I put this in IMHO because I think this is a matter of terminology preference.
I think it makes sense if the UK press refers to Harris as Asian-American but I’m not sure it’s clear what you are saying when you label her that in American media.
Have we (USAers) started referring to Indian people/heritage/culture/etc. as ‘Asian’? Because I haven’t noticed that.
Also, when I checked a few minutes ago the word 'Asian doesn’t come up once in Nicki Haley’s Wikipedia entry.\
Why the discrepency? Was there a push by somebody to present Sen. Harris as an Asian-American rather than ‘Indian-American’, the usual term used in the U.S.?
You can’t call her that! Trump already used the one derogatory Indian nickname he knows. The poor guy would have to learn how to pronounce “Sacajawea”.
India is, in fact, in Asia. But I’ve noticed that Americans shy away from calling Indians Asian, while in Britain they more readily agree they’re Asian.
I am unfamiliar with “Indian-American” as a common term. To see if it was just me, I tried Googling Aziz Ansari with “Indian-American” and got a mere 185,000 results - virtually nothing in Google terms.
People who have some understanding of broad cultural distinctions might classify Asian cultures along the lines of South Asian (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan), South East Asian (all the ASEAN countries), and [generic] Asian (China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia).
None of this suggests that referring to Kamala Harris as “Asian American” is wrong or offensive. But if the term is indeed inappropriate or offensive, I’m willing to be educated.
Google gives me 494,000 results when searching for “aziz ansari indian-american” without quotes. And then “aziz ansari asian-american” yields about twice that amount, with 1,030,000 hits. And then for completeness, “aziz ansari indo-american” yields 909,000 results.
For what it’s worth, the wikipedia page says that the US Census uses the term “Asian Indian.”
Not inappropriate at all. I myself prefer the term Asian or South Asian for Indian people. But I never here that in the American media. At least not until the last week.
Siam Sam, I don’t know that Americans “shy away from it” as much as they never hear the term unless they’re watching the BBC.
I do find it odd that Harris is labeled an “Asian American” but Nicki Haley isn’t (at least in Wikipedia, but I’ve never heard that term used for her anywhere else, either).
Also, if Senator Harris as a person of Indian heritage prefers to be called Asian-American then she should be, sijple as that. But again, I have no complaint with the term at all. Just remarking that it seems to me this appellation isn’t normally used in the USA so it stands out when it’s used now.
It looks like that’s mostly because 1. Columbus screwed up thinking he was in India and, 2. American palefaces can’t seem to bring themselves to use the term “Native American”.
I’ll note this is just a bit contentious as there more than a few American Indians that have disdain for the term Native American or just prefer Indian. Certainly the folks I knew a little as a kid and later in college in and around the American Indian Studies program at SFSU were of that opinion. But this was a few decades back, I’m not in touch with those folks now and language usage certainly does shift.
But I’d hesitate to throw this on “palefaces” per se as per the links above.
By the book, technically, yes she is Asian-American; India is part of Asia.
But in virtually all actual/common usage, the term ‘Asian-American’ refers to people of East Asian descent. Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.
Ultimately people will refer to you based on your self presentation.
If Kamala Harris chooses to present herself as a multi-race Indian/African American (or either/both) that is her right as she is a product of the two. As far as I know Nikki Haley doesn’t publicly present herself as an Indian-American (it’s possible that her ethnic background isn’t a big part of her political life) and even had in the past chosen instead to label herself as “white” despite both her parents being Indian immigrants.
The Associated Press reports that in 2001, Haley listed her race as “white” on her voter registration form.
I think that what it’s saying is that she isn’t ethnically Black or African-American.
Also, once that’s clarified, not WASP, but is Colored, but not Native American.
I’m saying that her Jamaican heritage is the least important part of the label in the American media.
Apart from that, it appears to me that the Indian-American community has been using the term Indian-American (which is how Apu was normally described), but that the Democrat Political Organisation is more comfortable with Asian-American, which is how they are describing her. I haven’t seen what the Republicans are saying.
It’s just that we don’t commonly call Indians “Asians” here in the US. I know they are Asians, but right or wrong, that’s not what we call them (usually).
Referring to an Indian-American as an Asian-American is a bit like referring to an automobile ‘hood’ as a ‘bonnet’ in Chicago or Pittsburgh. You aren’t wrong in calling it that but many people will be confused and envision some sort of woman’s sunhat.
Again–I want to remind folks that I have no problem with any self-descriptor Sen. Harris prefers, That isn’t the point of this thread. The point is–how will that term be understood by American citizens?
I’m curious how Commonwealth Dopers would phrase it.
I have never understood it to be reluctance to acknowledge that India is part of Asia. But in my experience (as an American and living briefly in the UK), in the United States, “Asian” is generally understood to mean “East Asian”. And in the UK, “Asian” is generally understood to mean “South Asian.”
For example, the British Office of National Statistics identifies five Asian ethnicities: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and “Other.” (The US Census defines Asian ethnicities as “Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Other Asian”.)
I assume it’s a matter of population – the largest Asian groups in the UK are clearly South Asian. While in the US, East and Southeast Asians are much more prevalent.
You want confusing? In apartheid South Africa, only Indians were labelled Asian.
South-east Asians (mainly Filipinos, Indonesians and Malays) were lumped in the Coloured category along with Khoisan and mixed-race European-African-Indian descendants.
Chinese were also Coloured. Except for the laste decade of apartheid, when Chinese were honourary Whites. As were Japanese and South Koreans.
A) I don’t see how it matters and II) I’m happy to describe her with whatever her preference is…which have yet find out because I fail to see how it’s any of my business.