Canadian Psychology 2009, Vol 50, No 2, 91–97 © 2009 Canadian Psychological Association 0708-5591/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0014393 Psychology Without Caucasians Thomas Teo York University Based on historical, theoretical, and empirical reflections, it is argued that the Caucasian theory and term are obsolete in psychology Discussing the historical origins of the term in Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s writings and the key elements to his theory, it is shown that his theory has found no corroboration and has been falsified through scientific research Discussing current theories of the origin of humanity in Africa, the original skin colour, and the issue of degeneration, it is argued that the end of the Caucasian term in the discipline of psychology is not about political but scientific correctness The reception of the term in different cultural contexts is reconstructed The idea that Caucasian refers to a specific group and has no theoretical but purely descriptive meanings is rejected, as is the idea that a common sense term is a justification for scientific concepts Suggestions for a more adequate terminology when referring to human groups are provided Keywords: race, racism, conceptual clarity, history, theory In this article, I challenge the problematic usage of the term Caucasian in psychology I present the original theory underlying this term; that is, the assumptions and elements of the Caucasian theory, all of which are shown to be false or misleading I also address the continued usage of the term in North America and the reasons for the term’s success Although there have been publications pointing to the racialized history of the theory and concept of a Caucasian (Augstein, 1999; Baum, 2006; Bhopal, 2007; Hannaford, 1996), psychologists still use this term in their empirical studies A general PsycINFO search of the term Caucasian yielded over 5,000 results for works that used the term in their abstracts (and nearly 500 works were listed as using the term in their abstracts in 2007) A closer look reveals that the term is mostly used to describe participants But using a term that refers to a cultural-historical construction that has no scientific basis is problematic The precision of terms is important in psychology and, from a methodological point of view, it is crucial to move away from falsified ideas The argument that everyone knows what the term Caucasian means should be challenged, too, because semantics in North America (in Europe the term fell out of fashion, see below) does not make for a scientific concept On the contrary, the task of science includes challenging false beliefs Early empiricists such as Francis Bacon (1561–1626) were aware of the problem of precision in language Indeed, the term Caucasian is a prime example for Bacon’s (1965) Idols of the Marketplace (errors in human knowledge stemming from the use of language and leading to confusion in human thinking) Following Bacon it is also argued that the term Caucasian hinders an understanding of human diversity If one were to compare this situation (use of the term Caucasian) to chemistry, then it would mean that chemists still operate with the term phlogiston to explain the flammability of objects Yet, it would now be considered scientifically incorrect to use phlogiston theory in chemistry journals Of course, this argument has been made by Montagu (1964), who suggested that “race is the phlogiston of our time” (p xii) and that it would have the same historical fate However, the present article is not targeting the concept of race, recognising that there is no final consensus on the concept, despite the American Anthropological Association’s (1998) Statement on Race.1 Instead of predicting the future of race, the present argument focuses on the Caucasian idea, for which there is a general agreement that it is an outdated and falsified theory without scientific credibility Psychologists no longer use term Aryan or Nordic to designate human populations These terms, which have the same scientific status as the term Caucasian, have disappeared for scientific and political reasons It should be pointed out that the following arguments are not about, as it is sometimes called, political correctness (a term that requires an academic analysis itself); rather, they are about scientific incorrectness For the following discussion it is important to differentiate two issues: (a) the Caucasian theory, which operates with certain assumptions, and (b) the Caucasian term Using the term does not necessarily entail an understanding or even awareness of the Caucasian theory However, it is argued that the Caucasian term cannot be separated from This statement suggests that human populations are not biologically distinct groups; that most physical variation lies within traditionally defined racial groups; that there is greater variation within racial groups than between them; that humanity is a single species; that attempts to divide human biological populations into races are arbitrary; that race is more of a sociocultural than a physical idea that has its roots in colonialism; that the ideology and