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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Funny you say that because in the US, Indians are not considered Asians in practice even though of course South Asia is, well in Asia. I have seen many people argue that Asians only mean East Asians and does not include South Asians. However, the official census lumps all Asians together.

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As an American, when I hear Asian I think Chinese/Japanese/Korean.

Despite the fact that I know India is in Asia, I don’t think of people from India as Asians.

Incidentally, Israel is also in Asia, but I don’t consider Israelis to be Asian either.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-continent-is-israel...

I think also the divide between Europe and Asia to be silly since generally continent is defined as: "any of the world's main continuous expanses of land" - and I don't see any dividing body of water between Europe and Asia... What am I missing?

> What am I missing?

The Turkish Straits. Are you referring to the more northern border? I assumed it was the Ural Mountains, but it’s more complicated than that and has an interesting history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_the_conti...

I believe you are spreading misinformation here.

The Census Bureau determines ethnicity and race within America for legal purposes (including employment)

Asians are people from 'the far east' 'southeast asia' and 'india'

https://www.census.gov/mso/www/training/pdf/race-ethnicity-o...

BY NO MEANS am I defending this, I believe much of our race 'stuff' is indefensibly stupid and unscientific from biological, historical, and sociological perspectives, and the American idea of "Asian" is one of the worst concepts of all.

It's not misinformation. Colloquially when people in the US say "asian" they are only rarely referring to Indians or Pakistanis or Bangladeshis. They are almost always referring to Chinese or Japanese or Koreans.

The census may use different groupings.

In Germany 'Asians' and 'Indians' are two distinct groups. When we talk about 'Asians' we usually mean Japan/China/Korea/Thailand but never Indians (or even Pakistani).

My theory is that this comes from restaurant culture. There is 'asian food', e.g. 'stuff with rice' and there is 'indian food', e.g. 'stuff with curry'.

Genetically, most Indians are more closely related to Europeans than to East Asians. And East Asians are more closely related to Native Americans than to Indians.

E.g. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/53636/online-phy...

This is one phylogeny. What is it built on? The problem is individual haplotypes have complex histories of their own which recombine sexually to form diverse mixtures which flow across "ethnic" groups.

Well to be honest those descriptions are vague and not helpful

SE Asia is "souther" than "South Asia" (which is still in the northern hemisphere)

Not specifying the country really sounds like a diversion most of the time (and it's rare that "Asian" could be an useful generalization).

Typically if there is some distinction of asian in US surveys I've encountered, the common categorization is southeast asian vs asian/pacific islander. Which is just as much of a head scratcher of groupings.

Asian in the US includes S. Asia, I think, popularly.

How are Indians not considered “Asians in practice” when they are considered as such by the Census, the authoritative organization that sets the categorization standard?

Its just the view the English language has consensed on at the ground level. It's not decided intentionally.

In my experience living in the U.S. at least, if someone is referring to someone of Indian origin, they call them Indian, whereas if someone is referring to someone of Korean/Japanese/Chinese origin, they'll call them Asian (unless they know their particular country of origin).

I would expand the Asian designation to include southeast Asians as well (Vietnam, Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, etc). Though maybe that’s just a west coast thing.

Because laypeople don't think of those things. The divide in the way people look, the environment of their countries, how they sound, and what they believe, is split in Asia by the Himalayas. Obviously there are many differences between the countries but it's easy to see why conceptually some might group some of them together into 2 large regions. Also Indians in America don't generally refer to themselves as Asians when speaking, so if their goal is to be perceived as Asian, they are not helping themselves.

Colloquially, in America, Asians are identified as having slanty eyes and white skin. Indians have brown skin and are therefore not colloquially referred to as Asians. Instead, they are referred to simply as "Indian".

Colloquailly in the UK it is somewhat of an opposite scenario, if people hear "Asian", they think someone from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh.

This is an oversimplification, most Americans will also be quick to categorize darker skinned Southeast Asians as Asian.

Historically most Asians in the US were from East Asia and later SEA so the label tends to evoke those groups. Lacking familiarity, it may also be harder for many Americans to easily discriminate (lol?) between East Indians and other non-white/non-Asian groups.

Still there are plenty of people that do include Indians as "Asian" in the US, it's hardly a universal standard to exclude them as a lot of comments here seem to think.

The GP is correct. Of course officially Asia has many nations. But colloquially we use 'Asian' to refer to East Asian folks. You're talking about a country that, in many parts, refers to Native Americans as 'Indians' to this day...

For the same reason that Tomatoes not treated as fruits "in practice."

It is the 'Anglo Colonial Atlas of Races' masquerading as "geography". Middle East -- a geographic figment of colonial imagination -- is code word for 'lightly colored sand dwellers'. Asian means 'of the yellow races with strange eyes'.

It's dumb that we call the group "Asian" instead of "East Asian," but there are notable ethnic and cultural similarities that East Asian nations don't share with the rest of Asia. Ditto the Middle East.

I don't think it's automatically bigotry to refer to people this way. "Western European" and "South American" are less controversial examples.

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