Published on Quora.com November, 2021

Quora has since deleted this answer as “Hate Speech” and is only viewable here. Your opinion on their judgment is welcome in the comments below.

Linda Keres Carter — I assimilated to the minority like the extinct one I’m from.

The Caucasians are people who live in the Caucasus mountains. They live in a very strategic location that has constantly been invaded by conquering hordes from all directions, raping, and pillaging as they go. As a result, the people living in the Caucasus are very good-looking people. (Who survives an invasion if not the good-looking women?) And, of course, they possess a great deal of genetic diversity.

In the early 1700s a German pseudoscientist, Blumenbach, developed what appears to me to be a fetish for the skull of one of these young women. She had been stolen as a little girl and sold into a Russian brothel. She died of syphilis around the age of 23. Her body was boiled down to release the bones from the flesh. Those bones were then sold to Blumenbach. So, even after she died, her owners were still making money selling her body.

Blumenbach then made his infamous panorama filled with drawings of skulls from around the world. He used her skull, which he tenderly referred to as ‘the most beautiful skull in the world,’ as the prototype for European phenotypes.

He was essentially flipping the meaning of the word ‘Caucasian’ to mean something enviable. This is not unlike what’s currently in play as black American teenagers have taken the big, bad ’N’ word and turned it into an endearment. At one point, my bi-racial, 8-year-old son beseeched me very sweetly, “Momma, are you my nigga’?” I was astonished at the sheer genius of this new usage. He belongs to a dynamically evolving culture that had enabled me to ensure that his initial association with that word was with unconditional mother love. What could I say except, “Of course, baby, I’ll always be your sweetheart.”

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Submission accepted by  Kim Sikoryak. Answer requested by Tomurcuk Yelman

COMMENTS

Linda Keres Carter  · 7mo

For some reason I can’t edit my own answer. I wanted to add my source for this. It’s my interpretation of a dissertation-level paper written by beloved American scholar, Nell Painter Why White People are Called Caucasian

I haven’t read the related book, “The History of White People,” The History of White People – Kindle edition by Painter, Nell Irvin. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com yet, but scanning through it, it has the same material. There’s a very extensive list of citations. The lady’s Harvard educated and highly esteemed. Last I heard, she’s now studying painting. One of those ever-curious minds. I love her. She’s always interesting. And you can tell she feels the same compassion for the enslaved girls from both Georgias — the Georgia in the US, and the Georgia in Eastern Europe.

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