Gal Gadot is Israeli and by being an Israeli she is for all intents and she is Asian albeit from what we consider “West Asia”. And Hebrew is considered an Asiatic language native to West Asia.
She is “Asian” and not like the majority of supposed “Asian Americans” who have never set foot in Asia, usually only speak English and only hold American passports.
But as already mentioned, America’s concept of “race” is silly and fluid and we don’t consider West Asians to be “Asian”.
Sorry for the double post but interestingly enough, East Asians use to consistently described as being “white people” in the 16th/17th century by European explorers due to their pale white skin. But of course this idea changed and Jews have been historically seen as “other” and not “one of them” in the eyes of Europeans and various other peoples.
And historically Ashkenazi Jews are said to be a “mixed” people, a mixture of West Asian and European, but then you could apply the same logic to Sicilians and a few other European ethnic groups, many of whom do have North African/West Asian/Arab/etc ancestors for obvious reasons.
And “West Asian” was a term used too, but then the whole “Middle East” term rose and “Asian” became defined as just certain countries for whatever reason that I really can’t explain.
Hebrew is a member of the Afroasiatic family:
The Afroasiatic languages are mostly spoken in northern Africa and the Arabian peninsula of Asia. I don’t know whether the language that one speaks has anything to do with one’s ethnic ancestry. I don’t know whether the languages that one’s ancestors spoke has anything to do with one’s ethnic ancestry. Gadot’s ancestors probably spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, German, and/or Czech. Gadot grew up speaking Hebrew and learned English in school. I don’t know whether she learned any other languages.
[quote=“Wendell_Wagner, post:244, topic:788703”]
Hebrew is a member of the Afroasiatic family:
The Afroasiatic languages are mostly spoken in northern Africa and the Arabian peninsula of Asia. I don’t know whether the language that one speaks has anything to do with one’s ethnic ancestry. /QUOTE]
It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with one’s racial ancestry.
Sorry about that.
It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with one’s racial ancestry.
In the U.S. it’s common for someone to give as their ethnic ancestry many different things. They may throw in their race or their language or their religion (or that of their ancestors) or where their ancestors came from immediately before moving to the U.S. or where their ancestors came from several moves before (i.e., an ancestor moved from country W to X and a later ancestor moved from country X to Y and a still later ancestor moved from country Y to Z and an ancestor after that moved to the U.S.). I’m not making any claims about what makes sense. I’m just saying what people say.
Race is whatever people believe it is. For Israelis, it’s very important that Jews be a race and therefore, they are.