When I was a child, I assumed my family had migrated to America from some place called “Caucasia.” I was imprinted with the idea while I was composing my memoirs on a yellow, Big Chief tablet with a No. 2 pencil.
My second grade teacher had assigned the project to the class and had provided a list of details that had to be included. One of the important pieces of information was my race. I had no idea how to answer, so I consulted the Google search engine of the era, my mother.
“We are Caucasian,” she told me with the same surety of tone she used when she presented the Ten Commandments to me as the rules for my life. But, just as I could only figure out the meaning of three of “God’s rules” when she read them to me from the King James version of the Bible, the word “Caucasian” left no mental picture.
Nevertheless, I licked the tip of the big, yellow pencil with the chewed-off eraser and slowly printed the word into the definition of “me.”
Over the next nine years of filling out school forms, right up until I applied for a beginner driver’s permit when I turned 16, I proudly declared my Caucasian race. In fact, the ancestors of all but one kid in my class evidently had migrated to American from “Caucasia” at some point.
While classmates had skin tones that varied from a pale pink to a ruddy bronze to a medium walnut, we were all the same race — except for one girl who was designated “Negro.”
Following my sprouting understanding of word forms, I assumed she had come from some place called “Negroia” — probably an ancient civilization next door to “Caucasia.” She could offer me little clarity, however. She said her grandmother told her the whole family was “colored” (although grandma did not specify what color) and they originally came from Tennessee. Her older brother, she said, was insisting he was “black,” even though his skin was lighter than the Caucasian boy with the medium walnut color.
Imagine my surprise when I decided to look up my ancestral homeland in the 28-volume Encyclopedia Britannica in the corner of the school’s study hall. “Caucasia” did not exist. The only close reference was to to the Caucasus Mountain region in West Asia between the Black and the Caspian seas.
The word “Caucasian” did pop up, however. Evidently the term was first coined by the German philosopher and would-be anthropologist Christoph Meiners in 1785 as he claimed all human beings can be divided into two races — “Caucasian” and “Mongoloid.” He said the Caucasian race is “the beautiful race” and the Mongoloid race is “the ugly race.”
He was kind enough to include Hebrews, Arabs, Egyptians, Indians, Spaniards, Italians and a few others in his beautiful race, but added that Germans were at the top of the racial heap — since they had the “whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin.” He said non-German Europeans were OK, but called them less favorable “dirty whites.”
German and Anglo-Saxon immigrants to America sort of liked the whole concept, so in our nation’s early days the word to describe anyone who had come here from Europe was deemed to be “Caucasian,” often used interchangeably with “white.”
Meiners pretty well left the people in sub-Sahara Africa out of the whole classification process. At that time, “the beautiful race” in Europe was still clinging to the idea that those “dark people” were not actually a part of the human species at all, therefore, capturing them and shipping them to America and elsewhere as slaves was not a problem for Caucasians, Mongoloids or even God.
As time went on, however, other philosophers and would-be scientists added those folks in a third classification called “Negroid.” They, of course, were listed even lower on the scale than the “Mongoloid” race.
By the time I was in high school, I had abandoned the idea that I am Caucasian — regardless of what Mom taught me right alongside the Ten Commandments. As the years moved on, I also came to the realization that I am not “white.”
What I am is Homo sapiens — a little of this and a little of that — and (according to recent DNA studies) even a little bit Neanderthal. People the world over are so much more the same than they are different that the whole concept of race is bogus and tragic.
If I were writing that second grade memoir again, I would lick the lead on my big, yellow pencil with the chewed-off eraser and scrawl “human” on the Big Chief tablet. That should be enough to describe anyone and everyone.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. His weekly column appears on the Opinion page each Sunday. Contact him at editorial@therepublic.com.
