Why Are White People Called Caucasian?

¶ … White People Are Called Caucasian

Caucasus is a word from Greek kaukasos (Mt.Caucasus) which gives the region its name, therefore Caucasus refers to the mountains of East Europe and the people that are native to this region, it is one of the main ethnic divisions of the human race so called white or European race. Mountains cross the region running all through East and West. The Northern Caucasian range forms the natural border with Russian while southern, forms the natural border of Turkey and Iran. The five Caucasian ethnic groups are categorized into three namely; Caucasian, Indo-European, and Altaic (Malik & Kenan, 2006).

The Kalmuck who are part of Altaic people are considered to be ugly while Circassia and Georgian who are Caucasian category of people are widely known for their beauty.

Religion is one of the aspects that guide us to know why white people are called "Caucasian" for instance Georgians who reside in south of Chechnya who are sometimes considered Caucasians are largely Christians and seen as Europeans.

The war in Chechnya forced white people to run to Caucasian hence being associated with the region (Mayall & David, 2004). The geographical and historical aspects vividly explains the association of white people with Caucasians for instance Russia and Russian borderlands takes the place of the tropical region of Africa, Caribbean islands, and the United States south, there is attachment to African and American plantation as well as Russian attachment to the lands from where white slaves came from (Mamdani & Mahmoud, 2001).

Beauty plays a leading role in the designation of "Caucasian" their beautiful white slave usually came from Georgia or the Caucasus.

White people are called "Caucasian" simply because Blumenbach, one of the most influential German scholars chose the name. He chose this name on 11 April 1975 in Gottingen after he discovered the Georgian skull which he used to hypothesize origination of Europeans from the Caucasus, which he made it scientific classification.

Their possession of whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin and other traits like skin pigmentation was another relation of Caucasian to white.

ORIGIN OF SCIENTIFIC RACISM

Scientific racism employs the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial inferiority or superiority (Mayall & David, 2004). The concept of "black" as a metaphor for race was used at the end the 17th century when F. Francois Bernier (1625-1688) divide up humanity basing on facial appearances and body type. He came up with four categories; Europeans, Far Easterners, Lapps, and blacks (Mamdani & Mahmoud, 2001). Scientific racism was applied during the new imperialism period (1880-1914)and was used in justifying white European imperialism it aided in supporting the classification of human population into physically discrete human race claimed to be either superior or inferior more so, in historical context of 1880 to 1930,after the second world war (1939-1945)scientific racism was officially dealt with in theory and action majorly in UNESCO antiracist statement "the race question"1950 this statement acknowledged the existence of different human races.