I’m gonna start off with saying that I know that the borders of what constitutes “Asia” and “Europe” are socially/culturally constructed and vary depending on who you ask and where you are. But for the sake of this post, I’ll go by what is “usually” accepted as what constitutes “Asia” and its regions.
I’m asking this for two reasons:
I saw this 2 year old article written during the 2017 Asian/Pacific Islander American heritage month basically asking Americans surveyed to say if they consider someone of [insert nationality/background here] to be “Asian” and the results were pretty telling. Basically Nobody Knows Who Counts As An Asian Person | HuffPost Latest News
I was constantly told that “Asia is a diverse continent”… but people have gotten in heated debates with me when I “dare” state that my blonde hair blue eyed classmate originally from Israel is “Asian” and that she was born in a “(West) Asian” country, holds a passport to said country and speaks “Asiatic” languages (she is fluent in both Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic).
It seems to me that to many “Asian” is synonymous with most countries in East/Southeast Asia and sometimes South Asia (usually like in the UK). And for some reason “Asian” is considered a “race/racial category” but “European” and “African” aren’t. West Asians can be considered “white” at least in the American census standards (even if some may see themselves as being “brown”, “Asian” or “not white”).
And I’m just here wondering … why is this the case? I’m told that the “reason” is because “those” parts of Asia are “culturally different” from the rest of Asia but I find that to be a poor explanation because for example, South Asians are definitely culturally different from East Asians and within them you have so much diversity in those regions as well. Although as I already mentioned South Asia is also a “debated” region.
I also forgot to add that Central Asia is also usually forgotten as being part of “Asia” at least in my experience.
I don’t believe that the Survey conducted in that Huffington Post article even asked what people think of said region. Though I’ll maybe read it again.
As you mention, there is a difference between Asia as a whole and East Asian, and a great many people only think East Asian (ie, Korean, Japanese, Chinese) when the term “Asian” comes to mind. In their minds, Arabs, Indians, etc. are a whole different type of person.
Asia as a geographical concept and Asia as a cultural/ethnic concept are not coextensive.
You use the term “west Asia”, which is obviously defensible in geographic terms but, as you’ll be aware yourself, is not commonly used. What you call “west Asia” is more usually called the Middle East. We have East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia, but no West Asia or North Asia.
Similarly with the “asiatic languages” that you mention. This isn’t a particularly useful term, because language groups, like culture and ethnicity, don’t line up neatly with the boundaries of the geographically-defined continents. There are a number of distinct languge groups in Asia, some of which - e.g. the Afroasiatic language group, the Indoeuropean langauge group - cross continental boundaries.
In short, while it may be geographically correct to say that someone from, e.g. the Lebanon is from Asia and speaks an Asiatic language, it’s not a particularly enlightening or informative thing to say. It amounts to little more than an assertion that the Lebanon is, geographically, part of the continent of Asia. It is, but so what?
How are you surprised that using words in a non-standard way to describe someone with an origin and (I assume) ethnicity that is the root of long standing conflict results in heated debates?