Hacker News Reader

Comment by hiroaki | Hacker News Reader

As a South Asian Indian, I am puzzled by ethnicity questionnaires which never have an option that seems appropriate. "White" seems wrong as does "Caucasian", even if we are supposedly anthropologically related. "Asian" seems to refer to Asians except for persons of the Indian sub-continent. And "Indian" refers to American Indians.

Sigh...

View on HN

Woah woah! "Indian" should not be used refer to Native Americans in a questionnaire!

"American Indian" is the term used by the US government on the census form, so it likely is used in many other surveys that use a similar format. (I don't know how broadly it is seen as an offensive or incorrect term.)

http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Downloads/questionnaires/2014/...

Wikipedia has a fairly good page on the issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controvers...

There's actually lots of dispute about this--substantial numbers, perhaps a majority, of... indigenous people prefer American Indian to Native American, since the latter sounds like something a government bureaucrat would dream up. A fairly radical and influential group exists that embraces that name, the American Indian Movement.

Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. As a non-American I didn't know the political climate. "American Indian" sounds fine to me; at least it's not so ambiguous. "Indian," IMO should really be used to describe people from India only.

Nah, you're Indians!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VMY8X9rU8

American Indians tend to prefer the term "American Indian" to "Native American". The term "Native American" was invented by white liberals to make themselves feel better.

Nor should "Indian" be used to refer to South Asians. Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Nepalis are not Indians.

Likewise, Tibetans living in India and Nepal are not Indian or Nepali (if these are ethnicities). Nepalis living in Bhutan are not Bhutanese.

South Asia is pretty colorful (at least compared to Han-dominated East Asia). I do think they have "South Asian" as an option on many query forms now.

True! I prefer the more geo-neutral term: desi !!!

Desi is bit of a strange term for some. As a person of Sri Lankan origin, I don't know any other Sri Lankans who refer to themselves as desi. I didn't hear the term myself until college. I don't know why we need a new term when "South Asian" is perfectly adequate.

That's not the point. The point is, its super confusing to me(and possibly to Native Americans too) if 'Indian' is meant for one group or the other.

Yeah man, big no-no there. Indian refers to the ones from Southeast Asia (i.e. you), not Native Americans.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com