Why is the government the only one asking about our race? In completing forms for private businesses I cannot recall a time when I was asked to provide my race. However every government form always asks me to choose one, with no option of choosing prefer not to answer. The most recent one had a category titled Caucasian/Latino. This got me wondering what Caucasian means, something I had never previously considered while dutifully checking that box while otherwise never being otherwise preoccupied by my race or others’.
In fact Wikipedia describes Caucasian as “an obsolete racial classification of human beings.”
Miriam Webster’s states that the term refers to those of or from what was historically known as the Caucus Region (think broadly modern day Russia and Turkey).
A Sapiens.org article states that “[t]he word “‘Caucasian’ is used in the U.S. to describe white people but it doesn’t indicate anything real.” The term itself actually has racist origins as it was purportedly derived by German anatomist Johann Blumenbach to describe God’s race as opposed to other “degenerate” classifications, and his theory was used in the U.S. to justify and institutionalize racism. (Why Do We Keep Using the Term Caucasians by Yolanda Moses, 2/1/17.)
Why is the U.S. government inquiring about race, either on any of its agency forms or in Census data? If we want to be non-racist let’s stop classifying based on shades of one’s skin color.
Notes From Real Life 