Caucasian
The word caucasian is used widely and commonly to describe white people, although it is historically inaccurate. It is highly unlikely that most white people came out of the Caucasus region in Eurasia. In the eighteenth century, German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach created a racial classification with five categories (Caucasian, the "white" race; Mongolian, the "yellow" race; Malayan, the "brown" race; Ethiopian, the "black" race; and American, the "red" race), with caucasian being the most pure and ideal. His research implied that race was scientific and that caucasian was the super race. Time has shown that Blumenbach’s theory that the caucasian skull was the oldest and most “beautiful” was inaccurate, but for some reason the word caucasian continued to be used, although all other classifications were discarded.
Clearly, the term had more social, rather than biological implications as it's definition changed over time to exclude certain groups. Eventually a new racial science called eugenics was developed in the nineteenth century, which divided caucasians into four subgroups to further distinguish a superior race (Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, and Jew/Semitic), which were eventually used to discriminate against several groups, including the Jewish population of western Europe during the second world war. The word caucasian is a racially-charged word with implications of white supremacy and superiority deeply embedded into its history.
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