a worldview of race functioned as a rationalization of practices against conquered groups; that race is a myth about the diversity of humanity; that beliefs about different racial capabilities and behaviors are unscientific folk beliefs; and that inequalities between so-called racial groups are the product of political-economic circumstances but not a consequence of biology Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Thomas Teo, Department of Psychology, History and Theory of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada E-mail: tteo@yorku.ca 91 TEO 92 the Caucasian theory, at least not in an academic discipline, and that the common sense (better: common understanding) usage of the term in a particular context does not legitimize it Historical Origin of the Caucasian Theory The idea of a Caucasian goes back to Christoph Meiners (1747– 1810) (see Baum, 2006) However, the idea received its influential theorization in the writings of the German physician, natural scientist, and physiologist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752– 1840), who suggested a five-race schema (varieties of human beings) in the third edition of his 1795 book On the Natural Variety of Humankind: Varietas Caucasia, Varietas Mongolica, Varietas Aethiopica, Varietas Americana, Varietas Malaica (Blumenbach, 1795, pp 285–296, 303–322; or ¶ 81, 82, 85– 89).2 He rejected Pieter Camper’s (1722–1789) idea that the measurement of facial angles (deviations from a main line) could explain the differences that he found in his own skull collection (¶ 61) Instead he suggested arranging the skulls without the lower jaw on a horizontal line on a table and studying them from the rear view (¶ 61) This approach would allow for the identification of those parts of the skulls that form national character: the direction of the mandibula (jawbone) and the ossium jugalium (zygoma), the width of the calvaria (skullcap), the flatness or elevation of the frontal bone, and so on Based on this method he argued that the middle skull in this arrangement, which for Blumenbach had the most symmetry and beauty, belonged to a Georgian woman Her Caucasian skull was described as beautiful, balanced, gently rounded with moderately leveled forehead, and narrow cheekbones (Blumenbach, 1798) The skull on her left was for Blumenbach a deviation from a balanced form and belonged to an Ethiopian (African) woman Her skull was elongated and appeared beak-shaped The skull on her right also deviated from perfect balance and belonged to a Mongolian (Caribou Tungusian) The skull of this individual was extended on the sides and appeared flattened According to Blumenbach, differences were not confined to skull shape but could also be observed regarding the shape of teeth, ears, breasts, genitals, limbs, feet, hands, and stature The Caucasian race received this name because of the mountain range Caucasus; because its neighbouring countries are inhabited “by the most beautiful human stock” (Blumenbach, 1798, p 213), the Georgian people; and because the “fatherland of the first human beings” can be found in this area (¶ 85) He emphasised that this variety had the most beautiful skull, a form that represented the middle between two extremes The white colour of the Caucasians was also the primordial “real colour of humanity” (p 214), because—according to Blumenbach—it was easier to explain the degeneration from white to black than from black to white The concept of beauty was not only justified by looking at features of the skull but also included aesthetic differences between national facial features (¶ 56) The Caucasian variety deserved in Blumenbach’s system the first position because he considers it the original (primordial) race (¶ 81) The Caucasian race was for Blumenbach the balanced race, with Mongolians and Ethiopians at the other ends, and Americans and Malays in between Whereas Americans were constructed as the middle between Caucasian and Mongolian varieties, Malays were considered to be the middle between Caucasian and Ethiopian varieties The Caucasians were of white colour, with red cheeks, black or brown hair, and round head (¶ 82) All Europeans with the exception of Lapps and Finns, western Asians unto the river Ob, the Caspian Sea, and the river Ganges, as well as the inhabitants of Northern Africa, belonged to the Caucasian variety Although Blumenbach (1798) discussed five human varieties, he emphasised the unity of humankind (p 203) The notion of unity as well as the location of the Caucasus could be accommodated to the accounts of the Bible However, this should not obscure the fact that he cemented an aesthetic hierarchy An assessment of the whole program suggests that his Caucasian theory consists of four elements: (a) Caucasians are the most beautiful people; (b) the original cradle of humanity is close to or within the Caucasus; (c) Caucasians are the original race with other races being degenerations; and (d) white was the original colour of humanity In terms of the (a) aesthetical component in his theory it should be noted that Blumenbach derived his arguments for the qualities of the Caucasian from a female skull This should