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#8978 10/26/00 08:47 AM
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Following on from a comment made in "Wonk" and without getting too bogged down in all the pc stuff - how did American Indians (cf Asian Indians) get called Indians in the first place?

Is it a word which just meant "native"? Or did people think that the indigenous people of America came from India?


#8979 10/26/00 09:02 AM
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As I recall the story, old Cristoforo Colombo refused to believe he had only travelled halfway around the world. He must, he thought, be in the Indies. Hence, the native population must be Indian. QED. Like the QWERTY keyboard, it's a frozen accident of history that is well-nigh un-undoable.


#8980 10/26/00 01:25 PM
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shanks,

I think I know the answer to this, but what is your opinion on the use of the word "Asian" to describe "Indian" people?

Actually this is probably exclusively UK.
Could somebody from outside the UK enlighten me on this one?


#8981 10/26/00 01:42 PM
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Asian to describe Indian can be very uncomfortable. Two reasons:

1. Asia is a lot bigger than India. Asia is a lot bigger than South Asia (notionally understood to cover the Indian sub-continent). Hence it excludes other Asians by definition, which is unfair.

2. The word is always used to refer to South Asians, not Indians specifically, which then gets you caught up in the tangled web of Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis and others, say, suggesting that they are not Indians, and not like Indians.

To be honest, though, there is a great deal that is common in the cultures of the people from the various South Asian countries, and a common word to recognise this is not necessarily (or by definition) insulting - any more than European would be, when used in the right context.

Much more irritating to me is when someone asks: "Do you speak Indian then?" (Or a favourite of some of my expat friends: "So are you Hindi?") I also have a personal quirk - my hackles rise when someone talks to me about "your people" (mean they ever so well by it).

Let's see what the non-UK responses are like...

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#8982 10/26/00 04:36 PM
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Speaking only about my part of the country, I can say that we really seldom even use the term "Asian", when referring to a specific person or group. It may well be different on our West Coast, which has the greatest influx.

As I hinted at in my other post, we here in the U.S. kind of need to take special care when using the word "Indian",
because of the long-term usage as applied to the ones who
greeted Christoher C. and Raleigh. People I know usually say "a person from India", or similar. If I heard someone described as Asian, it would not occur to me to think they were from India.
Overall, I'd say we tend to use the country of origin:
Chinese, Korean, Japanese. Interestingly, here the area containing Vietnam, Thailand, etc., is popularly known as
Southeast Asia.


#8983 10/26/00 06:53 PM
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Let's see what the non-UK responses are like...

So, what's your pick, shanks? Having had contact with people from many different parts of South Asia(Gujarati, Bangladeshi, Burgher, Punjabi, Telugu) since childhood, I have happily never been guilty of the gaffes you mention. The hardest thing I find is trying to explain where my Dad is from. Although he was born in Meerut, but his family home was only ever Quetta or Karachi, while he attended boarding school in Ghora Ghali. So I find myself saying something really long-winded like "he was born in India, and grew up in what is now Pakistan." Any suggestion on a suitably catholic term for those from the subcontinent, from one of "your people" (is it wrong that I cringed and smirked simultaneously when I read that phrase?) would be much appreciated.
For my father the irony of this identity dilemma is that he was stateless for forty years - Britain would not recognise him as a citizen nor would India, so that when he became a naturalised NZer, he had lived here longer than had the NZ-born immigration officials working on his case.

As an aside, Enigma suggested that my Dad was not "stateless" for forty years, but "stately"! It also occurred to me that its inevitable suggested replacement for NZer, O'Brien, may have deeper meaning. Terence O'Brien served as NZ's ambassador to the UN for years, including the duration of NZ's stint on the Security Council. That quirky coincidence seems apt for our beloved spell-checker.



