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The idiotic practice of lumping Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian people together as “Asians”, as if the term had any kind of cultural relevance, is mainly a tic
by leephillips 6y ago
The idiotic practice of lumping Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian people together as “Asians”, as if the term had any kind of cultural relevance, is mainly a tic of journalists. For the most part, normal people don’t talk or think this way.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoAsia is a big continent, and often Pacific Islanders are also thrown in with the jumbo term. Africans probably also feel weird when we bucket everyone from their continent under a single African label.
- lastofthemojito 6y agoIt is in fact "Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month" in the US right now. So go ahead and celebrate with some dumplings and a side of poi? African as a label becomes even stranger when mixed with American. African-American is usually used as a synonym for Black American, despite not all Africans being Black. An Egyptian-American likely would not be called African-American. We use words weirdly!
- leephillips 6y agoIt’s worse than that. I’ve heard black Africans living in Africa, who have never been to any country in the Americas, referred to as “African American” by people who think—well, who knows what they think? Americans are insane when it comes to “race”.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoAt some point in time, some portion of popular culture deemed “black” as a descriptor of people with certain skin tones and cultural background in the US was derogative and pushed for switching to “African American”, even though it can cause confusion.
- elthran 6y agoWeirdly for sure - referring to Charlize Theron as "African-American" always sound odd, even if it is technically correct
- leephillips 6y agoI’d love to annoy or perplex people by doing this. Unfortunately, her name never seems to come up in conversation.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 6y agoThere’s always Elon Musk, noted African-American businessman.
- coldcode 6y agoRussia is also in Asia, but you rarely hear them called Asians. Indians are rarely lumped in either. Lumping dissimilar peoples together never made much sense to me - even Continents are arbitrary divisions.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoThere are some Russians that look really Mongolian (and probably are close to Mongolian ethnically), and of course pass for East Asians. There is a lot of land between Novosibirsk and Vladivostok.
- lastofthemojito 6y agoLooking at it on a map can be deceiving though. About 80% of Russia is in Asia, but about 80% of Russia's population lives in European Russia.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoIn the US, people refer to descendants of East Asia (China/Korea/Japan/similar looking) by Asian. In the UK, Asian means descendants of South Asia (Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Nepali).
- 1MachineElf 6y agoHere's my strange anecdote: My girlfriend's mom is Cambodian with Chinese ancestry. One time she was describing a pickled cabbage preparation from her home village, and I responded with "oh, so kind of like Korean kimchi?" and her response was "yeah, but Asian-style." In her mind, "Asia" specifically means China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Thailand.