It always amazes me when US Americans talk in terms of human races like it's the most normal thing in the world. And no, “Cummings“ is not a “Caucasian name“ (whatever that is supposed to mean), it's an English name. I don't want sound too harsh, it's just that as a Central European with all our recent history, things like this really rub me the wrong way.
There are a number of these things, though. I personally get a little irritated with the way many people here use terms like "Hispanic" to contrast with "white people". To me, "Hispanic" is a wide spectrum of ethnicities but really more of a linguistic, cultural and national/political specifier, with lots of overlap with "white". People who are trying to be correct about this will pull out complicated phrases like "non-hispanic whites" which may be correct but are also clumsy, reflecting the absurdity of the way we categorize this country's social boundaries in the first place. "White" itself has had a fluid definition in the US over time, previously having excluded southern or eastern Europe, Jews, or even the Irish.
I know that in my own recent ancestry I have at least 4 European ethnicities, some of which would have been ridiculed by other Americans in the past. But this nuance washes away and I am a "white guy" which lumps me together with cultures I don't particularly identify with. There is no sense in denying, for example, that I am less discriminated against by appearance than other groups. But I do not think either that there is one homogeneous "white people" living in the United States.
Therefore I find it pretty odd that in the USA the idea of a uniform European "ethnicity" - largely defined by skin color! - is still very common and even officially practiced. I remember how I had to fill a form when entering the USA which asked for my "ethnicity". I was flabbergasted and just ticked "unknown" or something like that because I didn't want to identify myself as "Caucasian".
Every form I can remember seeing in the US that asks whether you are Hispanic says that it includes people of any race.
So how do you like this election season?
Yes, that is the "correct" thing that goes on the form, written by people who have bothered to look into this question. It isn't how people talk in casual speech.
I personally do not. Nor do those forms you are talking about. But it something I hear a lot out in the world.
I question the wisdom of telling native speakers that their language uses a word wrong/that doesn’t mean what “they assume it means”. Stuff in AE (and other language) means exactly what AE speakers (and speakers of other languages) assume it means.
Cau·ca·sian /kôˈkāZHən/ NORTH AMERICAN white-skinned; of European origin.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portable_radio_SCR536.png
Because that's exactly how some people teach the definition to mean.[0] I've always been told that to the people in Persia, the people that came across the Caucasus were much more pale skinned. Teachings also say those same people helped populate Europe. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people
Yes, but it has been completely abandoned by the scientific and political mainstream for decades now. Using the word "Caucasian" will definitely give you some strange looks ;-)
> You're not wrong though, we should use White European instead since that's what it means today.
I agree, because it would make it clear what it is really about: lumping people together by their skin color. This is one of those examples where PC speech only helps to hide a problem instead of solving it.
Namely: Why would it be called "white EUROPEAN" when basically none of the people it is applied to are European in any reasonable sense of the word? They may have great-great-great-grandparents who were European, but that does not make them European.
Americans do this all the time - they call themselves "german", "irish", or "italian", even when they are not born there, do not speak the language, have never even visited the country, and have zero exposure to the culture of that country.
In America, a nation of immigrants, people are often proud of where their family came from. This can trickle down a few generations. There is an increasing number of people that identify as "American" instead of where their family originally immigrated from, particularly in Appalachia and the South, so this could eventually change.
I understand the frustration from a European point of view, but I just wanted to provide some context to the phenomenon.
Even when that’s true—-and it often isn’t--they usually mean that they’re part of a specific American subculture.
Italian-Americans, for example, traditionally celebrate Christmas Eve with a “Feast of the Seven Fishes.” This dinner isn’t traditional in Italy, but it’s also not common in other American cultures either. An Irish-American family might have a turkey instead but they’re more likely to “observe” St. Patrick’s Day by eating soda bread and corned beef.
It's a weird mindset, and it's definitely tied in to the toxic streak of white supremacy that runs through all of American culture.