People in the West, but nowhere else, are always pussy-footing about what to call people.
Caucasian is a term for a race - an identifiable, genetically stable, sub-group of Homo sapiens sapiens. I prefer to use Caucasoid, to de-stress the connection with the Caucasus. It is not the same thing as European, because most Caucasoids live in South Asia. It is not the same as White, because those same South Asian Caucasoids are mostly not what most European Whites would call White.
All over their range, from Ireland to Kamchatka and from Novaya Zemlya to Sri Lanka, Caucasoids have great variation, and a fair amount of admixture with the other two main races of Hss: the Negroid and the Mongoloid, terms I will stick with here because they suit the purpose.
Mongoloids range from Central Asia to Tierra del Fuego, and constitute the majority of humans, so one could say they are typically human! The pseople Americans call Asians, Amerindians, Polynesians - all are Mongoloid.
The sub-Saharan black Africans are the major part of the Negroid branch. Australian aborigines and Melanesians are a minor part. In sub-Saharan Africa, the Khoi-San people of the Ituri share much in common with them, but might have a different ancestry.
There are many admixtures. The Ethiopians are a mix of Caucasoid and Negroid. The Turkic peoples appear to have elements of Mongoloid and Caucasoid. And so on.
The whitest people on Earth, the Sami or Lapp, may be more closely related to the Mongoloid group than to the Caucasoid.
Difficulties with these words all arise in the minds of Americans and Europeans, whether of the Caucasoid or any other variety. People are what they are, and humans are the more interesting for that fact.