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  • Of course they're all from the US, they're the only ones who use the word that way. They're also the only ones obsessed with the ethnic origin of the various parts of their population. In England, a person with UK citizenship whose ancestors came from Africa 300 years ago isn't an African-Englishman, or a Black English, or some other racist bullshit like that, he's simply an Englishman. That's because the British aren't unhealthily obsessed with ethnic origin.

    This of course makes it difficult to find UK examples of the correct usage of the term, as this whole topic doesn't really exist in a civilised nation.

    Earlier we talked about European languages. I speak some of them.

    French: Caucasien: Qui appartient au Caucase, chaîne de montagnes d’Asie. (Who is from the Caucasus, a chain of mountains in Asia.) https://www.le-dictionnaire.com/definition/caucasien

    German: Kaukasier: Einwohnerbezeichnung (term for describing inhabitant) https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Kaukasier

    Russian: кавказец: Жители, уроженцы Кавказа. (Inhabitant or native of the Caucasus) https://kartaslov.ru/%D0%B7%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0/%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%86%D1%8B

    See? One example from the most spoken language in Europe of each group, Latin, Germanic, Slavic.

    They all agree.

  • What happened to “show me one dictionary”?

    I was honestly surprised with it listing the term with its common, but incorrect meaning, without as much as a hint to that end. You got me there!

    Because crispy_kilt says so?

    No. Please refer to the three academic sources I provided.

    That paper is about what terminology should be used in academic work, who gives a fuck for people talking on lemmy?

    That's like arguing "could of" to be correct English just because some people do it. Correctness is thankfully not what some believe, but something that has to be demonstrated with some rigour. If you discredit academic sources in favour of a popular misconception then I guess we will never agree.

    Pedants -> incorrect pedants -> incorrect pedants who insist they’re right, regardless of the evidence in front of them

    I mean, I provided several sources for my claim

  • Well, they're wrong. The Caucasus is where Georgia, Armenia and other countries are. Caucasians are people from the Caucasus.

    Another academic source: "White, European, Western, Caucasian, or what? Inappropriate labeling in research on race, ethnicity, and health." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1509085

    There is more: "Though discredited as an anthropological term and not recommended in most editorial guidelines, it is still heard and used, for example, as a category on forms asking for ethnic identification. It is also still used for police blotters (the abbreviated Cauc may be heard among police) and appears elsewhere as a euphemism. Its synonym, Caucasoid, also once used in anthropology but now dated and considered pejorative, is disappearing."

    https://books.google.com/books?id=_hZHAAAAMAAJ

    The United States National Library of Medicine discontinued usage in favor of the more narrow geographical term European, which traditionally only applied to a subset of Caucasoids. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd03/nd03_med_data_changes.html

  • Not a dictionary, thus not a credible source.

    Let me help you out:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

    "The Caucasian race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. [...] In the United States, the root term Caucasian is still in use as a synonym for white or of European, Middle Eastern, or North African ancestry, a usage that has been criticized."

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

    I understand why you might think Caucasian to mean something else despite person from the Caucasus despite being European: the US version of English is influential, due to the size of the country and the popularity of their media. Some British people have started saying "TV series" instead of "programme", for example, due to the influence of the US. You probably heard and read the adjective almost always in the incorrect US usage, because a) other nations don't obsess over ethnicity and b) the actual Caucasus not exactly being a common topic in the media. Hence, when you do hear the word, it is used the way the USA does, incorrectly.

  • Alright, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Link me to a dictionary of your country's version of English that lists "caucasian" with the exclusive meaning of "European or descendent of Europeans", or something to that effect.

  • The usage of the word as it is common in the USA is incorrect. OP might not be aware of this, hence my comment.

    Do you know why US-americans don't use the appropriate word "European"? I've always wondered. They do say African, Asian, Latino, but not European, to describe ethnic origins.

  • I am Caucasian

    Are you actually from the Caucasus, like Georgia, Armenia, etc, or do you use the word to mean "European or descendent of Europeans"? Because the USA likes to use the word to mean European-like, which is incorrect, as the caucasus is a very specific region in the border of Europe and Asia.