Talk:Caucasian race

A useful term in anthropology ? / The term "Indo-European" in conjunction with "Caucasian race"

"Within strict anthropological discourse the term is useful in identifying a very large group of people who present certain general physical characteristics"

What's the source for this claim?? AFAIK most biological anthropologists would use 'indo-european' rather than a term as empirically dubious as 'caucasian'. While this article makes clear the problems with the term, I don't think it does enough to make clear how discredited it is among the scientific community.

Indo-European is definitely linguistic and not anthropological.

Caucasoid has gotten more recent anthropological use than Caucasian, although it is not necessarily the same thing - the -oid suffix indicates it is supposed to be a looser category.

As for all these terms, yes, in recent decades many scientists and others feel any racial typology is a bad idea, but that discussion is centralized in articles like Validity of human races and shouldn't have to be repeated in each article, just referenced.--JWB 22:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry JWB, you are wrong, “Indo-European” is definitely not only a linguistic term (not longer). In recent time the meaning has been extended. Note, I am not a professional in this matter, but there must be a mention / explanation about the relation of “Indo-European” and “Caucasian race” in this anthropologic topic. How’s such an exactly will look, I cannot say.

Please note, I do not equate “Indo-European” 1:1 with “Caucasian race”, I absolutely recognize “Indo-European” as a subset of some larger human classification.

A solution could be, “In newer times, a lot of “biological anthropologists “have started to use “Indo-European” (in meaning for an “ethnic European group”) rather than a term as “Caucasian”. (Or something equal, my English is not perfect.)

However, as already mentioned, in the current version, this article ignores completely this important information. --lorn10 23:45, 24. June 2006 (CEST)

Usually excluding southern Europeans?

Usually excluding southern Europeans? (maybe the author of that sentence was an American usually confusing Latin Americans with Spaniards or Italians?) From where I stand, this article still lacks labour and must be improved. I am not going to make any suggestions at the moment.

Yes I think it is a pure american view of the concept. anyway we don't speak about "caucasian" in Europe. Nobody except the people who live in those mountains (Chechenians, azerbaidjans, armenians, etc...) would describe himself as "caucasian". Most people consider himself as "white", even if in Europe we generally don't identificate with a "race" but with cultural-linguistic groups. The latins, for exemple, are the people who speak a latin romance language (french, italians, spanish, portuguese), and, even if they have generally more dark-hair than the northener people, they have always been "White". The american view of "latin" is biaised by the fact that most of the romance-language speakers in USA are mostly of native indian or mestizo origins (non-white). So the latin word have been badly used to describe these people who didn't enter really in white or amerindian categories.

--GTubio 20:53, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Almost exclusively in the US?

I'm not sure this is true. The term is familiar as part of their language by speakers of British English. It is also used in professional communication by the British Police as in 'A six foot tall, brown haired caucasian male'.

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Moved comment below from 129.100.152.211 from article to here:

Very interesting. As far as I know three groups, the Manchurian, the Yeniseyan and the Ainu, carried three blood groups Haplotype C, Haplotype A, Haplotype D to the Americas. That's how the American Indians got them. Another group, the Northern Chinese, went over later on with Haplotype E which is found commonly among the Pueblo and Navajo Indians. At the mean time, two central Asian groups carried Haplotypes D and C to Europe which is found commonly among modern day Caucasian populations. While Haplotype B which is totally absent among the Amerindians, spread among Caucasian groups and Mongoloids later on from Africa via the Middle East. And the Mongoloids, like their cousins the Caucasians developed male pattern baldness and resistence to epidemic deseases, which are almost absent among their cousins the American Indians. This is the basis on which our society is legally divided into Mongoloid(Asian), Caucasian-Mediterranean, Indo-Dravedian, African-Mulato and Amerind-Meztiso social groups. And these groups continue to celebrate Multiculturalism by cultivating their own images, feeling proud on TV networks and popular entertainment, helping people of different ethnicities to understand their own respective cultures, supporing members of their own respective groups in highschool cafeterias, in order to make this society more diverse.

-Frecklefoot

I am Scottish, Czech, and Albanian. Why do I note my ethnicity? Because I am 100%caucasin. My father is from Albania. The Albanians are;a.) Nomads who live in Eastern Europe. These nomads originally came from the Caucus Mountains. b.) They are the poorest country due to there resistance of frivilous self glorification. c.) Their language is recorded as being the oldest language in Europe. d.)Before thier pilgrimage to East Europe from the Caucus Mountains they fled from persecution from the Islamic Semites and Orientals. The point is caucasins both eastern European and English etc...are defined by common language,persuction for thier Christian beliefs and there long standing strength. I believe it good people love one another for their inner selves, which often comes around to who one is on the outside and through thier historical blood. Note: Oddly enough the English word yes is yo in Albanain, Ja pronounced "Ya" in German and of course the common thread runs on. One other comment I would like to add, the Galatians in The Holy Bible are better known as the Gauls. These people live were? They live in Europe. The Celts? The Celts were founders of Galatia!The Celts domination runs from Bohemia to the U.k. To close,simply put,Christianity is richly rooted in white soil....pretty amazing huh!

