The word 'Asian'

[thelonewolf266]

When I hear asian i think Chinese/Japanese.

and i'm from scotland.

Another Scottish person whoo we appear to be an endangered species on this site I was beginning to think I was the only one.

OT:I generally mean Chinese or Japanese people when I say Asian but I am familiar with people using it as a term for people from India, Pakistan, Middle Eastern countries and the like.

 

[Nouw]

Eh I'm Korean and the term 'Asian' seems to have grown on me as only eastern Asia.

Stupid childhood forcing wrong terms on me >.>
[sub]I live in New Zealand so there's as mix of practically every ethnicity and culture.[/sub]

 

[Ashcrexl]

i have always heard east asians called asians, indians called indians, and everyone else called middle-easterners. my indian friend calls himself a brown person, but i have never heard that from anyone else.

oh yeah, perfect excuse to post this.

 

[badgersprite]

In Australia, Asian usually means South East Asian. European generally means Western or Southern Europeans, as opposed to Eastern Europeans. Americans usually refers to people from the USA, rather than non-U.S. Native Americans or people from South or Central America. When we talk about Islanders we usually mean Pacific Islanders rather than the Japanese or people from the UK. When we say Africans we're probably not referring to Egyptians. I've heard people from Afganistan (which is in Central Asia) being called Middle-Eastern.

So, yeah, in short, semantic and geographical problems exist. It's not like this is news. But last time I checked changing the way people speak isn't that easy.

 

[Wintermoot]

when I think of Asia it,s mostly east Asia (Korea,China,Japan,the Philippines, Indonesia etc.)

 

[funguy2121]

I've recently been thinking about the word 'Asian' which, at least in the UK, is used mostly to refer to people from West Asia (India/Pakistan/Bangladesh), and not to Chinese or other East Asian countries. But in this article it seems to be being used to refer also to people from Arabic countries, and to me this is just getting a bit weird. What seems to be happening is that it's becoming a racial term that is just a euphemism for 'brown-skinned', and that just seems misleading - especially given that the vast majority of actual Asians are Chinese!

I think we need an unambiguous, non-racist word to refer to the mostly Muslim and Hindu brown-skinned population that inhabits West Asia and the Middle East. 'Brown' would work (and before you say it's racist, 'black' appears to be fine), but in the US, it seems to be mostly used to refer to Hispanics (I noticed it particularly in The West Wing). So is there any other word we can use?

I'm tempted to suggest we should revive the good old-fashioned 'dusky'

Are the vast majority of Asians Chinese? I don't think so. India is quite populated, as is Bangladesh. Add Japan, Korea, all of SE Asia and the Middle East, and I think they would outnumber the Chinese.

Do you refer to yourself as European? Aussies from all over Australia Aussies? Africans...Africans? Then why not Asians? The Middle East is in Asia. And why do you feel the need to lump Indians in with Arabs? Do you have similar feelings of unwarranted distaste for both groups?

I didn't find your racist jibe at the end funny either. Did the Arab bullies who used to terrorize you in your youth come back recently, or have you been listening to too much of whatever your version of Rush Limbaugh is lately?

 

[StBishop]

I've recently been thinking about the word 'Asian' which, at least in the UK, is used mostly to refer to people from West Asia (India/Pakistan/Bangladesh), and not to Chinese or other East Asian countries. But in this article it seems to be being used to refer also to people from Arabic countries, and to me this is just getting a bit weird. What seems to be happening is that it's becoming a racial term that is just a euphemism for 'brown-skinned', and that just seems misleading - especially given that the vast majority of actual Asians are Chinese!

I think we need an unambiguous, non-racist word to refer to the mostly Muslim and Hindu brown-skinned population that inhabits West Asia and the Middle East. 'Brown' would work (and before you say it's racist, 'black' appears to be fine), but in the US, it seems to be mostly used to refer to Hispanics (I noticed it particularly in The West Wing). So is there any other word we can use?

I'm tempted to suggest we should revive the good old-fashioned 'dusky'

There's always Arabic, meaning peoples from the Arabian peninsula and surrounds.

I've noticed that here (Australia) people from Pakistan, India and surrounds are often just assumed to be Indian. Many people I talk to consider Indian to be an ethnic group rather than a nationality.

I would say that the various ethnic groups can be summed up as follows
Kiwi (Maori)
Aussie (Aboriginal)
Pacific Islanders/Oceanic Peoples (Various Islands of the pacific)
North American (North american natives and Inuits')
Hispanic (South american/Latin)
Mediterranean (Pretty self explanatory, southern Europeans from nations bordering the Mediterranean)
Caucasian (Lilly white, north western Europeans, Eastern Europeans and Russians even though Much of Russia is in Asia)
Asian (China, the Koreas', Japan, South East Asia etc.)
Arabic (People from the Arabian Peninsula and surrounds)
African (From Africa, I know too little of Africa to be much more specific. For example many Egyptian people I've met could argue that they're Mediterranean, Others could argue that they're Arabic, and I'm sure this applies to many people from the continent considering it's huge)

 

[Flatfrog]

Are the vast majority of Asians Chinese? I don't think so. India is quite populated, as is Bangladesh. Add Japan, Korea, all of SE Asia and the Middle East, and I think they would outnumber the Chinese.

You're right (I just looked it up - China has about 1/3 of the population of Asia) but I don't think it really matters that much for the point I was making (although I was surprised how close the Indian population is to China's - I was under the impression the difference was much higher).

Do you refer to yourself as European? Aussies from all over Australia Aussies? Africans...Africans? Then why not Asians? The Middle East is in Asia. And why do you feel the need to lump Indians in with Arabs? Do you have similar feelings of unwarranted distaste for both groups?

I don't feel that need at all (and I don't know where you got the idea I had any distaste). My problem is that in the UK press, language does seem to be evolving to the point where East Asians *are* excluded from the word, at least by default. 'Asian' is taking on a racial, rather than geopolitical meaning. It's a bit like how the phrase 'African American' has come to mean any black American, whatever their ancestry. And I'm not sure that's a good thing - it's taking a word which had a perfectly clear geographical meaning and forcing it to do double duty.

Let's put it the other way - a few words have started to come into general use which have a purely racial meaning - a shorthand for particular racial types. I'm thinking of Caucasian, for example, which obviously did originate as a geographical term but one that wasn't particularly vital, and it filled in a useful gap. (Nordic would work too, but has unfortunately taken hold in the racist world so we'll have to give that one up as lost). In the US, the word Hispanic appears to be pretty much unexceptionable. And I think it would be quite handy to have other words that do the same thing. Obviously in a multicultural, multiracial world they will become increasingly irrelevant and vague, but right now they're just missing from the language, leaving people with no comfortable, non-racist way to refer to a brown-skinned person of Asian ancestry - or for that matter, what used to be called a 'yellow-skinned person' but now has no defined name at all! (There was 'Mongolian', but that has been thoroughly tainted by its misguided use to describe Downs Syndrome - if you don't know the story behind that, it's a fascinating story of racism, look it up)

I didn't find your racist jibe at the end funny either. Did the Arab bullies who used to terrorize you in your youth come back recently, or have you been listening to too much of whatever your version of Rush Limbaugh is lately?

And that kind of makes my point. Why is the word 'dusky' seen as a 'racist jibe'? It was a suggestion made in perfectly good faith, even if my tongue was in cheek and I was aware that it would never work. Give me a better word and I'll use it. That was the point of my challenge.