not be understood as an emancipatory attempt to move away from male-dominated constructions of the nature of man Rather it becomes more understandable if one realises that he used aesthetic criteria, cultural-historically associated with women, for establishing his rankings Bindman (2002) points out that Blumenbach (and Camper) can be understood as examples of where “measurability is inextricably tied to aesthetics” (p 190) and that Blumenbach used beauty as a criterion to distinguish animals from humans If one applies that criterion to human varieties, if one assumes (problematically, of course) that humanity was originally beautiful and white, if one accepts the concept of degeneration, then indeed, one must conclude that degenerated varieties would be less beautiful Banton (1987) pointed out correctly that degeneration did not mean deterioration (see p 6) for Blumenbach Nevertheless, his system cemented the idea of white aesthetic superiority in the description of a Caucasian Clearly, from a current scientific point of view, aesthetic criteria can hardly be used to establish the origin of the human species and hierarchies Thus, the first element in his theory should be considered, from a theoretical (and not historical) perspective, as the basis of an unsound methodological approach Before I address (b) to (d), it is necessary to discuss different developments regarding the Caucasian theory in North America and in Europe The Cultural-Political Context of the Caucasian Theory To address the value of the Caucasian theory, it is not only important to understand its theoretical shortcomings but also its relevance Indeed, a number of eminent scientists and race theorists have taken up Blumenbach’s Caucasian theory and it has become an important category within many racialized systems and in scientific racism For example, in France, Georges Cuvier (1769 –1832) distinguished the three races of Caucasians, Mongolians, and Ethiopians in his famous Animal Kingdom (Cuvier, 1817) He repeated Blumenbach’s aesthetic and hierarchical argument: “La caucasique, a` laquelle nous appartenons se distingue par la beaute´ de l’ovale que forme sa teˆte; The Latin original and the German translation are used in this article For comparative purposes, Blumenbach’s paragraphs are listed PSYCHOLOGY WITHOUT CAUCASIANS et c’est elle qui a donne´ naissance aux peuples les plus civilise´s” (p 94) In the United States, Samuel George Morton (1799 –1851) attributed to the Caucasian race the highest intellectual abilities (see Gould, 1996) In Europe the Caucasian theory took a different path Racial thinking was not abandoned but replaced by the Aryan theory The Aryan theory had a linguistic and a more influential racial branch Canon Isaac Taylor (1829 –1901) argued, from a linguistic perspective, that the small clan of Aryans gave rise to the Sanskrit, Greek, and German languages He attributed the end of the “Caucasian hypothesis” (Taylor, 1888, p 239) to Sayce’s Principles of Philology from 1874 However, it is difficult to separate the linguistic and the racial arguments (see also Barkan, 1992) In Germany, the philologist Friedrich Max Muăller (18231900) emphasised that his concept of an Aryan race refers to people who speak an Aryan language (Muăller, 1892) Yet, he also argued that the Aryan race was the “race to which we and all the greatest nations of the world—the Hindus, the Persians, the Greeks and Romans, the Slaves [sic], the Celts, and last, not least, the Teutons, belong (Muăller, 1883, p 137) In England, the ethnologist James Cowles Prichard (1786 –1848) discussed Blumenbach’s Caucasians, but he was skeptical of considering Mount Caucasus as the birthplace of the Europeans (Prichard, 1845, p 133) Amongst other distinctions, his race divisions included Semitic and Arian races, to which he dedicated full sections in his book The Aryan theory was embraced and developed by JosephArthur de Gobineau (1816 –1882), a French social thinker and diplomat, who cemented the idea of the superiority of the Aryan race (Gobineau, 1854/1966) The British political thinker Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), praising German culture and naturalized in Germany during WWI, had a significant impact on Adolf Hitler’s (1889 –1945) Aryan theory In his book on Arische Weltanschauung, Chamberlain (1905/1938) identified an important feature of Aryan thinking: racial purity He praised classical Indian thinking as being void of the Semitic spirit, therefore pure (see p 38), and constructed the Semite as lacking true creativity, an argument that Hitler (1927/1999) would repeat Augstein (1999) argued that “the rise of Aryanism helped to prevent the Caucasian hypothesis from gaining ground in Europe” (p 73) But what were the sociohistorical reasons for that shift? European powers at the time did not rule a significant number of visible minorities within Europe—with one important exception: the more (traditional clothing) or less visible Jews and their long history of discrimination (see Hilberg, 1985) In addition, the ongoing wars and struggles between European powers made differences within that continent more relevant The Aryan theory, and