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I have moved the Latin name to the History section, assuming that it was Blumenthal who coined it. Could anyone confirm that? Thanks...Jorge Stolfi 17:45, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Usage in Australia

In Australia the word Caucasian is used to refer to those people that have Anglo-Saxon background, this happens in the media as well as in official documents. There is an important number of Australians who have Greek, Italian and other European background which are not regarded as Caucasians. The Australian government refers to them as the ethnic communities along with other racial minorities.--tequendamia 11:13, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Genetics and race

The claim is not that skin color is unrelated to genetics - that would be silly. The claim is that there is no set of genetic characteristics that defines "the black race" as separate from "the white race" - that is to say that genetics cannot be used as the primary means of drawing racial lines. You have to resort to appearance - i.e. skin color. Not to a particular genetic sequence. This is not an obviously untrue claim, and I'd like to see some evidence against it before you revert it again. Snowspinner 06:44, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

No. You are building a strawman there, not that I think I can expect different from you anytime soon, you unfortunately being highly biased against White people and all (reference for people who might wonder about this: look to the race-discussion at the bottom of the VillagePump page for a couple of examples). -Three arguments saying that your version is both incorrect and POV-

• The article states; "Indeed, the advances in biochemistry over the past 30-40 years have revealed that the traditional racial divisions have no genetic basis."

1) Here it is stating that traditional racial divisions (Black, White, Asian, and so forth) have no genetic basis, when that simply is not true. DNA is heritable (sp?), and "race" is our name for groups of people having spread their genes more among themselves than with other groups, and thereby having gained unique genetic features if long enough time has passed. Race is a term for groups of people being markedly different from other groups, and these differences does have indeed basis in genetics. Therefore the statement in that article is extremely POV, even false, and is not fit for an encyclopedia.

2) The article itself even contradicts itself, because it says that "There is currently extensive debate on the scientific validity of racial classifications". First it says that there is extensive debate on the validity, and then it says that its validity is "indeed" 100%.

3)Quote: "Its relevance is debatable as a physical anthropological, ethnic/cultural or socio-political concept."

Here the article expresses even more POV, it even dictates what is and what is not debatable, even when it just said that the "undebatable" was under "extensive debate."

Therefore, your edits are incorrect, and I am not the one making controversial edits. Fix the article. - 66.185.84.80

To my knowledge, you are not a biochemist, making me suspicious of your blanket statements about what has and hasn't been revealed in biochemistry in the past 30 years. This makes me question point one very much. Perhaps you'd like to give a citation. Point two does not seem to me to contradict point one. The advances described in point one happened, launching scientific debate. This is largely how science works. As for point three, the fact that it is debated (As shown in the response to point two) proves its debatableness beyond, I think, any real doubt. Snowspinner 07:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Point 3: Of course the statement in point number three proves that it is in fact debatable, that is exactly my point. It thus also makes the article's blanket, de facto statement about the validity of the debatable very debatable indeed. It is the article that contradicts itself and makes "100% claims" about something that even you know is highly debatable, so give it a rest and free the article of this blatant POV.

Point 1: As for your simple, non-valid rebuttal involving a statement of my not being a biochemist: What I stated is the simple and widely accepted theory of evolution. Have you never heard of evolution, man? Or perhaps you have, and disagree? If the latter is true, then I must inform you that you are in the minority. The world accepted evolution a long time ago.

Point 2: So that's what it seems like to you. Unfortunately for you, seeming is not good enough. The sentences speak for themselves, they are in direct opposition. Please refrain from trolling behaviour when losing an argument.

- 66.185.84.80

To the anonymous editor 66.185.84.80: please take the time to read some modern scientific text on population genetics, and you will perhaps understand why that sentence is not POV. Trying to give a quick summary, some of the major discoveries in question (that 18th century anthopologists did not know about) are: (1) humans have tens (hundreds?) of thousands of genes, which are inherited independently and randomly from either parent; so classifying people by the visible characteristics like skin color and skull shape makes as much sense as classifying cars by their windshield decals. (2) there are no "pure races", not even "somewhat pure" ones: even when one looks at the "purest" races, there is much more genetic variation within each race than between the means of the two races. (3) even the most paranoid racial barriers are leaky as a sieve, so over a millenium or two any social group will become genetically very similar to the neighboring populations, and vice-versa -- even if the group continues to maintain its "ethnic" identity. And so on.
Because of these reasons, it is simply impossible to give any sound basis to the old concept of "race"; it would be like asking a car mechanic to provide a link between engine power and windshield decals. There simply isn't such thing as a "Caucasian gene" or even a "Caucasian gene set". An article which does not say this clearly would be doing a bad service to its readers.
Jorge Stolfi 09:34, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

• the 66.185.84.80 user's disruptive history and nazism, and the "race != one gene" straw man aside, of course race is genetic. it is a characteristic statistical distribution of genes. Badanedwa 05:47, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Well, one problem with defining rece that way is that there would be no clear-cut boundary between such "races", so labels like "Caucasian race" would become completely arbitrary. One could as well define a "United States race" as meaning (among other things) X% black skin, Y% white skin, etc. Another problem is that you would not be able to say whether an individual belongs to a given race or not: if "race" A is defined as 40% blue eyes, 60% black (and other things), while "race" B is the other way around, to which race does a blue-eyed individual belong?

