The article traces the virtualization and symbolization of racial discourses and racism in modernity, and their translation into ethnic-cultural, religious, gender and social spheres in the conditions, marked by imperial and secondary colonial difference. Thus the author demonstrates a manipulative nature of racial taxonomies, also drawing attention to the danger of continuing insensitivity of the Russian scholars to this category. The case study demonstrating these problems is the changing interpretation of Caucasians and, particularly, the Diasporic nation of “Circassians” in the Russian, Western European, American, and Ottoman imaginary, related to the fluctuating geopolitical interests and conflicts between various actors. The author also accentuates the external and internal reasons for the syndrome of coloniality of the Caucasian consciousness leading to stagnation and failure of the majority of efforts and programs aimed at the unification and revival on the basis of the Caucasus indigenous cosmology, culture, ethics, and knowledge system.