later the Nordic theory, reflected these concerns For Grant (1916) the Nordic race was “the Homo europaeus, the White man par excellence” (p 150) He believed that the Alpine, Mediterranean, and Nordic races differ significantly in intellectual, moral, and physical characteristics, with Nordics being rulers, organisers, and aristocrats Nordicism emphasised the superiority of the Teutons within Europe (see Jackson & Weidmann, 2004) Although Germany in the second half of the 19th century had imperial ambitions and its thinkers published on the African soul (Grosse, 1997), the Aryan theory became the most relevant theory in problematizing the Jewish minority within Germany, and the Nordic theory became significant in justifying aggression within Europe, for example, in the rhetoric and practises against the Slavs 93 For Hitler (1927/1999), the “mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is represented by the Jew” (p 300), which was his main concern He also rejected the Germanization of Slavs in Austria and called it a blessing that Germany still possessed “great unmixed stocks of Nordic-Germanic people” that he considered “the most precious treasure for our future” (p 397) With the end of state-sponsored Nazi ideology in 1945 academic attempts to justify and to develop the Aryan or Nordic theory have disappeared No reasonable psychologist in Europe would consider a comparison between Aryans and Blacks, or Nordic-Germanics and Alpines although, so the argument could go, “we all know what an Aryan is.” The concept of the Aryan has no scientific credence as well as no political relevance In Europe, especially in the German-speaking context, academics not use the term Caucasian to designate Europeans as it was deconstructed already in the 19th century and there existed no political need to reintroduce the concept after 1945.3 Indeed, in many European languages the term Caucasian refers now to the peoples from Caucasus, and ironically, as Baum (2006) points out, Caucasians themselves, on the background of the end of the Soviet Union and the wars of independence in the Caucasian regions, have been racialized into being “black.” Why has the term survived in North America? Given the history of the United States, which included slavery, the justification for exploitation, and the lack of civil rights for African Americans (“separate but equal”), the major conflict regarding minorities concerned the Black population Even in the context of European immigration, when the idea of Nordic superiority played a role, when Aryan ideas were invoked, and when individuals like the eugenicists Madison Grant (1916) and Davenport (1917) shaped some of the scientific-racist discussions, the deep underlying concern was the role of the Black minority in the United States In addition, due to the assimilation to the English language and the lack of discriminatory criteria for identifying differences between European races, all Europeans could be conceived as Caucasians This sociohistorical reality helped sustain the concept of a Caucasian in the public sphere of North America after WWII (see also Baum, 2006) The idea of a Caucasian race, more or less combined with the idea of Caucasian superiority, has become common sense in North America— but common sense cannot function as a scientific justification for unscientific concepts and theories The Cradle of Humanity Blumenbach believed that the original cradle of humanity is close to or within the Caucasus, that Caucasians were the original race with other races being degenerations, and that white was the original colour of humanity What is the status of these assumptions? There is overwhelming evidence that the original location of humanity was in Africa or as Manica, Amos, Balloux, and Hanihara (2007) phrased it: “all studies point to Africa as the putative cradle of modern humans” (p 346) The scientific discordance lies somewhere else; it focuses on the time line when human ancestors moved out of Africa Dawkins (2004) emphasises that I did not find a single entry in PSYNDEX using the German term, 1977–2008; the term seems to be used sporadically in medical journals 94 “everybody agrees that our ancestors are from Africa if you go back far enough” (pp 56 –57) Yet, he also distinguishes between a “Young Out of Africa” and an “Old Out of Africa” theory (p 57) The former suggests that all living human beings came out of Africa less than a hundred thousand years ago and replaced existing populations that emerged from Africa in previous waves, hundreds of thousands years earlier For Wells (2002) all our ancestors lived in Africa about 50,000 years ago On the other hand, Templeton (2005) argues that the first wave of an out-ofAfrica expansion happened 1.9 million years ago, the second one 700,000 years ago, and the third one around 100,000 years ago The migrants from the last wave were mating with populations from earlier waves Despite these different scenarios it is clear that Africa as a location played the central role as the cradle of humanity and the Caucasus appears in no current accounts as the location of human origin There has been some emphasis on Central Asia as