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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

I actually have a problem with using "Asian" as descriptive of people. Asia is the largest continent with almost 60% of the world's population. It includes such diverse countries as Turkey, Russia, (east of the Urals), Armenia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, China, North Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia. There really is not much of a common culture across all those, nor is there a common ethnicity or language.

To me, Asian just seems a word that was coined by British, French, German, colonial empires to describe something "other" and to lump a bunch of peoples and cultures together.

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North & South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan absolutely share common culture with China. Korea used Chinese characters (Hanja) before Hangul. Japanese Kanji consists of adapted Chinese characters. Pre-1900s, Vietnam used Chinese characters.

In the United States, "Asian" really means something more like "Sino". Maybe not the right word, but originally within varying degrees of the Chinese sphere of influence throughout history. In the UK, an Indian or Pakistani person would be considered Asian. This is not true in the United States.

Asian in the US is mostly used as a short form of "East Asian."

It was not traditionally true in the US -- I agree that "Asian" traditionally meant East Asian in the US until recently, but lately the media has been calling Kamala Harris the first Asian-American vice president because her mother was Indian.

But Asian in the UK usually refers to South Asian matters generally.

I actually have the same annoyance when US media use the word "European".

Like, a French person, a Portuguese, a Norwegian and a Bulgarian are going to have virtually nothing in common, but in international internet conversation it's assumed that they're all part of the same group.

Similarly when Americans use the generic term “white people”

Excuse me, what is the white people branch?

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