This problem becomes much worse when you consider all genes instead of two or three. With 30 genes, each having two variants, you could define about one billion different "pure races", and an infinitude of gene distributions.

A more fundamental problem is that genes get inherited independently, and those which are bad/good for a given environment are quickly selected out/in while those that are indifferent just drift around. White skin may be an advantage in colder climates, but is a definite disadvantage if you live in the tropics at low altitude. (Spend a couple of hours under the sun in a tropical beach, without suncreen, and you will understand why.)

This problem is made worse by our modern understanding of how genes work. For instance, black skin involves complicated mechanisms for manufacturing and regulating melanin, depositing it in the right places, etc. etc. All humans have the genes needed for that mechanism, but white-skinned people ("Caucasian" as well as "Asian") have a small genetic defect somewhere that prevents the mechanism from working properly. Obviously this defect has nothing to do with intellectual capability or whatever other attribute that, according to old-style racial theorists, are associated with skin color.

For these and other reasons, modern population genetics does not even try to define the concept of "race". It s not that the geneticists don't like the idea, they just cannot figure out a way to define "Caucasian race" or "Nordic race" or "Jewish race" in any way that would make sense.

All the best,
Jorge Stolfi 16:00, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

...

<there is no set of genetic characteristics>

There most certainly is, it just hasn’t been isolated yet.

In one of my high school classes during a disscusion about Condoleezza Rice, a slightly ditzy classmate remarked, (after the teacher had made a statement, describing her as black): "Yeah, but she's not THAT black." I think she was on to something; what black race? Caucasian race? never heard of it! Leon W, 6 Nov 2005.

Indian subcontinent

Indians are referred to as Caucasian? really? see Image:Map of skin color distribution.gif according to which East Asians have a lighter complexion that Indians. dab 12:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Though it seems odd now, yes, Indians were labeled Caucasian. It was not just about skin hue. My bet is that it is because Europeans had more experience with India than they did China because of their colonial history, but that is just a hunch. --Fastfission 14:17, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nope, the hogwash is based on good linguistics: see Indo-European languages. Ironicaly, these languages are not spoken in the Caucasus. Joestynes 09:36, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

And not just solely on lingustics, Indians (from the North, at least), are descended from the proto-Indo-Europeans, who also gave rise to the Europeans, of course (in distinct contrast to the origin of the east and southeast Asians). A light-skinned Indian may be mistaken for one of European ancestry; the same would likely not be true for a light-skinned Chinese or Korean person, for instance. The facial features of Indians in general are similar to that of the other Caucasians. — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:27, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well yes and no. Don't assume that 19th-century language categorization is any more "value-free" than race categorization. And let's not give too much credit to the "visual similarities" argument, which is nonsense on a number of levels. --Fastfission 16:23, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the darker features in the Indian subcontinent come from pre-Aryan peoples, particularly the Dravidians.---BDH

Offensive, Americocentric article

(though Americocentric should not mean offensive)

Southern Europeans are described as "Latins"? Maybe by you they are. Are Greeks Latins? Maltese? Cypriots? They're all Southern Europeans.

The opening paragraph does not even make clear that this "concept" is entirely discredited! There's no such thing as a "Caucasian race". The term is used loosely in the US for "whites" but that doesn't mean it has any reality.

As noted, in Europe, "Caucasians" are people from the Caucusus, nothing more, nothing less. I noted Dbachmann's reversion of some changes. He said in his edit summary that they were not "NPOV". Well no, but neither's this article as it stands. I think some of the changes could have been incorporated, in more moderate language.Dr Zen 09:30, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, you have improved the article. dab (ᛏ) 09:42, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PLEASE TAKE NOTE- THIS IS IMPORTANT!

Colour is not the onlt thing that determnines a race, race is also about features. e.g. if you make a European persons skin colour darker and their hair they would look that far off from somone who is from India, middle east or meditarrian. This is because their features are similar (not the same) However this will not be the case for Oriental people or Black people as features such as hair nose lips are different.

Also the Causasian or White race as it is known these days comes from a part of Asia called Caucaus hence these Europeans are from Asia. Some split into Europe and the Med others into West Asia(middle east) and others into South Asia (Indian Sub- continent) Another theory is that the originate from India many thousands of years ago and not the theory somone put earlier that Indians are causasians because the british were there, more the other way round

Use of talk page

I've once again deleted the long and free-wheeling essay posted to this page. Wikipedia talk pages are for discussing changes to articles, not for giving your opinion about the use of terms in television, your opinions on political correctness in general, or your theories on the origin of "wigger" culture, as you put it. If you have concrete suggestions as to how to improve the article, please feel free to contribute them. As it is, your comments are cluttering up the talk page and far exceed what the purpose of talk pages are for. Please feel free to post them on your own user page and link to them from here if you must. -Fastfission 03:42, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[Note: I agree that one may reasonably object to the original post on the grounds that it was too long, and at times too broad in scope and overly speculative. I will not repost the original but will instead post the following more concise, more focused version:] Wikipediatag 13:03, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Use of the term 'Caucasian' wrt Southern Europeans in the U.S.