being an important site for a genetic marker (M9) that can be found in most European and Asian males (Wells, 2006), but even the most generous interpretation cannot allow this location to be reinterpreted to overlap with the Caucasus Indeed, Central Asia as an important geographic centre for Eurasian lineages could more easily be adapted to the Aryan theory As Barbujani and Goldstein (2004) phrased it regarding the peoples from Europe: “Modern Europeans are African immigrants” (p 119).4 Clearly, based on archeological, linguistic, anthropological, and genetic evidence, the second element of Blumenbach’s theory is empirically not corroborated It should be mentioned that the idea of three, four, or five basic races is questionable, and indeed, one could argue that this categorization is unsupported This holds true for morphological but even more importantly for genetic comparisons Lewontin’s (1995) pioneering research showing that there is more variation within than between traditionally defined races, and recent populations studies (Wells, 2002, 2006), corroborate the notion that traditional race distinctions are more than problematic More recently, Serre and Paăaăbo (2004) have shown that major discontinuities between “races” not exist However, it is possible to identify genetic markers than can be associated with certain populations More specifically, researchers and commercial enterprises can identify the Haplogroup within which an individual belongs based on an analysis of the Y-chromosome or the mitochondrial DNA (for male individuals, both may be used); but this does not confirm in any sense the concept of a Caucasian (or European) race Admittedly, there is dissent regarding the success of the deconstruction of the traditional concept of race (see interpretations regarding the studies by Rosenberg et al., 2002), but there is no support for the idea that Blacks degenerated from Whites Indeed, evidence suggests that it is the other way around: Europeans have African ancestry and in terms of colors, white could be considered a degeneration (to use Blumenbach’s terminology) from black and not vice versa Skin colour is usually explained by reference to climate, natural selection, and sexual selection More specifically a strong correlation between skin pigmentation and the intensity of ultraviolet radiation has been shown (Norton et al., 2007) The same researchers argue that the variation in skin colour should be understood as adaptation to different ultraviolet radiation conditions based on natural selection Analysing the specific mecha- TEO nism, they also argue that the lighter pigmentation of many Europeans and East Asians can be explained by independent genetic mutations Despite questions regarding the details of these processes, it must be concluded that sub-Saharan Africans had dark skin and that the original human beings were not white However, Jablonski and Chaplin (2000) argue that the protohominids’ integument may have been close to that of the current chimpanzee: Under the dark hair was a white or lightly pigmented skin (see p 58) In the evolution of hairlessness a change occurred “as the density of body hair decreased and the density of sweat glands increased, the need for protection of subepidermal tissues against the destructive effects of UV radiation, particularly UVB, also increased This protection was accomplished by an increase in melanization of the skin” (p 59) For the genus homo a “darkly pigmented integument occurred” (p 57) A sophist could argue that Blumenbach was right after all, but Blumenbach never envisioned the first beautiful white human beings as having a hairy ape-like appearance, as this would have offended his sense of beauty (see above) When it concerns humans the evidence seems clear: they were dark-skinned and that the light skin of the Europeans can be understood as an adaptive advantage within a particular context Comparing Blumenbach’s theory to current knowledge, researchers must conclude that an aesthetic justification for the superiority of the Caucasian is scientifically not feasible; that the idea of the Caucasus as the birthplace of humanity is false; that the notion that all other populations degenerated from Caucasians is fictitious; and that the assumption that the first humans were of white skin colour is not supported We can safely conclude that the Caucasian theory is falsified and that as a consequence the concept of a Caucasian should be labelled as unscientific Psychologists have no other choice but to abandon an outdated theory However, as philosophers of science know from Lakatos (1970), there exist various strategies to form a protective belt around a falsified theory In the case of the Caucasian it is the idea of common sense: English-speaking North American culture assumes that the term of the Caucasian is universally accepted Yet, common sense is no instrument for scientific correctness Caucasian as a Common Sense Term The idea that Caucasian is a legitimate term because “everyone” uses it in North America should be challenged The common sense philosopher Thomas Reid (1710 –1796) (1764/1997) argued that intuitively accessible general truths (i.e., common sense) are part of the constitution of all normal human beings and play an important role in obtaining knowledge of external objects and events Skeptical approaches and arguments that contradict common sense should be considered wrong He also pointed out that common sense does not depend on philosophy, or on critical theoretical reflection (as we would label it) Although Reid himself did not exactly have human taxonomic concepts in mind, it seems to be common sense in North America that the Caucasian is a real object The term’s embeddedness in English-speaking North Rather than stating, “you are a Caucasian” it would be more appropriate to state: “you are an African.” Indeed, we all should declare that “we are Africans.” PSYCHOLOGY WITHOUT CAUCASIANS American culture and linguistic pragmatics makes the concept self-evident, and individuals using the term take it for granted (see also Danziger, 1997) Challenges to the concept are resisted because “there is nothing wrong with a word” that everyone understands and uses However, I suggest siding here with Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), who argued that common sense is an ambiguous and contradictory concept, and that referring to common sense as a confirmation of truth would be “nonsense” (Gramsci, 1997, p 423) Scientific correctness cannot be obtained through collective pragmatics Still, it may be argued that the term does not have a theoretical meaning but is solely a descriptor or synonym for Europeans In this common sense and seemingly descriptive meaning the term is used by leading genetic scientists such as Craig Venter, one of the pioneers in mapping the human genome In a widely publicized article on disclosing Venter’s genomic DNA, Levy et al (2007) write (Venter was listed as the last coauthor): “The individual whose genome is described in this report is J Craig Venter a self-identified Caucasian male” (p 2114) But one should not blame natural scientists who appear to be ignorant about the history of race theory for using a problematic concept They are in good company with the social scientist Malik (2003) who is knowledgeable about the development of the idea of race but who also uses the term without quotation marks (referring to other researchers’ works) Baum, who comments on Cavalli-Sforza’s (a pioneer of population genetics) use of the term Caucasoid in his writings, concludes that it “reveals the degree to which racialist notions continue to shape scientific and popular understandings of human diversity” (p 214) The common sense argument, which is also a pragmatic argument, suggests that “we” all know what we mean by the term Caucasian— even if the underlying theory is wrong The first argument against this common sense proposition is that, even if a term or concept is used in public discourse, there is no scientific rationale to keep a falsified concept in psychology as an academic discipline Psychologists no longer use the concept of an elan vitale, even if one could make the argument that people bring different “energies” to their activities (whereby the term energy is equally problematic) If a layperson mentions that he or she observed a beluga whale, and that the fish was m long, we would correct the person by stating that whales are not fish The person might get away with the argument that everybody knows what is meant by using the word fish in everyday conversations, but it certainly would be unacceptable to use this scientifically incorrect term in academic journals The second argument against using Caucasian as a common sense term is that this word prescribes ways of false thinking It enforces the idea that the so-called Europeans form a large unified group when indeed the Europeans of 1492 or any other time consisted of a variety of populations, with different customs, languages, habits, and morphological features that are all shifting The concept of a Caucasian imposes uniformity where there is none and cements the idea that Caucasians form a meaningful racial unit It has been argued that it is important to keep to this notion for medical purposes I think it is fair to argue that large categorizations of humanity provide only a rough guide and in some instances actually prevent the examination of specific populations that are afflicted with certain diseases As Goldstein and Hirschhorn (2004) phrased it: “But in the context of disease and drug response, geographic ancestry is only a proxy for what we really want to know, which is the set of risk factors (and response predictors) carried by an individual” (p 1244) 95 A classic example of how thinking in traditional race groups is misleading is sickle cell anemia Once considered a racial disease, this description does not justice to empirical reality The sickle cell allele not only occurs amongst Blacks but also amongst individuals of the Western Mediterranean, in India, and in parts of the Middle East The illness does not coincide with race but with the habitat of the malaria parasite Resistance against the malaria parasite was a selective benefit (see Perry, 2007) As a consequence, Lewontin (2006) emphasises that it is more important to look at