Reply #141: Caucasians [View All]

[subcomhd]

The term Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid<1>) has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.<2> Historically, the term has been used to describe the entire population of these regions, without regard necessarily to skin tone. In common use, the term is sometimes restricted to Europeans and other lighter-skinned populations within these areas, and may be considered equivalent to the varying definitions of white people.<3>

The concept of a Caucasian race is highly controversial today. It is rejected by many academics and political activists who view any system of categorizing humanity based on physical type as an obsolete 19th Century racism,<4> and human genome studies have shown that there is no single and simple genetic definition equivalent to "Caucasian".<5>However the term continues to be widely used in many scientific and general contexts, usually with its more restricted sense of "white".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race