The term 'Caucasian', as used in the United States, includes southern Europeans, contrary to the claims of an earlier edition of this article that it does not. To suggest otherwise is simply inaccurate. Anyone suggesting otherwise is undoubtedly confusing and/or conflating southern Europeans with 'Latinos/Hispanics', a term which in the United States refers to persons of Latin American origin who may in fact be of any race but are often casually referred to as 'non-white'.

Wikipediatag 13:03, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some authors?

I challenge the vague claim "Some authors have used it to specifically refer to Northern Europeans ..." and request documentation of who precisely these referenced authors are. Are we talking about the writings of fringe elements (such as Nordicists and/or Neo-Nazi types), or credentialed anthropologists? If the former, I think that should be stated clearly.

Wikipediatag 13:54, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Useless linguistic criteria

The listing referred to a "Finno-Ugrian" descent. This is rather misleading, as it groups together genetically very different people based on linguistical grounds. For example, some classify the Samoyeds as "Finno-Ugrian", and there you go. There was a theory that the speakers of Finno-Ugrian languages had a common ancestry, but this theory is discredited. Likewise, there were attempts to link Fenno-Ugrian languages with Asian ancestry. Again, this was unsuccessful (e.g. [1]), as it was more an attempt to show the "racial purity" of the Swedish. The Fennic language speakers of North Europe are genetically similar to the nearby peoples, the Hungarians are like Turkish, the peoples in Siberia are like the Siberians, etc. The language is unrelated to the "race". --Vuo 23:15, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

The question is whether or not it has been historically used in that fashion. Historically the link between language and race has been variously emphasized. But I don't know about this particular aspect. If there was a theory but it has been discredited it is worth noting. --Fastfission 01:15, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

"Whites" a redirect?

Why was "Whites" redirected to this article? Gramaic 05:45, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

---Caucasian race-- is a term coined by an alien pseudoscientist with an inhuman aim.The introduction of that term into science and politics has lead to almost incessant wars of the undesired immigrants against the indigenous population. One will not find that term in the chronicles of the indigenous population when it was governed by the local king-till 1864. The term Caucasian derives from the word "Cauc" that is simply 'snow', 'snow-clad'in Kartuli. title_nation@mail.ge

My recent addition

My recent addition about Blumenbach believing the original humans to be white comes from "Mighty White of You" by Jack Hitt in the July 2005 issue of Harpers'. The particular citation is on p. 46. The format of references in this article didn't give me an easy way to add that in the article, so I'm putting it here for the benefit of whoever is actually working on this. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:56, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Merge with whites?

I've begun to think this page should be merged with whites. Although I'm not saying that they are exactly the same concept, it seems to me that they are difficult to treat one in isolation from the other. In addition, as the article states, the expression Caucasian race is really only common in the United States. In other places, they necessarily fall back on terms like "white race" or "European race". - Nat Krause 13:13, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

No. The idea of a "Caucasian race" is a specific thing not entirely the same thing as the idea of "whiteness". It is a specific formulation of "whiteness" as an anthropological entity (that is, a "scientific" rather than a "folk" version of "race"). They are of course very related but not the same thing. --Fastfission 15:41, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Like I said, I'm not saying that they are exactly the same concept, but it seems to me that they are difficult to treat one in isolation from the other. - Nat Krause 18:41, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see the difficulty. This article is about the "scientific" "racial" term and its implications and usages. The whites article is about a broader "ethnic" identity. They are related to one another and cover a lot of the same ground, most definitely, but they are not the same thing. Additionally, as this article points out, the anthropological idea of a "Caucasian race" includes a lot of people not considered to be either "racially" or "ethnically" white (i.e., people from the Indian subcontinent). --Fastfission 22:36, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

The difficulty, I would say, is that it is impossible to draw a clear distinction "white" as an ethnicity and "Caucasian" as a race. In the United States (and I think this is typical of Western countries), "white" is normally conceived of as a race. How can the concept of an ethnicity which defines itself as a race be separated from the concept of a race proper?

The beginnings of the articles in question show exactly this sort of difficulty. Caucasian race says, "The term Caucasian race is used ... to mean "white" or of European ancestry". Whites says, at the end of the intro, says "In North America, and to a lesser extent other countries, the term Caucasian is widely understood to mean white." Strangely, it also begins by defining white to include Middle Eastern and North African people (in addition to being self-referential by including "White culture" in the definition, and then having a final clause which makes no sense).

Even if you could clearly separate one from the other, the results would not necessarily map to the normal uses of the words in question (i.e. we might be better of moving whites to something like Social perspectives on whiteness).