specific ancestry rather than traditional race or group identities He uses the example of thalassemia, an inherited blood disease, which can be found in high frequencies in individuals in certain parts of the Mediterranean, Arabia, and southeast Asia, with the highest frequency found in Nepal Because the disease is rare in most of Asia, traditional race categories such as “Asians,” according to Lewontin, would result in a failure to test for the disease Ioannidis, Ntzani, and Trikalinos (2004) conclude, based on their analyses of large-scale databases, that: “Literature claims for ‘racial’ differences in genetic risks should be scrutinized cautiously Some of them may be spurious interpretations of the data The available evidence is compatible with the hypothesis that genetic effects are usually consistent across human populations” (p 1316) Thusly, the term Caucasian prevents a look at specific populations (which themselves are only proxies), and more importantly, the term obfuscates the study of medical concerns at the individual level The third argument against a common sense term in psychology is based on developments regarding the internationalization of psychology By internationalization, I not mean the distribution of North American psychology to the rest of the world, but rather a move away from a centralized American to a genuine global psychology This international psychology involves a process of assimilation, by which North American psychology incorporates non-Western concepts into the discipline, but more importantly, it involves a process of accommodation, by which the very nature of American psychology changes based on ideas from around the world (see Brock, 2006) Internationalization in the context of the Caucasian concept involves moving away from a tradition that gives primacy to the common sense notions of one cultural group American psychology could attempt to convince the rest of the psychological world to use this very North American term, but it seems unlikely, based on the evidence, that the Caucasian term will receive international acceptance Conclusions and Implications The term Caucasian is unscientific from a historical, cultural, and biological point of view.5 The concept of a Caucasian is not only unscientific but perpetuates a division that goes back to the 18th century and cements thinking in large biological groups There is no reason, even based on common sense arguments, why The title of this article, Psychology Without Caucasians, is an allusion to Friedrich Albert Lange’s (1877/1950) proclaimed a psychology without a soul as the only promising research strategy in the discipline Beginning with Lange, and throughout the twentieth century, a consensus was reached in psychology’s mainstream such that concepts that could not be observed, or empirically validated, or logically/philosophically analyzed—thus, concepts that were metaphysical in nature—should not be used in a discipline with a scientific self-understanding Consequently, the concept of a soul was removed from the discipline’s research programs 96 psychology as a discipline should lessen the scientific status of its studies by using terms from a falsified theory The usage of the term Caucasian is also an example of what has been labelled the hermeneutic deficit of psychology (Teo, 2008): Experimental designs, operationalized variables, and data not automatically make a scientific study The term scientific involves operating with concepts that justice to the status of knowledge in the social and natural sciences One could argue that if there were no Caucasians, the term White or Black would also be obsolete I suggest that the pragmatics of the term Caucasian invokes an understanding of the term as a quasi-natural category, with a scientific history, whereas the pragmatics of the term White could imply that the term is used as a sociopolitical and not a biological category Indeed, Whiteness Studies emphasise the social construction of Whiteness (e.g., Cooks, & Simpson, 2007) and Whiteness becomes a sociopolitical term referring to people who are perceived as being white and therefore have certain privileges qua being white This definition includes the idea that the perception of whiteness may change according to cultural contexts The one-drop rule (the idea that one “drop of black blood” makes one black) in the United Sates differs from race classifications and discussions in Brazil (see Bailey & Telles, 2006) Mills (1997) went even further and argued that “Whiteness is not really a colour at all, but a set of power relations” (p 127) Clearly, the terms Black and White are nonsensical from a biological perspective, are embedded in racialized and racist traditions, and are incorrect in terms of their representations These terms are not sustainable for the long term, but there exists a difference in the pragmatics of language that is relevant to these terms Although linguistic pragmatics is not a justification for the usage of everyday terms in academic contexts, I suggest keeping the terms Black and White in North America in quotation marks or in Italics—when they are introduced as political categories without biological