by Tom Ana
When I lived in Armenia and Georgia, I remember talking with my friend about her cultural identity. “I do not think I am white. I am Armenian and Caucasian. I don't know if that counts,” she once told me. She was not alone in her confusion. I often encountered young people in the Caucasus who were unable to define themselves in the terms that have become the global lingua franca for race and culture.
I myself am white, a mixture of Anglo-Celtic ancestry with Eastern European roots. But the source of my whiteness is not important. In many parts of the world I would be identified as Caucasian, a linguistic placeholder for whiteness. My cultural identity is easy. But when I lived in the Caucasus, I witnessed how many people similar to me found the idea of race to be a complex and ill-defined issue.
