Obviously, the character is white, and they want a white actress to play her. Perfectly reasonable, right? But the trouble is that people tend to get race, ethnicity and culture all mixed up. So if the casting call said something like ‘white actresses only’, you’d get a lot of hispanic, arab, etc. actresses who could play the part feeling excluded. This is despite the fact that those actresses arguably are white, because those designations don’t really have much to do with race.

Why “caucasian”, not ‘white’? Because most people consider those terms interchangeable, even though they aren’t really, and because caucasian sounds more ‘precise’ or ’scientific’ to many people (even though, again, it isn’t really).

To sum up: people can be silly.

I could play Caucasian – especially since the definition covers Iranians and East Indians (unless, being typically obscure, the Coens meant natives from the Caucusus; or perhaps mixed-ancestry actors, like Michaela Conlin, Tamara Taylor, Jennifer Tilly, Halle Berry…) – since I play one every day on the telephone, apparently (inside j/k to Toto) ….

THE COEN BROTHERS ARE REMAKING TRUE GRIT?!?!

Also out of curiosity do they say the same type of thing for the other caucasian parts in the film?