I'm not sure that it's true that "the anthropological idea of a "Caucasian race" includes a lot of people not considered to be either "racially" or "ethnically" white". That sounds like a contradiction to me: "white" is a race, so, if it is in evidence that a given person is racially Caucasian, then that person must be white. The fact that Americans don't normally consider Indians or some Arabs to be white might show nothing more than that our thinking is contradictary. I think this sort of anomaly can be more easily explained by dealing with both subjects together. - Nat Krause 15:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

"White" is a color, not a race. If you don't know that "the anthropological idea of a 'Caucasian race'" includes South Asians, many of whom are brown-skinned, then you have no business editing this article. You might consider brushing up on proper quotation nesting as well. ThePedanticPrick 17:10, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I could say the same to you. The colour white is discussed at white; we are discussing white in the sense of a race/ethnicity. This article itself says, "The term Caucasian race is used almost exclusively in North America to mean 'white' or of European ancestry". Being brown-skinned doesn't necessarily exclude you from being white; for instance, some Italians are quite dark, but I don't think many people today would dispute that they are white. - Nat Krause 14:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Caucasoid should be considered along with Caucasian race and Whites. This article is not of high quality and suffers from edit wars and material that should be in other articles. It should be stabilized with a wider consensus on what belongs there, or merged. Some discussion at Talk:Caucasoid.--JWB 23:54, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Why is Caucasoid separate from Caucasian race in the first place? - Nat Krause 15:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

It is a slightly different thing. Caucasoid, as I understand it, is used by modern forensic anthropologists to aid in identification of remains and things like that. It does not necessarily refer to a "Caucasian race", a concept which most anthropologists don't think exists. If you think it sounds difficult to say that a concept can except in one framework and not another, well, you're not alone, and this battle is still being fought out within the disicipline. In any event, they are closely related but not really the same thing because of this distinction. --Fastfission 20:45, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

To me, that sounds like different working definitions of the same basic idea. I think it would be more profitable to merge them. - Nat Krause 14:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, they're not the same idea, whatever they sound like to you. Why don't you just leave this to people who have more experience with these topics? I don't mean to sound snippy but I don't think you have enough knowledge about the topic to judge on something like this. The terms have different usages, histories, and meanings. They are related but not the same thing, and there is no reason to merge them. --Fastfission 14:55, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Biblical "Legend"?

I suspect that the use of the word legend as in "Biblical legend" is unecessarily offensive to those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. I suggest changing it to "According to the Bible", or "according to the the Biblical book of Genesis."

(I don't intend to get into a debate on anything here beyond the thought that some readers would be offended by the word legend.)

I suppose we should also change the article on Greek mythology since the word "myth" might offend the ancient greeks? Wikipedia doesn't need to suck up to Christians or any other group. If something in the bible hasn't been historically verified, then it's fine to call it biblical legend. ThePedanticPrick 21:25, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Anthropology

There are some very basic tenents in scientific Anthropolgy that should be applied. That science has become heavily revised for political correctness etc. but the concept of 3 large inclusive races of mankind still actually enjoys wide acceptance. Please leave the edit that calls attention to the inclusiveness of the term "Caucasian" it includes about 35% of the people on earth. Black Dravidian people in the south of India, light brown people in the north of India, Olive skinned people in the middle east, who become lighter as you enter the mediterranean region, and finally the very fair shinned of northern Europe, and their immigrant relations in the Americas and Australia. Spray them all the same color and their similarity is obvious!

Caucasoid

Why doesn't "caucasian race" redirect to Caucasoid?

it means the same thingRobwi 05:55, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Original inhabitants of North Africa Caucasian?

No evidence has been brought of this. I would like some prrof before people make such claims. As it currently stands the berbers are believed to be the original inhabitanst of North Africa. I looked at the berber article and it says that berbers either originate from East Africa or possible the mid east. Either way none of these people are causcasian although many mid-eastern people have caucasoid chracteristics accoridng to Coon. Also Coons book which is used to define caucasoid article said that berbers were not caucasian. Wiki must be consistent in its defintions and can't have articles that contradict each other.

Coon is not the only authority and in fact is not in very good repute. If there are more than one widespread viewpoints and no consensus, Wikipedia is supposed to describe the major viewpoints, not assert just one.

It's not necessary to assert all North Africans are caucasian or not caucasian. There are not sharp boundaries between races. A lot of time is spent here debating boundary cases, but generally in actual usage, people just avoid using the caucasian / non-caucasian distinction when there are lots of people whose affiliation is unclear.--JWB 11:43, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

The mysterious sic

The sic in

The concept of a "Caucasian race" or Varietas Caucasia (sic) was first proposed

is quite mysterious; it is not clear what is meant to be misspelled. I encountered a discussion of this issue at Talk:Caucasian#Regarding "common usage, especially in North America", which suggests nothing is incorrect here.--Imz 18:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Could the Latin be incorrect, or not following the standard used for classification names? ThePedanticPrick 16:09, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the part claiming africans to be white for three reason. 1.No source was provided of these claims. I know JWB says his dictionary says that but simple assertions are not enough. For all we know you could be reading a dictionary written by the kkk or black supremist group. 2. The sources provided with regards to coon claims opposite. 3. A dictionary that just says this person is this race simply isn't enough. A dictionary is not science and anyone who is literate can write one no matter how false its contents are. Dictionary's that are 50+ years old don't even recgonize native americans as humans so I have a problem with using a source that has so openly racist assertions. Also the dictionary claims that there are whites in North Africa can be taken in many ways. The way it was put in this article says that native north africans are white and no one has proven that berbers (native north africans) are white.

