I’ve heard Indian immigrants use “red Indian” too and my jokey response was to remark that south Asians tend to look multitudes more reddish (reddish-brown albeit) to my eyes than Native Canadians.
The situation is much more complicated and intricate than it looks from the outside.
Yes, there’s a strain of extreme nationalism coursing through each country that makes individuals want to make strict distinctions between Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis.
Yes, the religious sectarianism is often at deadly levels, especially with a Hindu nationalist party in power.
However, in the Diaspora, at least in North America, there is a very strong strain of the generation born here that recognizes the fundamental commonalities in our backgrounds, upbringings, experiences, cultural exposure, etc., regardless of what’s happening back in the “old country.”
So, yes, in situations in which, for example, “Indian-American” might be exclusionary, many many South Asian Americans are comfortable using “Desi” to include everyone. And it doesn’t feel weird at all, because divorced from the politics and atrocities and resentments back in the Subcontinent, we really are a product of common experiences.
A Muslim Panjabi Pakistani American and a Hindu Telegu Indian American have a lot more in common with each other than they do with their first cousins who grew up back in the old countries.
And among the people I know in the South Asian American community, there are a heck of a lot of what our grandparents would consider marrying outside of the acceptable community.
Look at Hasan Minhaj, from a Muslim family from Hindi-Urdu speaking North Central India. He married a woman from a Hindu Gujarati family. That kind of thing doesn’t raise eyebrows from the people I know.
Not at all comparable. That’s an organization using an historical name. As a branch of the Smithsonian, NMAI was a new entity, and wasn’t using a previous historical name. (Although it incorporated the collections of the former Museum of the American Indian in New York, that’s only one component.) They were free to name it anything they wanted. I was working for the Smithsonian in Washington DC at the time the museum was created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and was involved in meetings with Rick West, the founding director and member of the Cheyenne tribe. I never heard any objection to the name of the museum on the part of him or the tribes involved.
It’s tough. I just filled out the 2020 census and had to make a choice on how to label my children.
I am Greek, Polish, English. My wife is 100% Newari.
My options were “White” or “Asian”. Should I choose Asian because they are “50% Newari (Nepali)”? Do I choose “White” because they are “50% European”.
The big question is why are we so concerned about keeping tabs on folks’ race. I understand citizenship, but race??
Regarding Kamala Harris why wouldn’t she be considered Jamaican and not Asian? India is on the Asian continent by the way.
Why wasn’t Obama considered “European” instead of “African”?
Looks like we have a skin color fixation. Possibly it’s effective to rely on racial tropes to either cut someone down or to build them up. It’s really unfortunate.
Interesting. The concept of overinclusivity strikes a chord with me, but right up front I admit to being a typical ignorant American. I prefer Indian and Indian-American to Asian and Asian-American because the latter feels overly inclusive.
I also don’t refer to Russians as Asians, and for the same reason, even though 75% of the land mass of Russia is in Asia. (Only a quarter of the population, though.)
I remember years ago I was talking with a Russian coworker and I bumbled my way into a faux pas, something about Asia and Russia (we had a lot of international coders and business at that job) and her immediate response was a flat “There are no Asians in Russia.”
America’s history is one where if a person had any visible African ancestry they were referred to as Black. Harris and Obama are multiracial and draw ancestry from many people, but their experiences as Americans probably meant that this one-drop tradition shaped their lives. It’s important to note that since all African-Americans have varying amounts of multi-racial ancestry Harris and Obama would not stand out as unique.
That’s just ignorance. They will be straightened out the minute they run into a Native American.
That may partly be due to the textbooks which were a legacy from Colonial times referred to them as Red Indians just like Inuits are often referred to as Eskimos in the legacy textbooks
Well I’d call her American.
Born American: 2nd Generation American. Around here, that would make her “Australian”.
Her parents Jamaican-American or ?? Jamaican-Canadian ??, Her mother… dunno. Personally, if I knew it, I’d give her ethnic group from India, which I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere. If she were by way of Malaysia, Malaysian-Indian or Tamal. From Fiji, Indo-Fijian. I really don’t know what words other Australians would use: we really aren’t as British as we used to be. But Harris herself: “American”
I hope you do not take such political statements too seriously. So everyone is a loyal citizen of Mother Russia, fine, whatever. But, as you pointed out yourself, there are loads of Asians in Russia (even if you want to leave out Slavs), even if they do not constitute a majority.
Genuine question: why didn’t you just check off “American”?
Not jprokos but there is no such “check” option on the 2020 census as you can see on this sample form. They’re asking for a somewhat detailed breakdown of ethnicity, not nationality. You can and I’m sure some do write in “American”, but that’s not the data the census is trying to capture.
Evidently, those weren’t your only choices, if the census form linked to is the one you filled in. You could have filled in both one European ethnicity under “White”, and also entered Newari or Nepali under “Other Asian.”
Perhaps we could get one of our census workers in here - I suspect that the form I and others linked to is a “long form” that’s not given to everyone. Could be wrong; it’s been a long time since I worked a census.
Besides the Americanitis, if you want to get real technical about it, only Turks are Asians and only Tunisians are Africans.
Desi is used as a synonym for South Asian sub continental.
Interesting. I was under the impression it was rather well known that many Natives in the US prefer the name Indian over Native American. They say something like “you gave us a name, we adapted it, but then you had to go and change it.” I’ve also heard objections to being called “American,” saying they predate the Americas. Hence my use of “Natives.”
The biggest thing I’ve seen lately is butting heads over lumping the Native nations altogether under one label, rather than treating them as just as separate as European countries. People do seem to think there’s like one Native American culture.
As for Harris? I’ve mostly just heard people calling her black. I did hear “Asian American,” and I was confused for a second until I found out she was of Asian Indian heritage, and then thought “Huh, I don’t usaully hear that term used for that. But I guess it’s correct. Wonder how other Asian-Americans feel about it, though, since the prejudices against Indian Americans tend to be different.”
That is why I think you don’t see Indian Americans say theyr’e Asian Americans. All of the East Asians get lumped together into a single “Asian” group in our stereotypes, while South Asians are lumped into an “Indian” group. And, yes, West Asians being lumped into a “Middle Easterner” group. And North Asians I guess are “Russians,” despite including other countries since the dissolution of the USSR.
I always thought it was Cuban,
Damn this is a confusing thread.
Kamala Harris is an American Black as far as I’m concerned. Not a ghetto raised hip hop black, but a black American. The vast majority of the american people who see her on the street would say she is black unless they were told otherwise. Which most of them just were.
Indeed, that’s the American Community Survey which since 2010 has not been sent as an alternate form of the universal Census form but as a separate survey, i.e. everyone gets the “short”. Tamerlane’s link https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/technical-documentation/questionnaires-and-instructions/questionnaires/2020-informational-questionnaire.pdf has the one that every household should have received this year, and the relevant questions are in page 2 (repeated for other household members in pages 3 to 7).
In that sense I tend to like the Canadian solution of referring to the greater abstract group as “First Nations” and then using the specific names when talking about specific things.