This has been my biggest sticking point with the UK, (and probably the rest of the EU, but I don't know their translations very well) the usage of "Asian" to describe Arabs and other Middle Easterners seems like such a transparent attempt to cover for them.
There's the talk about the "model minority myth" where Asians actually help to make a functional society and not become violent and disruptive to the rest of us, and I think there's some need to cover for the anti-society ME population by labeling them under the thing that everyone else thinks is "the good one." This is what you see in the US where Latinos get labeled as "Caucasian" to obscure the racial statistics on the Most Wanted lists and such.
It's just a language difference. Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans are not called Asian in the UK, or if they are then some qualifier is added to distinguish from south asians. They are East Asian, oriental, or whatever their nationality is.
older british people would tell you that they used to call a pakistani a pakistani. This effort to call them "asian" is 100% because they want to avoid pointing out the specific group that is the problem
This has been my biggest sticking point with the UK, (and probably the rest of the EU, but I don't know their translations very well) the usage of "Asian" to describe Arabs and other Middle Easterners seems like such a transparent attempt to cover for them.
There's the talk about the "model minority myth" where Asians actually help to make a functional society and not become violent and disruptive to the rest of us, and I think there's some need to cover for the anti-society ME population by labeling them under the thing that everyone else thinks is "the good one." This is what you see in the US where Latinos get labeled as "Caucasian" to obscure the racial statistics on the Most Wanted lists and such.
It's just a language difference. Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans are not called Asian in the UK, or if they are then some qualifier is added to distinguish from south asians. They are East Asian, oriental, or whatever their nationality is.
older british people would tell you that they used to call a pakistani a pakistani. This effort to call them "asian" is 100% because they want to avoid pointing out the specific group that is the problem