I was filling out an order form for a baby doll for my daughter a few days ago and was being asked to select the ethnicity. The choices were American Indian, African-American, Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic.

As I was looking at this list I started wondering if I should be offended at the use of the term Caucasian.

White people have always been called white, but on forms we use the word Caucasian to refer to light-skinned people that can trace their ancestry back to Europe, but more specifically the Caucasus region.

The Caucasian mountains are located between Iraq and Russia and I am not from Caucasus and as far as I know, no one in my family tree was ever from Caucasus.

Nowadays we refer to people of African heritage as blacks or African-Americans, but when it comes to a form, isn’t their ethnicity just plain African? The form doesn’t say Caucasian-American or Asian-American so why does it say African-American?

Also, whereas I might prefer not to be associated with people that come from a mountain region north of Iraq, as far as I know, blacks are proud of their African heritage.

I think forms should either list people based on their ancestral heritage like Caucasian, African, Hispanic and Asian, or use a color code like black, white, yellow or brown. Otherwise it’s just plain inaccurate.

What does an African or a black person from Europe check when they are required to select ‘race’ on a form in this country? They aren’t African-Americans unless they live in America.

To complicate things even more, interracial marriages are becoming more common all the time, so if you’re father is black and your mother is white or your mother is Hispanic and your father is black, what would you check?

I guess the real question is, why do we have to select our race on any forms in this country in the first place? Sure, if you’re ordering a doll for your daughter for Christmas and you’re black you might want to order a black doll, but in any other case I don’t see the point. If you’re applying for a job, you should get the job based on your qualifications and not your ethnicity.

One last thing. How come I never see ‘Arab’ on a form? Are they considered African-Americans too?

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