I got a smile from this Reuters story about ethnic Russians chasing unwanted immigrants out of their town. Quote:

“This is unique,” Maria Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center said. “Disturbingly, this is what the people of Kondopoga were demanding, that the Caucasians be hounded out of town.”

Say what? So they’re chasing out the white folk? But aren’t Russians themselves sort of … white?

What’s actually happening here is that the expelled people are Caucasians, not “Caucasians.” That is to say, they are, as Reuters says, “dark-skinned men from the Caucasus region.”

It reminded me of that passage in Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, when the English protagonist goes to a California funeral parlor to arrange for his friend’s funeral. “Was your friend Caucasian?” asks the funeral director. “Certainly not. Why would you think that? He was English…”