It was just on an American blog, that I was asked of my ethnicity... It never had happened to me before. And this question is very strange for me as a German. We do not think in those categories. Or: if we did, we would belong to those Germans who did not learn from their own history. Ethnicity - this means race, doesn't it? So, what sense has it to proclaim someones's ethnicity on a blog? Well, if someone is wanted by the police it may help, sometimes, to mention his or her ethnicity - if this information could help to find the criminal. But: does it help at all? I wondered, that in German newspaper articles about crimninal intents in the United States the German journalists, sometimes, use to mention that the criminal was "Kaukasier" - the word-to-word-translation of caucasian. But in German language "Caucasians" are denizens of those of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which were located in the Caucasus Region of Central Eurasia! And it was astonishing for me, that large numbers of those people seemed to appear as being criminals in the States nowadays...   So I learnt that this was just a misunderstanding - Caucasians are not emigrants from the Caucasus Region - Caucasian is another expression for "White People". And on Tagworld and other blogs you are asked to mention this under "ethnicity" in your profile. So I searched through Wikipedia in order to get an explanation...  There I was told that "Caucasion" is not a matter of the color of my skin but a matter of form and size of my skull!!! To ease the classification for me, the authors show a Typical Caucasian Skullon the site. I am not a pathologist, but it looked like any other skull I ever saw in books or on an haloween party before. Standing in front of the mirror,, I am asking myself: Is this typically me? Must I cut off skin and flesh to get to know more? The Wikipedia authors, also, tell me that the ethnicity of caucasians includes all people, from white skinned ones with blond hair to brown skinned ones with black hair, what means: all people from scandinavian heritage to south indian background. Only African or Black Americans are not Caucasians, and American Native People or East Asians. Looking at my children - European mother, Black African father -, if they have the dark skin as a characteristic from their father and the Caucasian skull from their mother - in this case they are Black Caucasians, aren't they? I must tell you: all of this seems to be very, very suspect for me. My mother experianced in her childhood during in Nazi-Germany that her classmates used to call her names, and denounced her to the headmaster of the school because she was "looking like a jewish girl" - not all that tall, dark skin, dark eyes, black hair, form of nose and face, more over being named Lydia... Therefore she was forced to stand in front of the class, while her biology teacher measured her head and her body. And that teacher abased and safed her from being extradited to the authorities, at the same time, by "proofing" that the front of her skull was not "Arian" and not "Jewish" but "Eastern". So, what ethnicity I am? My children? Whoever? And why is it so important to be mentioned in a blogger's profile? Before I came to American blogs I have never ever being aware that I am a Caucasian - and I never ever missed it,,,