It is among us common folk. Try having a normative chat about race with someone and tell them white is not a race.
I have done that for decades. I even steadfastly refused to put my race into the 5 categories that a CHP tried to coerce me into doing back in the 1990s when I was getting a traffic ticket. I explained to him that my "race" was not on his outdated multi-choice quiz which was based on psuedo-science. I said he could either choose to mark "Other" and write in"Mutt" or just leave it blank. He certainly wasn't pleased, had to radio his superior but in the end I never had to put an incorrect 'race' on my ticket.
Most people (at least thoughtful ones I usually engage in discussions), recognize that "white" is neither a race nor an ethnicity. I never once had a problem discussing it. But then again, I wasn't talking to the Tea Party/Trump types. Also this underlying logic is flawed: just because some people might be ignorant doesn't change reality. There was a time when you could say "try having a normative chat about the world not being flat..." Its a invalid argument.
Already explained this one as well.
"One reason we keep using the term “Caucasian” is that the U.S. legal system made use of Blumenbach’s taxonomy. As early as 1790 the first naturalization law was passed, preventing foreigners who were not white from becoming citizens. But according to Mukhopadhyay, Blumenbach’s category of “Caucasian” posed a problem because his classification of white also included some North Africans, Armenians, Persians, Arabs, and North Indians. The definition of Caucasian had to be reinvented to focus the ideological category of whiteness on northern and western Europe. The term, even though its exact definition changed over time, was used to shape legal policy and the nature of our society.
A second reason the term has had staying power is that, as new immigrants began to stream into the country in the 20th century, political leaders and scientists supported a
new racial science called eugenics that built on 19th-century notions of race. Eugenicists divided Caucasians into four ranked subraces: Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, and Jew (Semitic). I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that the Nordics were ranked highest intellectually and morally. These rankings were used by our government to design and execute discriminatory immigration laws that preserved the political dominance of Nordics, who were largely Protestant Christians.
Today, the word “Caucasian” is still used in many official government documents, and it continues to carry a kind of scientific weight. For example, it is found in social science and medical research, and is used by some colleges and universities in their data collection and distribution of student, staff, and faculty statistics. In Mukhopadhyay’s research, she sampled government websites and official documents and was surprised to learn how many government offices, including the U.S. Census Bureau, still use the word.
So “Caucasian” became entrenched in our legal, governmental, scientific, and social lives. And although the U.S. government reluctantly denounced or at least played down racial science after the atrocities of Adolf Hitler’s regime were fully exposed at the end of WWII, the term has not been discarded.
What can we do to change it? We need to acknowledge that the word “Caucasian” is still around and that its continued use is problematic. We should use terms that are more accurate, such as “European-American.” Doing so would at least be consistent with the use of descriptive terms like “African-American,” “Mexican-American,” and others that signify both a geographical and an American ancestry."
https://www.sapiens.org/column/race/caucasian-terminology-origin/
eliminationist
but your point doesn't change the fact its outdated and inaccurate terminology that will eventually be retired.