Claim is not that "africans are white" but that some people in at least far northern Africa are Caucasian rather than Negroid. This is a very minimal statement chosen to avoid controversy.

1. All sources agree at least this far.

2. As previously explained to you the Cavalli-Sforza 2D diagram (not Coon as you said) has a data point for Saharan Berbers much further south.

3. All scientific sources agree that some Berbers or North Africans have little or no Negroid mixture. There is debate over other North Africans. Please see the Berber article which goes over this in detail with recent scientific references.--JWB 22:18, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I do acknowledge that there are some caucasian people if you consider mid-east people to be caucasian in North Africa I don't agree that they are original inhabitants cause that is simply false. The North Africans today who are white are not natives and mostly came over when the Ottomans did and are descendents of them. First you claim Berbers are black then you claim they are white your source said they were so they are black. A book is used here from 1775 we would not use a book from 1775 in another scientific forum it is a joke and was written at a time when when blacks, indians, women, chinese were all by law property of white men and not people. It is coon website so stop trying to lie. Coons uses that percise diagram in his own book and thats why its there, so ys coon didn't make it but he certainly did use it in his book.

"All scientific sources agree that some Berbers or North Africans have little or no Negroid mixture" Not coons book or this website. Sure if all your scientific sources are coming from a time when people believed cutting your wrist let the "bad blood" that was making you sick out so you could feel better. How could a book written at a time when europeans were largely ignorant to the world even be used. Europeans didn't even have a map of the 40% of the populated world so how could already classify races by then? Anyways the berber article maintains that berbers came from east africa which are to my knowledge black for the most part. If you want to say whites live in North africa go ahead but they are not native there and according to genetics they are closets to negro followed by asian than any other race.

I got a used copy of Coon's "Living Races of Man" because discussions here keep referring to him. He does consider Berbers to be Caucasoid, page 84. He believes Caucasoids migrated to northwest Africa around 12000 BC, and the previous population was Capoid.

It is really odd for you to consider Coon an authority and other more recent and respected sources unscientific, considering Coon's reputation as a white racist, and Afrocentric criticism of his designation of some Cushitic and Nilotic peoples as Caucasoid and part Caucasoid.--JWB 18:29, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

None of the people including the ones from Europe have been proven caucasian all asertions. I only left in europe because that is where caucaus is and that is where causcasian come from.

The Caucasus is partly in Europe and partly in West Asia. --Gramaic 04:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

You have not proven or given proof that they are white. Many of them look like negroid-caucasoid mixes or caucaoisd mongoloid mixes

You are an afrocentric nutbag. North Africans are approximately 80% Caucasoid and 20% Negroid. And, if people from Europe aren't "white" or "Caucasian," then what people are? JMac, go back to clown school, you daft afrohead! --Gerkinstock 29 November 2005

And you Gerkinstock - what about this silliness in Coon's work describing people in Sudan, Ethiopia, and RWANDA as extensions of Caucasoid racial types. The original inhabitents of North Africa were not "Capoid", the reason Coon put that there, was because at the time, "Capoid" was viewed as "less Black" than the "Negroid" people, and there was no way in 1930 that Coon could call Mediterranean people a "mixture of Negroid and Caucasoid" without finding himself the object of rejection in the "scientific" community of his day (or maybe he himself didn't want to humiliate his white countrymen by saying they ARE in fact mixed with Negroid characteristics). North africans are approximately 80% Caucasoid NOW... after generations of Arabization and what not, surely we all agree that the colonization of North Africa since Islam has made the region LIGHTER than it was before.... after all ARABS living in North Africa were originally inhabitents of ARABIA... NOT North Africa. --68.60.55.162 10:00, 1 December 2005 (UTC)ZAPH

Even Coon only says there has been some Caucasoid admixture in those areas of East Africa, not that people there should be classified as Caucasoid. Nobody has been advocating putting these assertions in the article anyway. If you prefer to have the article list all viewpoints even if controversial or not generally accepted today, they can be added.

Coon also explicitly mentions a small degree of Negroid admixture in the Mediterranean. This is in line with both other older anthropologists and with modern genetic studies.

Arabic-speaking N. Africans are mostly descended from Berbers, with some additional input from east, north, and south. The last 1000 years did have an Arab migration, as well as importation of slaves from both sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. But not everyone speaking Arabic is descended from the original Arabs, any more than everyone speaking English is descended from the English. The original Islamic conquest was by a relatively very small army. The Banu Hilal migration of Bedouin probably had more of an effect on the N. African population, but not enough for major lightening.

