Have you ever wondered why we call white people Caucasian? The answer is surprisingly... Heck, you know what this show is about! Most people know the definition of Caucasian as a white-skinned person of European descent.
Right? Not really. Outside of America, white people generally aren't seen as Caucasian at all. Why?
Because almost every country has a different definition for Caucasian. a person from the Caucasus region, which in case you're wondering is actually right over here, with parts of Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Northern Turkey. So why has Caucasian become synonymous with all white people? Well, buckle your seat belts, because things are about to get pretty racist.
A century before Hitler's rise to power, there was another German man who believed white people were the perfect race, Christoph Meiners, who was one of the earliest adopters of scientific racism. Now hold on. because it's about to get really unscientific.
Miners believed that Caucasians, aka the actual people from that region between Russia and Turkey, had quote, In fact, he viewed every non-Caucasian race as ugly, inferior, immoral, and animal-like. He also believed people from the Middle East and Asia had little intelligence and were predispositioned to be evil. Then-German scientist Johann Blumenbach added to this emerging definition.
Blumenbach believed- believed that the Caucasus region was home to the most beautiful race of men, the people of Georgia. And what made the Georgian people so beautiful? Well this creepy guy had a huge collection of human skulls, and out of the 245, the Georgian skull was his favorite. Did I mention that he had a collection of 245 human skulls?
So this weirdo, using no science at all, decided that all of humanity must have come from this region. And, spoiler alert, we didn't. He also decided that all light-skinned people from Europe belonged to the same race, Caucasian.
Then he split the rest of the world into four other races, which he referred to as Sounds like a fun guy. Those other races were Mongolian, the yellow race, Malayan, the brown race, Ethiopian, the black race, and American, the red race. Blumenbach's racial classifications went on to be adopted by the newly formed United States, because of course it did!
It helped our founding fathers justify things like slavery and selective immigration quotas. But that was a long time ago, right? So why does the word Caucasian persist while other old-timey racial categories like Mongoloid and Negroid have disappeared?
Well, there seems to be a few reasons that are a little intertwined. In America, there's a long legal history of the word. The Supreme Court has actually used Caucasian in 64 cases, including one from 1928 that is key. During the 1920s, only free whites, or Caucasians, were allowed to become naturalized citizens. In 19- In 1928, Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian man who fought for the US in World War I, tried to become a US citizen by arguing that many anthropologists defined Indians as Caucasians.
After a major legal battle, the Supreme Court decided that Caucasian really was a Caucasian. really only meant white Europeans. This decision legally codified the modern American definition of Caucasian, as whites with European ancestry. Why else?
You don't exactly know for sure, but one reason I think Caucasian is likely stuck around is because of its power. Language is one of the most systematic, subtle, and significant vehicles for spreading racial ideology, and Caucasian implies that white people are different from other racial groups in America. It makes it seem like white people are somehow connected in a way that's not just based on the pigmentation of their skin.
Idiot. It even sounds kinda scientific, even though it's really, really not. So were you surprised by the history of the word Caucasian?
Sound off in the comments below and we'll see you next week right here on Decoded. Like Marcus. He thought he was definitely getting in because he was black. Nope, that's just not how affirmative action works. You and Marcus may as well have lit that $75 application fee on fire.
And if you really want to get upset, meet Bradley. He's a legacy. Bradley got in because his dad and grandpa both went to school here.