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Saturday, August 31, 2013

Caucasian

Have you ever seen the word Caucasian? Well, if you've ever had a questionnaire, you probably know that this word is used for the "white" race. The other day, I got to thinking that I've never been to Caucasia, so I wanted to find out about why white people are referred as Caucasian. I went to my good friend, Google, to find the answer, and here's what I came up with.

The origin is not Caucasia, but the Caucasus Mountains in Eastern Europe/Southwest Asia. Apparently, a German guy called Christoph Meiners used the term Caucasian in a 1785 book, and another German called Johann Friedrich Blumenbach picked up on this and expanded upon it. Caucasians, according to Meiners, had the "whitest, most blooming and most delicate white skin," while his other racial class (he only had two) were the Mongolians. Blumenbach wrote in his book, On The Natural Variety of Mankind:

"I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind."

Now, Blumenbach later tried to justify his classifications based on cranial structure or something like that, but his opinions were out there. Using the noggin and bone structure in addition to skin color, he decided that beauty was more than skin deep when it came to archetypes for the Caucasian race, but since he was considering a racial classification for himself, of course this race would be the best of the best while the others were Mongolians (never really a term I've heard in high regard).

Now, while we use Caucasian today, it turns out that the term used for awhile was Caucasoid along with a couple of others: Mongoloid (which I've mentioned) and Negroid. I really can't imagine why we don't use these classifications today.

So after some time, Caucasian came to refer to those of us who are generally of European descent, but it is worth noting, for those of you that care, that the Caucasian race was considered by those who originally named it to be the most beautiful of people and the parent race for all humanity. For that reason, I will have no problem marking Caucasian proudly from now on.

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