?

Im fascinated by the idea of them but I'm sceptical that they just put in a random mix of things

There are many Biblical plotholes, but for Noah's sacrifices: there were 7 (or 7 pairs depending on how it's read) of every clean animal and a pair of all the others -- but since in the children's story version they leave out the sacrifices (or the drunkness and castration that comes after the rainbow), they rarely include that bit.

I've helped my older children consider how they want to mark ethnicity boxes (because their mix is different to mine, but does include the same issue that part of their heritage comes under 'Other' and personal issues of how they view themselves vs how others view them & what the demographic information is used for...), and while I most often use Mixed Other, they so far generally go with 'Prefer not to say'. Not sure how representative they are, but just as there are differences in ethnicity options in different areas to better fit the population, we may over time have to work with a sizable population that doesn't want to be counted in that way and how we track issues of equality if that becomes the case.

Ah the rainbow. It always puzzled me, even as a child (I was a precocious brat), how light worked before god made that Noah's Ark rainbow.

If I've got it right, the bible says light didn't diffract before the flood?!

Ah, bible inconsistencies. Fun distraction for a little child apostate like me who was encouraged to read the bible. I always liked how Adam and Eve were allegedly the first humans. Yet they had two sons Cain and Abel. Abel is killed, Cain is exiled off to a city in the East, in the Land of Nod, where he finds a wife and starts his own family. Um...