Why Caucasian? | Teen Ink

Why Caucasian?

October 29, 2012
By happyjanelle BRONZE, Woodland Park, Colorado
happyjanelle BRONZE, Woodland Park, Colorado
4 articles 0 photos 0 comments

You’re walking around your town when suddenly you hear a cop following you. He’s talking into his walky-talky and he identifies you as ‘Caucasian’. Don’t you just want to turn around and scream I’m a white person! Or at the very least I’m a blonde haired, blue-eyed person who descended from Europeans? ‘Caucasian is a word that has no meaning in modern society. Some people who are “Caucasian” aren’t even aware of what that word means. It has no place in our vocabulary and must be eliminated.

The Webster Dictionary definition of Caucasian is as follows: “Of or relating to one of traditional divisions of human kind, covering a broad group of peoples from Europe, western Asia and parts.” It makes absolutely no sense that white people are identified as Caucasian. The word ‘Asian’ is in the definition; it even defines it as people who are from western Asia. Yet, when someone of Asian heritage is arrested they are described as “an Asian male”. So why are white Americans labeled as Caucasian instead of white?

My cousin works as a cop for the LAPD. His station received a call one day to a bad part of town. He went and arrested an extremely tweaked-out women and he reported her as a Caucasian female. She turned to him and slurred “What does Caucasian mean?” Some people aren’t even bright enough to know what that word even means. If the word isn’t used in their ever day slang they normally don’t have any idea what a word like Caucasian would mean. Using the word white would give everyone a basic term to use to describe their race.

If this word is removed from the English language white people everywhere will no longer struggle with grasping their ethnic background. White people need to be referred to as white a word that everyone can have a united front on. All other races are able to identify themselves either from their original place of origin or from their skin color. African-Americans are normally okay with being referred to as black because that is what their skin color is. Most Hispanics are even able to deal with as being called Mexican because they originated from Mexico. White people need that same reassurance. I mean would you want to be referred to as a c***-Asian?



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