meaning This makes them equal to the term Caucasian (both are nonsensical) but different in terms of their application: white and black are understood as socially constructed categories that have no natural representation They cannot be found in the animal kingdom but only in a past in which racism has played a significant role in shaping the outlook of human societies These short reflections should make it evident how difficult the usage of scientifically correct terminologies is when it comes to the description of human groups or individuals Academic concepts relating to human groups are interlaced with political and everyday language meanings Following the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2001), I suggest being aware of the changes in terminology that happen repeatedly in the course of history I support being as specific as possible when it comes to the denotation of participants Thus, I agree with the Manual that suggests, for example, that one should refer to Vietnamese, Koreans, Pakistanis, and so on, instead of Asians However, I want to caution that this practise may become problematic, as it may underestimate variations and changes within these designations Although self-identification categories provide a fast solution to the problem, they should be treated with caution because participants may use the very terms that turn out to be scientifically incorrect In addition, it should be remembered that there can be no preordained system of ethnic group descriptions because various histories of various countries must be taken into TEO account: A system that may be relevant in contemporary Canada might not be useful in South Africa, and vice versa It remains to be seen whether advances in population genetics will allow for more precise biological identifications Is the usage of concrete markers (see Wells, 2002, 2006), such as a Haplogroup O3 (M122) for a lineage that can be traced to Neolithic Chinese rice farmers, more useful than traditional and self-identification systems? Given the history of recent migrations, group identity politics, and intermarriages, it will be difficult to separate the biological marker from the sociopolitical experience and identity For instance, a male individual identified as being from Haplogroup O3 (based on analysis of the Y-chromosome) might have grown up in Italy with an Italian mother, who herself can trace her maternal lineage back to Haplogroup I (analysing mitochondrial DNA), designating her as having ancestors probably from Northern Europe Then let us assume that the whole family migrated to Canada The objective biological markers may be very different from the person’s sociohistorical identity It should also be noted that the commercial practises of genetic ancestry testing might obscure or mislead the public about its limitations (see Bolnick et al., 2007) My concern is that the historical conditioning of thinking in races, including the thinking in Caucasians, will prevent a critical understanding of one’s biological ancestry that includes shifting practises of migration and intermarriage, but also notions of identity Re´sume´ En s’appuyant sur des re´flexions historiques, the´oriques et empiriques, nous avanc¸ons que la the´orie caucasienne ainsi que le terme sont de´suets en psychologie En discutant des origines historiques du terme dans les e´crits de Johann Friedrich Blumenbach et des e´le´ments cle´s de sa the´orie, il est de´montre´ que sa the´orie n’est pas appuye´e et a e´te´ falsifie´e au fil de la recherche scientifique En discutant des the´ories actuelles des origines de l’humanite´ en Afrique, de la couleur de la peau originale et de la question de de´ge´ne´ration, il est avance´ que l’abandon du terme caucasien en psychologie naıˆt d’un souci de conformite´ scientifique et non politique L’acceptation du terme dans diffe´rents contextes culturels est reconstruite L’ide´e que Caucase puisse re´fe´rer a` un groupe spe´cifique sans avoir de signification the´orique mais plutoˆt descriptive est rejete´e, tout comme l’ide´e selon laquelle un terme issu du sens commun constitue un concept scientifique Des suggestions visant une terminologie plus ade´quate pour re´fe´rer a` des groupes humains sont propose´es Mots-cle´s : race, racisme, clarte´ conceptuelle, histoire, the´orie References American Anthropological Association (1998) AAA statement on race American Anthropologist, 100, 712–713 American Psychological Association (2001) Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.) 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Blumenbach the balanced race, with Mongolians and Ethiopians at the other ends, and Americans and Malays in between Whereas Americans were constructed as the middle between Caucasian and Mongolian... Caucasian theory took a different path Racial thinking was not abandoned but replaced by the Aryan theory The Aryan theory had a linguistic and a more influential racial branch Canon Isaac Taylor... Europeans with the exception of Lapps and Finns, western Asians unto the river Ob, the Caspian Sea, and the river Ganges, as well as the inhabitants of Northern Africa, belonged to the Caucasian variety