Talk:Asian

Asian

YES, Filipinos are defiantly ASIAN. But lots of Filipinos deny it. They usually say that they are pacific islanders or hispanic! Yes they are part pacific islander but mostly asian. Click on the link below for more infirmation about Filipinos.

Yuit as Inuit vs. Eskimo

"the Russian geographical segment of the trans-continental Inuit ("Eskimos") population"

Wrong. Very wrong. The Russian Eskimos are not Inuit. The Inuit are the people who speak Inuit, a language which is a subgroup of the Eskimo languages. The Russian Eskimos speak a variety of Yupik, and are related to the Yupik people of Alaska. They do not consider themselves Inuit. They are known as either the Yuit or Siberian Yupik.

People keep mindlessly reverting to using "Inuit" to describe the Yuit. Please read the pages on the Yupik, Yuit, Eskimos, and Inuit first. The Russian Eskimos, or Siberian Yupik, don't speak Inuit and don't consider or call themselves Inuit. It's true that many of the Inuit people, who speak a language that belongs to the same larger group, the Eskimo languages, as Yupik, don't like the term "Eskimo" now. However, the Yuit and Yupik equally dislike being called Inuit, which they're not. It's like using "Chinese" to describe all East Asians because many people consider "Oriental" offensive.

Pakistan

This article describes Pakistan as Middle Eastern. Is it not a "South Asian" nation?

J3ff 03:48, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Culturally and linguistically Pakistan is part of India, and being of Pakistani origin myself I definitely consider myself South Asian. The fallacy that Pakistan is a part of the Middle East comes about due to the religious affinity Pakistan has with most countries of the Middle East, Pakistan being a Muslim nation in South Asia.

I hope this clears this up to some extent.

-Jameel Rahman jfrahman@suscom.net

Actually the Pashtuns who make up the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan after the Punjabis are not from the South Asian gene pool, they are Afghans. The Baluchi tribe are also an Iranian speaking people. A Pakistani would be more similar to a West Asian than to a Sri Lankan Tamil. 12 May `06.

I have a question on the essay topic.

You know how most Asians dont like being called "Orientals"? They should be considered lucky! For example, no one considers Indians as Asians anymore. They strive to be called Asians! It just doesnt seem fair to the South Asians. They feel left out because they don't feel they can be called Asian. What do we do about that? How can we change society to stop thinking that the term "Asian" is not ONLY meant for Orientals, but for South Asians and West Asians, too? Thank you. You should run a multimillion dollar advertising campaign.

Yes it is strange that of the largest continent containing sixty percent of all the people on Earth, people only associate "Asian" with people from a little slice of the continent (East Asia), while all the other people who are technically Asian aren't.

It doesn't make any sense to me either.

--Actually, I travel to the Europe quite often, and especially in the UK, the definition of "Asian" is opposite the American one. Over there, it is ONLY Indians, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, etc. who are considered Asian. The Chinese are described as just Chinese, much the way Indians are just Indian in the US. So really, I see the term Asian linked heavily to history and the specific groups of Asians that first came to each country.

Oriental

I propose leaving the article titled "Orient" ( to which the "Oriental" article redirects ) to debate the relative offensiveness or not of the term.

Even if that is not agreed, then what is written in the Orient article and what is written in this article does not match up, so amendments somewhere are necessary.JRL 09:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

"Orient" mean forumer Osman empire.

Filipinos

In the United States Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Filipinos are reocgnized as belonging to different entities from both Asian and Pacific Islander, hence, there is a 'Filipino' option included. The United States government decided to create this distinction because it recognizes the variety of peoples living in the Philippines, some of which are not Asian, but are descended from European, Middle Eastern, or American parentage. In the Philippines, most Filipinos consider themselves as mixtures of Pacific Islander(Austronesian) and Asian, with some European, Middle Eastern, and/or American blood.

No, this is purely because of affirmative action politics in the US. Average scores for some other Asian-American groups are very high, and these groups are overrepresented in competitive university admissions, and have experienced significant negative discrimination at times, as opposed to the positive discrimination applied to African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Filipino-Americans asked to be considered separately so as not to be subjected to the higher standards or reduced quotas applied to the 'Asian' group, or perhaps even be considered as a disadvantaged group that needs positive discrimination. As justification, they were able to point to the Philippines' distinct history as the only Asian country directly colonized by the US, as well as the different class composition of the Filipino-American community.