#8984 10/26/00 07:45 PM
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In parts of NY, Flushing, Asian is used to define a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and others-- there is an area called "new china town", but Koreans currently dominate. It's not a tourist site, rather just a popular neighborhood that has attracted immigrants from several areas. There are a several Thai, and even Malaysia restaurants, and most of the Filipino's I know live in the general area, and I am sure that there are other ethnic/national groups are there--take out restaurants are usually the first indication of a group presence..
Occasionally, natives (i.e., North Europeans who have lived in the area for more than 25 years) complain that there are too many signs that aren't in English. But the influx of so many immigrants has revitalized the area, and mostly what they are upset about is the lack of free parking!
It can be pretty difficult-- I live at the east edge of Flushing, and our local elementary school did a survey, in a school of 320 students, 30 different languages spoken at home! But my area is slightly more mixed, Hindi, Urdu and Farsi are included in the list of languages.

Most new comer sort themselves out quickly and decide for themselves how to hyphenate their ethic group.

My daughter in law, has a Philippine mother, an Aussie father, grew up in Singapore, but considers herself a San Franciscan (CA)!


#8985 10/26/00 08:07 PM
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shanks,

I think most Australians primarily think of South-East Asia when they hear the word Asia, probably extending as far north as Japan on the east side. Heading west is a different story. I imagine that most people here would NOT regard Indians (or Pakistanis or Nepalis or ...) as Asians. I think it relates mainly to physical characteristics of a country's inhabitants, rather than to geography. If you asked the same people what continent India is in, they wouldn't hesitate long before replying "Asia". Certainly a dilemma.

Interestingly enough, our previous prime minister, looking to strengthen economic ties with our Asian neighbours, tried to convince us that Australia was part of Asia. Unfortunately for him, the rest of Asia saw us as a large country sparsely populated primarily with European immigrants, with a healthy mix of people from ethnic groups from just about everywhere. They didn't buy his argument. Nor did the Australian people.


#8986 10/26/00 08:19 PM
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As Shanks says a term commonly used in the UK is Asian meaning "from the Indian subcontinent".

I suspect that this is because our largest non-white ethnic grouping (less than 4% of the whole UK is non-white, maybe slightly higher now) is from the Indian subcontinent and most people from Pakistan would prefer it not to be assumed that they are from India, so we don't try to guess and stick with Asian as a "safe" bet. South Asian is sometimes used by intitutions but isn't an every day term used in the street.

Apart from London, which seems to include people from every nation on earth, we don't have the same level of large scale immigration from South East Asia as the USA or Australia.

There are Chinese people in small numbers all over the country and a few large clusters in some big cities. I think we tend to use the name of the country for people from China, Korea, Japan or anywhere else in Asia (North or South)

"African and Carribean" used to be the other term but I'm not up to date on how people now choose to describe themselves.

The term we don't seem to use very often is "Caucasian" - it always stands out in American cop shows.

Here's the data from the CIA Worldfactbook 2000:
Ethnic groups: English 81.5%, Scottish 9.6%, Irish 2.4%, Welsh 1.9%, Ulster 1.8%, West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, and other 2.8%


#8987 10/26/00 08:37 PM
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SHANKS

I don't understand what you are angry about when you are asked about your people? I am very proud of being Canadian from Québec. When somebody asks about my people it doesn't upset me. Québecers often refer to themself as part of the peuple Québecois (Québec peoples). I am sure, by the tone of your post, that I must be missing something.


To continue with post...In Montreal, people from India are never refered to as Asians but Indians. Like 'of troy' the term Asian is often used to encompass people from Vietnam, China, Korea, Malasia. But when referring to one specific peoples the country of origin is used. We also tend to be very specific when referring to food/restaurants (Iranian, Spanish, French, Sechzuan, Malasian, Vietnamese, Jamaican, Haitian, etc). NOTE TO ALL WOULD BE TRAVELLERS...if you want to eat well, Montreal is THE place to visit. We have such a wide variety of restaurants of excellant quality. It is worth the trip just for that.




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