Following Petrus Camper`s theory of visual angle, Blumenbach and Cuvier classified the breeds according to their collections of skulls according to their cranial characteristics and anthropometric measurements. Caucasoid features have been recognized as: a thin nasal opening (“narrow nose”), a small mouth, viewing angles of 100-90° and orthognathism, exemplified by what Blumenbach saw in most ancient Greek skulls and statues. [53] [54] Later anthropologists of the 19th and early 20th centuries such as James Cowles Prichard, Charles Pickering, Broca, Paul Topinard, Samuel George Morton, Oscar Peschel, Charles Gabriel Seligman, Robert Bennett Bean, William Zebina Ripley, Alfred Cort Haddon, and Roland Dixon recognized other Caucasoid morphological features such as prominent supraorbital ridges and acute nasal threshold. [55] Many anthropologists in the 20th century William Clouser Boyd, Reginald Ruggles Gates, Carleton S. Coon, Sonia Mary Cole, Alice Mossie Brues, and Grover Krantz replaced the term “Caucasian” because it was no longer used. [56] The Census Bureau`s definition of race—according to which it identifies itself and is based on social groups—differs from Blumenbach`s in that it is remarkably unscientific. And he supports the now widely accepted claim that race is not something backed by science. Genetically, someone cannot belong to the white race or the Caucasian race. People do not belong to the Mongolian race. They belong to a species. According to the National Institute for Human Genome Research, the human genome is 99.9% identical. Beyond the Caucasus, the Census Bureau has its own definition of race — “a person`s self-identification with one or more social groups” — and asks respondents to choose from their own categories: “White, Black or African American, Asian, Alaskan Indian and American American, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander.” The census also allows respondents to vote for “another race.” The “North Caucasus breed” is a detachment proposed by Carleton S. Coon (1930).
[66] It includes the indigenous population of the North Caucasus, the Balkars, the Karachays, and the Vainakhs (Chechens and Ingush). [67] [68] The division of people into races, whatever Blumenbach`s intentions, continues to this day. The term “Caucasian” is still used occasionally, and not just in bad TV crime series. Historically, the racial classification of Turkic peoples was sometimes given as “Turanids”. Turanid breed type or “small breed”, subtype of the Europid (Caucasian) breed with mixtures, located at the border of the distribution of “large breeds” and Europids. [61] [62] Although Blumenbach noted that the “many varieties of man as they are now known as one and the same species”, his work was nevertheless considered scientific credibility for the concept of biological race. Over the years, this term has been misused to separate groups of people (often by skin color) and to explain the superiority of one race over others by a certain bastardization of science. The classifications of the peoples of India in the 19th century were initially uncertain whether the Dravids and Sinahalese were Caucasoid or a separate Dravid race, but by the 20th century they were considered cauvas. In the nineteenth century, anthropologists stated that the Dravids were mainly Caucasoid. [58] [59] [60] “There is no scientific justification for using this term,” says Joseph Graves, professor of nanoengineering and interim dean of the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering in Greensboro, North Carolina. “[Caucasian] is actually a 19th century anthropological idea based on a misconception that the origin of the human species was in the Caucasus.” “I think it has to do with Eurocentric racial ideology. People want to keep the special designation illustrated by this term “Caucasian”. In addition to its use in anthropology and related fields, the term “Caucasian” has often been used in a different social context in the United States to describe a group commonly referred to as “white.” [71] “White” also appears as an entry in the U.S. Census. [72] Naturalization as a U.S. citizen was limited to “free white persons” by the Naturalization Act of 1790 and later extended to other resident populations by the Naturalization Act of 1870, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), the Supreme Court ruled that East Indians were not eligible for citizenship because, although they were anthropologically considered “Caucasians,” they were not of European descent, as most secularists did not consider them “white.” This was a departure from the Supreme Court`s earlier opinion in Ozawa v. United States, in which it had expressly approved two cases in lower courts in which “high-caste Hindus” were classified as “free white persons” under the Naturalization Act.Government lawyers later realized that the Supreme Court had “revoked” this permit in the Thend case. [73] In 1946, the U.S. Congress passed a new law establishing a small immigration quota for Indians, which also allowed them to become citizens. However, major changes to immigration law did not take place until 1965, when many earlier restrictions on racial immigration were lifted. [74] This has led to confusion about whether Hispanic Americans are classified as “white,” as the term Hispanic originally applied to Spanish heritage, but has since spread to all people from Spanish-speaking countries. In other countries, the term Hispanic is rarely used. Every once in a while, in one of those mind-blowing, stereotypical police procedures on television, you hear the description of a suspect who seems to have moved from the 1950s. The taxon is thought to consist of a number of subtypes. Caucasian peoples were generally divided into three groups for ethnolinguistic reasons, called Aryan (Indo-European), Semitic (Semitic languages) and Hamitic (Hamitic languages, i.e.
Berber-Cushitic-Egyptian). [57] But Caucasians, as first identified by German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and as some still think of the group today, claim much more real estate than that. “The suspect is a 6-foot, 180-pound Caucasian male, white T-shirt, jeans… In the eighteenth century, the prevailing opinion among European scholars was that the human species originated in the Caucasus region. [22] This view was based on the fact that the Caucasus was the place of the alleged landing point of Noah`s ark – from which the Bible says humanity descended – and the place of suffering of Prometheus, who, in the myth of Hesiod, had created humanity from clay. [22] Coon argued that Caucasoid features originated before the Cro-Magnons and were present in the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids. [45] However, these fossils and the Predmost specimen were considered Neanderthal derivatives because they had short cervical vertebrae, a lower and narrower pelvis, and some features of the Neanderthal skull.
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