It has no direct relation to the ethnic composition of the Philippines. Many other countries also have some admixture of Chinese, European, American, or Middle Eastern immigrants in the past, often to a greater degree than the Philippines.

Also, Pacific Islander refers to Polynesians, Micronesians, and Melanesians, but not Filipinos or Indonesians. Austronesian is a language group instead of an ethnic group.

--JWB 05:47, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• The SAT is run by a private company, not the American government.
• Googling, I can't find any evidence that Filipinos are broken out into a separate category on the SAT and other Asian nationalities are not. As far as I can tell, the only American institution that has done this on some statistics is University of California, and it did not involve any decision that Filipinos are not Asian.
• "Asian" does not mean just Chinese, Korean and Japanese. This is already discussed in earlier sections of the article.
• Recent edits have put back misinformation listed in this talk page section. I can't find any valid information at all and am going to delete the section with a note to discuss here before recreating it.

--JWB 16:43, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation

There are a lot of problems with the last section of this article. One is that it claims that the word Asian is "is not a very precise or accurate one". This claim is of course false. Another claim is that the word "can cause considerable confusion". This may be true - but does it cause considerably more confusion than, say, European or African? The sentence "some believe that […] the term should be replaced by [other terms]" automatically leads one to ponder who these "some" are; do these "some" perhaps advocate naming all Asian sub-groups in a long list as a practical and feasible alternative (only nine random Asian ethnicities are mentioned in the first sentence of that paragraph)? Or do these "some" just prefer Asiatic or the more achaic Oriental?

I suggest rewriting or else removing that entire section "Problems with the term". It is mostly opinionated ramblings about how the term is wrong and bad and indecent and racist and what not. Asian is in fact an adjective and a derived noun that both mean "of or relating to Asia (qv.)". See also Use of the word American. ///Big Adamsky 08:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I have attributed the confusion to (1) Historical origin of Asia from European usage and (2) implicit linguistic understanding that a category imply some form of homogenity. I also put the section at the top given that the entire article now appear to be disambiguation. FWBOarticle 14:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

`Non-Caucasian' Asian countries

I deleted the section at the beginning referring to `Asian' as referring to `non-Caucasian' Asian countries. Caucasoid elements can be found in Pakistan and Northern India. Not all West Asians are Caucasoid as many Arabs from the Arabian peninsular are mixed with Negro blood and quite noticable in their appearance. Many Central West Asians are also `Mongoloid' in appearance.

Asian to "Asian people"

I think this article should direct to Asian people. This article is dealing with "Asian," and it's pretty vague title for a discussion about asian people like 98% percent. I think it should be redirected to Asian people and this text copied to Asian people. I mean "Asian" come on. The title should be self-explanatory and simple. If we are talking about "Asian people" it should direct to "Asian people" article. Let's make it concrete and they are pretty large ethnic and cultural identity too. 71.196.236.162 07:58, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. In fact, most of the articles' contents are identical. If there are no objections, I can undertake to merge/move all to the Asian people article. Thanks Hmains 23:04, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I also agree. "Asian" should redirect to Asian people.----^DarkTea 03:17, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

DT, you are mistaken: the above comments - more than a year old - supported a prior move of this article's contents to 'Asian people' (which was done); they do not support your willful and nonconsensual redirecting of this DAB as of late to 'Asian people'. Further attempts to do so without clear consensus or added editorial input will be reverted. Corticopia 04:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Clearly, User:Hmains said "I agree" to the anonymous poster who wanted "Asian" to "be redirected to Asian people". Both the anonymous and User:Hmains never said in their comment that they wanted "Asian" to be a DAB; they said they wanted it to redirect to "Asian people".----^DarkTea 04:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Unclearly: both of those editors indicated this LAST YEAR, before the article was moved. Thus, your interpretation of their intentions is incomplete and is merely your willful redirecting unsupported by a consensus. Feel free to involve others or compel for said changes. Until then ... Corticopia 05:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)