"

Caucasoid

Is it really necessary to mention that some Uyghurs are fair-skinned and have Caucasoid traits? It sounds a bit like Nazi ""science"" to me... Luis Rib

Well, they do have such traits. You can phrase it a bit differently if you like.  ]] 02:24, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

It wouldn't be necessary if we lived in a world in which race (whether considered a real or constructed category) was irrelevant. Unfortunately, that's not the case. The ethnic characteristics of Uyghurs play an important role in discussions of the relationship between Uyghurs and Han Chinese and thus how ""Chinese"" Xinjiang is or should be. In order to understand the politics of Uyghur/Chinese relations, it's important to know that these characteristics are commonly discussed.  20:20, 2 February 2006 
(UTC)

Why Caucasoid traits? These traits are probably more Semitic than Caucasoid. 86.166.123.12  

The more we try to parse this issue the thornier it gets. Read the Caucasian race entry in Wikipedia and see if you can find any way to separate Semitic from Caucasoid. The entire concept of race is in dispute, and regardless of how people ordinarily discuss differences, an encyclopedia ought to try to avoid such uninformed hypotheses in its entries. It might be better to describe, for example, a people as having blue eyes and fair skin and lacking the epicanthic fold, as well as being largely Muslim, than to try to categorize them by ""race,"" and so I'd agree that dropping ""Caucasoid"" would be smart. After all, much of the European population has at least some Mongolian ancestry, as do Iranians, Turks, Central Asians, and so on - and Uyghurs are certainly included in this distribution regardless of their ""Caucasoid traits."" And if you go back far enough, I suppose the entire world population has African ancestry. You can see how this can become like an argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and has no place in an encyclopedia that is trying to be authoritative and factual.  

"