Coon and more recent scientists do think N. Africa became more Caucasoid by migration, but on a scale more like 10000 years than 1000.--JWB 14:20, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is absolutely true that modern North Africans are mostly descended from ancient North Africans. That most have Arab surnames is no more relevant than most Iraqis having Arabic surnames, or most Amerindians in Central and South America having Spanish surnames. The change from Berberism to Arabism in North Africa was a cultural change, not a genetic one. In addition, Mediterranean Europeans have negligible non-European ancestry on the whole.--Gerkinstock 1 December 2005

JMac, I apologize for the name-calling I engaged in earlier today, though your edits are not remotely consistent with modern anthropological and genetic POV.-- Gerkinstock 3 December 2005

Singapore: Caucasian = White

Well, first time I encountered the term "Caucasian" was when travelling to the US - but only in Singapore it started to mean anything...

Singapore officially uses the CMIO scheme, i.e. you are either Chinese, Malay, Indian or other... Whilst I disapprove of the concept and fail to understand the importance of "race" in a modern society you can't avoid the term "Caucasian" living here.

The term "Caucasian" is used as equivalent to "whites" - and it does not include Asians (i.e. also Japanese or Indian people are NOT considered Caucasian) in certainly includes fair skinned Anglo-Saxons from all parts of the world plus Western Europe and Scandinavia however besides this narrow group the line doesnt seem clear to me you would also find terms such as "Hispanic", "Latino", "Middle Eastern" and so forth.

MB 18/01/06

The terms Hispanic, Latino, Semite and Middle Eastern do not describe a race but people's cultural or linguistic background. Latinos/hispanic for example could be black (African), white(Caucasian) or Indian (Amerindian), but they have in commmon that they speak the same language--tequendamia 01:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

well, tell that the goverment of singapore... MB 19/01/06

It doesn't matter, when Asians see a white latino they wouldn't know what country he/she is from until the person itself tells it. If you tell them you are Latino, they may wonder why you don't look like Ricky Martin or Antonio Banderas as that's they idea they have about latinos. The same happens in the west with Asians, we cannot differentiate at first sight between someone from Singapore, Beijing or a Tokyo. That difference could be relevant to the them, but not much to us. On the other hand very few cultures are so race conscious. Not all caucasians worry about race, only in certain countries such as the English speaking nations which see themselves threatened by the nations they once colonized.--tequendamia 22:46, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Skin Color is not a primary signifier of race

Physical features are Digitalseal 22:17, 8 February 2006 (UTC) Causian does include Indians from India look at the features and hair not the colour

AMERICANS ARE NOT WHITE/CAUCASIAN!!

Americans are not White/Caucasian!!! They could call themselves Martian if they want. So-called "white" Americans, according to their own one-drop rule, are not White and have never been White:

Genetics

"In European Americans from State College [in Washington D.C.], the west African and native American genetic contributions are low (0.7% and 3.2%, respectively)."

(Shriver et al., Hum Genet, 2003)

As to their European blood, many Europeans are not White either:

"The Tat-C haplogroup was observed at significant frequencies in each of the southern Middle Siberian populations studied. Surprisingly, it reached its highest frequency in the Siberian Eskimos and Chukchi from the Chukotkan peninsula. The Tat-C haplogroup was absent in the Lower Amur and Sea of Okhotsk region populations that have maintained greater geographic and/or linguistic isolation (e.g., the Udegeys, Nivkhs, and Upriver Negidals) and was only detected in the populations likely to have had recent contact or shared origins with the populations of southern Middle Siberia (e.g., the Okhotsk Evenks, Ulchi/Nanai, and Downriver Negidals). Because the Tat-C polymorphism originated on a Y chromosome containing the DYS7C deletion (haplogroup 7C), which was present only in the Middle Siberian Tuvans, Buryats, Tofalars, and Yenisey Evenks, the Tat-C haplogroup probably entered the Lower Amur and eastern Siberia from southern Middle Siberia. This conclusion is consistent with the previous hypothesis that the Tat-C and 7C haplogroups arose in central Asia and migrated west to northern Europe and east to Chukotka (Zerjal et al. 1997).

"The network of Tat-C and DYS7C haplotypes revealed that the ancestral Tat-C haplotype (7C[11-11-10-10]) was found only in southern Middle Siberia, indicating that this Y-chromosome lineage arose in that region. Moreover, the limited microsatellite diversity and resulting compact nature of the network indicates that the Tat-C lineage arose relatively recently (Zerjal et al. 1997). The absence of the Tat-C haplogroup in the Americas, with the exception of a single Navajo (Karafet et al. 1999), along with its high frequency in both northern Europe and northeastern Siberia, indicates that the Tat-C lineage was disseminated from central Asia by both westward and eastward male migrations, the eastward migration reaching Chukotka after the Bering Land Bridge was submerged. Both the M45 and Tat-C haplogroups have been found in Europe, indicating both ancient and recent central Asian influences. However, neither of these major Middle Siberian Y-chromosome lineages appears to have been greatly influenced by the paternal gene pool of Han Chinese or other East Asian populations (Su et al. 1999)."

