Why Do We Keep Using the Word ‘Caucasian’?
When a term signifies something that does not exist, we need to examine our use of it
By Yolanda Moses
The word “Caucasian” is used in the
U.S. to describe white people, but it doesn’t indicate anything real. It’s the
wrong term to use! My colleague and one of my longtime writing partners, Carol
Mukhopadhyay, has written a wonderful article, “Getting Rid of the Word ‘Caucasian,’” that is
still relevant today for how it challenges us to critically examine the
language that we use. It’s obvious that language shapes how we perceive and see
the world. And we know how powerful the concept of race is and how the use of
words related to the notion of race has shaped what we call the U.S. racial
worldview. So why do we continue using the word “Caucasian”?
To answer that
question, it is helpful to understand where the term came from and its impact
on our society. The term “Caucasian” originated from a growing 18th-century
European science of racial classification. German anatomist Johann Blumenbach
visited the Caucasus Mountains, located between the Caspian and Black seas, and
he must have been enchanted because he labeled the people there “Caucasians”
and proposed that they were created in God’s image as an ideal form of
humanity.
And the label has
stuck to this day. According to Mukhopadhyay, Blumenbach went on to name four
other “races,” each considered “physically and morally ‘degenerate’ forms of
‘God’s original creation.’” He categorized Africans, excluding light-skinned
North Africans, as “Ethiopians” or “black.” He divided non-Caucasian Asians into
two separate races: the “Mongolian” or “yellow” race of Japan and China, and
the “Malayan” or “brown” race, which included Aboriginal Australians and
Pacific Islanders. And he called Native Americans the “red” race.
Blumenbach’s system of racial
classification was adopted in the United States to justify racial
discrimination — particularly
slavery. Popular race science and evolutionary theories generally posited that
there were separate races, that differences in behavior were tied to skin
color, and that there were scientific ways to measure race. One way racial
differences were defined was through craniometrics, which measured skull size
to determine the intelligence of each racial group. As you can imagine, this
flawed application of the scientific method resulted in race scientists
developing a flawed system of racial classification that ranked the five races from
most primitive (black and brown races), to more advanced (the Asian races), to
the most advanced (the white, or Caucasian, races). Even though the five-race
topology was later disproven, “Caucasian” still has currency in the U.S.
One reason we
keep using the term “Caucasian” is that the U.S. legal system made use of
Blumenbach’s taxonomy. As early as 1790 the first naturalization law was
passed, preventing foreigners who were not white from becoming citizens. But
according to Mukhopadhyay, Blumenbach’s category of “Caucasian” posed a problem
because his classification of white also included some North Africans,
Armenians, Persians, Arabs, and North Indians. The definition of Caucasian
had to be reinvented to focus the ideological category of whiteness on northern
and western Europe. The term, even though its exact definition changed over
time, was used to shape legal policy and the nature of our society.
A second reason
the term has had staying power is that, as new immigrants began to stream into
the country in the 20th century, political leaders and scientists supported
a new racial science called eugenics that
built on 19th-century notions of race. Eugenicists divided Caucasians into four
ranked subraces: Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, and Jew (Semitic). I’m sure you
will not be surprised to learn that the Nordics were ranked highest
intellectually and morally. These rankings were used by our government to
design and execute discriminatory immigration laws that preserved the political
dominance of Nordics, who were largely Protestant Christians.
Today, the word
“Caucasian” is still used in many official government documents, and it
continues to carry a kind of scientific weight. For example, it is found in
social science and medical research, and is used by some colleges and
universities in their data collection and distribution of student, staff, and
faculty statistics. In Mukhopadhyay’s research, she sampled government websites
and official documents and was surprised to learn how many government offices,
including the U.S. Census Bureau, still use the word.
So“Caucasian” became entrenched in our
legal, governmental, scientific, and social lives. And although the U.S.
government reluctantly denounced or at least played down racial science after
the atrocities of Adolf Hitler’s regime were fully exposed at the end of WWII,
the term has not been discarded.
What can we do to
change it? We need to acknowledge that the word “Caucasian” is still around and
that its continued use is problematic. We should use terms that are more
accurate, such as “European-American.” Doing so would at least be consistent
with the use of descriptive terms like “African-American,” “Mexican-American,”
and others that signify both a geographical and an American ancestry.
The bottom line
is that it is time for a modern — and
accurate — terminology. The
use of an outdated and disproven term that falsely purports to describe a separate
race of people has no place in the U.S.
Yolanda Moses is
a professor of anthropology and a former associate vice chancellor for
diversity, equity, and excellence at the University of California, Riverside.
Her research focuses on the broad question of the origins of social inequality
in complex societies. Moses has explored gender and class disparities in the
Caribbean, East Africa, and the United States. More recently, her research has
focused on issues of diversity and change in universities and colleges in the
United States, India, Europe, and South Africa. She has co-authored two books
about race: Race: Are We So Different?, written
with Alan Goodman and Joseph Jones, and How Real Is Race?: A Sourcebook on
Race, Culture, and Biology, with Carol Mukhopadhyay and
Rosemary Henze. In 2017 she received a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in
Cultural Competence at the University of Sydney, in Australia. Moses is a
former president of the American Anthropological Association.
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