“A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. It includes Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Other Asian.”
How did “the Indian subcontinent” get in there? Obviously it’s part of Asia, but other parts of Asia aren’t included. There may be no “true” definition of race, but this just seems wrong to me.
In common usage, at least where I am, “Asian” is shorthand for East or Southeast Asian descent. It doesn’t include Indian any more than it includes Jordanian. Previously, “Oriental” was used with the same meaning of East and Southeast Asia. I still hear senior citizens use “Oriental” sometimes. Regardless of terminology, it seems peculiar and contrary to social perception to group Indian and Chinese people in the same racial category. Is there some reasoning behind this?
In common usage in the UK, ‘Asian’ specifically refers to people from the Indian subcontinent.
People from East Asia or South East Asia are more likely to be referred to by their country of origin (Chinese, Japanese etc), or occasionally under the umbrella term ‘Oriental’ although I suspect that is falling out of favour.
An Indian friend of mine always answered “Aryan” when asked his race. Insofar as the concept of race has any biological meaning, he was correct. I always answer “Human”.
Yes, the US government categories are nonsensical. I could be blonde haired / blue eyed but if I’m born in eastern Russia, do I mark Asian? Similarly, I could be blonde haired / blue eyed and born in South Africa, do I mark African-American?
The categories were defined years ago by people in Washington DC. You were expecting something intelligent?
OK, I’m wrong. The 2010 Census does, in fact, ask about race. But it doesn’t lump people from India in with people from Korea, Japan and China. Instead each of these groups is listed separately (along with “Other Asian - Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on.”)
I’m pretty sure that virtually all questions on race asked by the government are predicated on self-identification. The government has not published rules in the Federal Register that would require a Caucasian who was born in Eastern Russia to mark the “Asian” box; that should be patently obvious. You can mark whatever race you identify with, just as the Census FAQ states.
As for the OP’s question, all I can tell is that the Office of Management and Budget long ago established six"minimum categories" for use in surveys and forms by the government: American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, and White (which includes Middle Eastern). If agencies want to use more detailed categories (e.g., South Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, etc.) I believe agencies have that flexibility, but those six are the minimums that must be included.
Here is a fuller dissertation on how the US government handles “race.”
Basically, you get the catergories mentioned, which are generally derived from continent of origin of you or your ancestors, plus you get to refine if you are Hispanic or non-Hispanic.
You may pick as many categories as you like. No problem being “black and white, non-Hispanic.”
These are essentially self-identified groups, and almost all situations where the government requires they be asked also offers the option not to categorize yourself.
As a rule of thumb, the government is collecting this data to protect under-represented groups, and not out of a desire per se to label. So, for instance, at a hospital admission you are asked for this information but the purpose of collecting it is to try an make sure the hospital is not treating the various categories differently. It is not (typically) collected for its biological association, which is a whole other discussion.
Its just as nonsensical as a white person ticking a box “Caucasian”. As far as I know none of my ancestors in the last 200 years are from the Caucasus and it lumps me in with anyone from " some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia (the Middle East), parts of Central Asia and most parts of South Asia.[2]"
according to wikipedia.
I was a census taker in 2010. I interviewed one woman who had fair skin, reddish-blonde hair, a Tea Party bumper sticker on her car, and a chip on her shoulder. When I read the question about race, she answered, “Iranian.” So I checked “Other Asian” and wrote in “Iranian.”
Another time I sat on the couch for 10 minutes while a college kid with a Caribbean accent — who sure appeared to be African-American to me — tried to decide which box to check. He was adamantly not going to self-identify as African-American.
It doesn’t. Affirmative action programs are not based on the census, they’re based on applications for the programs in question (employment with a federal contractor, college admission, federal employment, etc.)
I was a census interviewer in 2010. All the Iranian people I interviewed simply said white and that was that.
I mostly interviewed Sudanese people, because I speak Arabic; most of them went with black, though others struggled with the question and wound up saying Arab or Middle Eastern. Because in Sudan, the term “black” is not applied to dark-skinned people; the Sudanese respondents who self-identified as black did so because they were aware that’s the American usage. One gentleman from Sudan self-identified as Arab or Middle Eastern, but was openly nervous about putting that on the census. He was concerned that the US government would compile lists of Arabs and Muslims for surveillance or rounding up. I tried to reassure him that the Census would not misuse personally identifying information that way, but suddenly got a hollow feeling in my heart that I could not honestly give that assurance because I don’t trust the US government not to do so either. I felt horrible but couldn’t do anything about it. One Sudanese mom told me her family was “aswad” (black), but her little boy began shouting, “No, mommy! Don’t tell her we’re black! We’re white, we’re white!”
I was sent to do some Spanish interviews too. One grandmother from El Salvador was so helpful, she micro-categorized the race of each of her grandchildren individually: they were variously morena, blanquita, blanco, morenito… All I could do in English, though, was write down either “white” or “brown,” depending. The biggest race question hangup I had was with 4 guys from Mexico. They sat there for about 10 minutes, unable or unwilling to choose any racial category at all. Finally I suggested “mexicano,” and they accepted that, so I wrote down “Mexican.”
My ex is from India, and went with Asian, of course.
Gah I side with the kid, I often hear reporters and anchors on the news slip into the term AA when talking about events in Trinidad. I once heard “An African American Guyanese national”
British were heavily invested in India. Their national focus on “Asia” was heavily Indian (notwithstanding Hong Kong and Malaya).
Americans didn’t quit expanding westward when they got to the Pacific coast. They continued right across to East Asia and never had a thing to do with the continent apart from the eastern edge of it. (I mean prior to getting involved in the Middle East after WWII).
Each took in the concept of “Asia” selectively, and their viewpoints became a pars pro toto situation. The parts they weren’t directly concerned with got ignored. So Americans still haven’t adjusted to the concept of Asia as a whole. For Americans, Asia=Chopstick Land.
“Race” of humans has no scientific meaning. That leaves only its sociological significance. The US Census is concerned strictly with the latter. The sociological patterns of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and Pakistani populations within the United States (and not in any other country I know of) have been judged similar enough that they can be lumped together in contrast to the quite different experiences of Latinos, African-Americans, and whites. Matthew C. Perry is dead, and Asia isn’t just about chopsticks any more.
Meanwhile, peoples of the Middle East and Iran, whose civilizations are historically interactive with European civs going back to their earliest origins, and who look similar to Europeans, are lumped in with “white” even though skin color has nothing to do with Arab identity, and Arab populations include the entire range of colors from European white to African black and everything in between. Arab definitions of identity are so completely unlike America’s all-important “color line” that such details just get ignored.
As for Central Asia? Heck, it might as well not even exist, for all the US Census seems to care. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Tajiks fall outside all of the categories. I’m just glad I didn’t have to interview any Central Asian peoples, because how would you feel to have your peoples’ existence completely ignored by a census?
