[Disclaimer] - I am not an American and I consider myself atheist, I am Caucasian and born in a pre-dominantly Christian country.

Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.

And I was always wondering how come Republicans are perceiving themselves as devout Christians while the political party they support is openly opposing those virtues and if this doesn’t make them hypocrites?

For them the mortal enemy are the lefties who are all about social justice, helping the vulnerable and the not so fortunate and peace.

Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.

  • xorEnglish
    4•4 months ago

    You’re right about where the Caucasus is, but the generally accepted meaning - both in the US and Europe - is white European ancestry, not just those from the Caucasus.

    • @crispy_kilt@feddit.de
      2•4 months ago

      I am from Europe, and fluent in several European languages. In all of those Caucasian means person from the Caucasus. The usage to mean European is exclusively an USA thing.

      • xorEnglish
        2•4 months ago

        Thank you for your assumption that I am not, in fact, European.

        However, given I’m from one of the few European countries that speak English as their primary language, I can categorically say you’re wrong.

        • @crispy_kilt@feddit.de
          2•4 months ago

          Alright, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Link me to a dictionary of your country’s version of English that lists “caucasian” with the exclusive meaning of “European or descendent of Europeans”, or something to that effect.

            • @crispy_kilt@feddit.de
              2•4 months ago

              Not a dictionary, thus not a credible source.

              Let me help you out:

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

              “The Caucasian race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. […] In the United States, the root term Caucasian is still in use as a synonym for white or of European, Middle Eastern, or North African ancestry, a usage that has been criticized.”

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

              I understand why you might think Caucasian to mean something else despite person from the Caucasus despite being European: the US version of English is influential, due to the size of the country and the popularity of their media. Some British people have started saying “TV series” instead of “programme”, for example, due to the influence of the US. You probably heard and read the adjective almost always in the incorrect US usage, because a) other nations don’t obsess over ethnicity and b) the actual Caucasus not exactly being a common topic in the media. Hence, when you do hear the word, it is used the way the USA does, incorrectly.

              • xorEnglish
                3•4 months ago

                I additionally linked to the specifically British edition of Collins as well for your benefit, which is, in fact, a dictionary. Seriously, trust me, if you go up to 5 Brits and ask them what Caucasian means, they will almost certainly all answer “white”.

                Wikipedia, also, is not a dictionary.

                It’s also pretty damn rude to classify the American usage as “incorrect”, you’re not the arbiter of what “real” English is.

                • @crispy_kilt@feddit.de
                  2•4 months ago

                  Well, they’re wrong. The Caucasus is where Georgia, Armenia and other countries are. Caucasians are people from the Caucasus.

                  Another academic source: “White, European, Western, Caucasian, or what? Inappropriate labeling in research on race, ethnicity, and health.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1509085

                  There is more: “Though discredited as an anthropological term and not recommended in most editorial guidelines, it is still heard and used, for example, as a category on forms asking for ethnic identification. It is also still used for police blotters (the abbreviated Cauc may be heard among police) and appears elsewhere as a euphemism. Its synonym, Caucasoid, also once used in anthropology but now dated and considered pejorative, is disappearing.”

                  https://books.google.com/books?id=_hZHAAAAMAAJ

                  The United States National Library of Medicine discontinued usage in favor of the more narrow geographical term European, which traditionally only applied to a subset of Caucasoids. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd03/nd03_med_data_changes.html

                  • xorEnglish
                    1•4 months ago

                    What happened to “show me one dictionary”?

                    Looks like your goalposts have grown legs.

                    So, the common usage in both the country with the greatest number of English speakers AND the country the language originated in is incorrect? Because crispy_kilt says so?

                    Language is a socially negotiated system, so what the word means to the people who use it is what the words mean.

                    That paper is about what terminology should be used in academic work, who gives a fuck for people talking on lemmy?

                    The scale of annoyingness:

                    Pedants -> incorrect pedants -> incorrect pedants who insist they’re right, regardless of the evidence in front of them

                    ----------------------------------------------------| you are here