(Lell et al., Am J Hum Genet, 2002)

          Tat-C Frequencies
Yakuts..........87% Eskimos.........61% Chukchi.........58% Finns...........55% Buryats.........52% Tofalars........47%
Lithuanians.....47% Lapps...........42% Estonians.......37% Maris...........33% Latvians........32% Nenets..........30%
Tuvans..........18% Chuvash.........18% Russians........14% Ukrainians......11% North Swedes.....8% Gotlanders.......6% 
Norwegians.......6% Poles............4% Germans..........3% Armenians........3% Slovakians.......3% Danes............2% 
Belarusians......2% Turks............1%

          7C Frequencies
Nenets..........50% Tofalars........47% Tuvans..........28% Buryats.........15% Maris...........17% Czechs...........6% 
Estonians........4% Russians.........4% Finns............2% Yugoslavians.....2% Cypriots.........2% Poles............1% 
Slovakians.......1% Turks............1%

(Kittles et al. 1998, Rosser et al. 2000, Dupuy et al. 2001,
Wells et al. 2001, Lell et al. 2002 and Puzyrev et al. 2003)

So, stop pasing off as White and face up to the facts.

The only person promoting the "one-drop rule" (which never applied to genetics or anthropological taxonomy) is YOU. Stop with this nonsense and face up to the fact that YOU are the one-drop rule quantifier at this site, not a select group of white people who died decades if not a century or more ago. -- Gerkinstock 00:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

In fact I do not promote the one-drop rule. I just want to question the views that some or maybe many people have on race, probably in a way that is a bit too belligerent. But it is OK if it makes people think.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:White_%28people%29"

... arbitrary ... gerrymandering ... huh?

I have reverted the following:

Racial classifications have begun to take on the appearance of being arbitrary, based on the politics of the time. Were "Caucasians" actually classified with as much detail as other racial groups, it would be seen that many of these new groups, in fact, are minority groups. For example, the term African-American uses a geographical location of ancestors' origins and current nationality status to describe what is commonly referred to as a "race". If this type of classification is done for those that are currently labelled "Caucasian", the result would be hundreds of "races", each of which was a minority by itself. Thus, it is evident that the creation of "racial" categories in today's society is nothing more than a form of gerrymandering, enabling certain categories to gain "minority" status and with it, special privileges.

which was used to replace:

Some have argued that due to the civil-rights and political-correctness movements, many white people feel a certain guilt or shame when acknowledging their race in a positive manner. However, this shame or guilt can more closely be tied to the overbearing violent, and white supremacist ideologies and realities that white people have laden at the feet and on the backs of people of color globally.

While I do not have the correct terms from logic, the editor is definitely mixing arguments and/or definitions. To say that African-American is an invalid term as related to racial grouping, because we don't say that Irish-Swedish-Michigan-Americans is a valid racial grouping is, what is the word, specious?

Perhaps I am confused enough by the statements, that I am not seeing the argument? Is the editor actually proposing that African-American is seen as a separate 'race'? It all just seems like a side-slipped argument against any special circumstances (like historical events?)

Shenme 10:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Indians as `Caucasians'

Although the orthodoxy states that South Asians are classed as Caucasians/Caucasoid, the truth is that Caucasoid elements in South Asia are in a minority. Most South Asians north of the Tropic of Cancer are more or less Caucasoid, but intermingling with proto-Australoid, Dravdian and Mongoloid races have now led many anthropologists to categorise South Asians as a race unto themselves. Similar can be applied to Arabs who on the Arabian peninsular and in North Africa who are generally classed as Caucasian but are mixed with Negro blood, and the various Central/West Asians who are often mixed with Mongoloid ancestry.

No actually South Indians are classified as Caucasion as well. Theo only difference is skin color (being closer to the equator). 97% of all Indians (both North and South) belong to a caucasoid race of the mediterranean sub-branch. There are some Mongoloids populations in the Northeast and Negroids in the Southwest of India, but they make up less than 3% of the people. Contrary to some popular belief Dravidians are Caucasions (making up the majority of South India). Although South Indians (like dravidians) have some australoid blood within them, Caucasion features are more dominate. Zachorious 03:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Pakistani People

A very interesting article debated here. I think no one should ever question the fact that Pakistanis are Caucasians or Caucasoid. We clearly belong to the Caucasian Race distinctly separate from Whites.

1. An average Pakistani man Racial Reality 1 2. Average Pakistani politicians Racial Reality 2 3. Foreign Minister of Pakistan (Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri) with Jack Straw who is currently the Leader of the House of Commons in the UK. Kasuri-Straw meeting

--Advil 6:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello Master Aryan race supremacist. You're just a Paki who wants to fit in the British world, but nobody likes you except for Neo-Nazis and Hitler worshippers who made that website you believe. Go ahead and live in self-delusion. Your people don't look Caucasian to me (what's with those eyes?!), but southern Mongoloid and close to Australoid with that colouring. There is no association of the Indus Valley Civilisation with Europe (the Rhine, Po, Tiber, Thames, Volga, Danube rivers), only with Asia like the Ganges River, Yangtze River and Oxus River. Why else are there places called Indonesia, Indochina and Indo-Australian Plate? You are Asian, end of story! I'll accept that piece of crap Saddam Hussein as more Caucasian than you! Don't everybody try to be White! You're all wannabes! IP Address 03:19, 5 August 2006 (UTC)