WHAT’S RACIST TODAY: The Word ‘Caucasian’
A Stanford researcher has declared her fellow scientists’ use of the word “Caucasian” to be racist.
WHAT HAPPENED
In an article published last month in Nature, a top scientific journal, Alice Popejoy argued that “too many scientists apply the term, either unbothered by or unaware of its roots in racist taxonomies used to justify slavery — or worse, adding to pseudoscientific claims of white biological superiority.”
- According to Popejoy, a postdoctoral fellow studying biomedical data sciences, saying “Caucasian” gives scientific heft to what is really a socially constructed racial group.
- “Decades of analyses have shown that ‘racial groups’ are defined by societies, not by genetics,” she said.
- “Only the privileged have the luxury of opining that this is not a problem. As a white woman, I too have blind spots that need constant examination.”