Rush Defines ‘White’

Erik Rush, the right wing nutjob who thinks all Muslims should be killed and that America suffers from an excess of “negrophilia,” says that the Tsarnaev brothers, who are literally caucasian (that is, from the Caucasus), aren’t really white.

When the suspects were finally identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the press immediately pronounced them “white.” A collective “A-HA!” of vindication rose on the airwaves and in cyberspace, as though all of America had somehow been certain that “brown people did it.”

Although the brothers Tsarnaev are technically “Caucasian” in the sense that their home country, Chechnya, lies in the North Caucasus mountains of Russia, they aren’t what has been considered “white” in the Western world for centuries. Generally speaking, people who fall into that category are those descended from forebears in Northern and Western Europe, Scandinavia and the British Isles, inasmuch as Southern Europeans, some Eastern Europeans, Eurasians and even the Irish have historically suffered discrimination under the former in the West.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are Eurasian.

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” — Humpty Dumpty