[scaleout1]

This maybe offtopic so I apologize in advance but when people say "Asian-Americans" does it include South Asians as well or just East Asians? As a south asian this has caused me a lot of confusion while talking to people in bay area

[whack]

In social situations, "Asians" generally refers to East Asians. However, most official demographic-checklists don't have an option for "South-Asian", and expect them to self-identify as "Asian". Hence, much of the evidence you see from the above lawsuit, likely applies to South Asians as well.

[prepend]

I love when forms mix racial terms and have the options “Asian” and “Caucasian.” Mixing races based on recent geographic origin with races based on morphology can lead to broad interpretation. South-Asians are actually Caucasian if you believe in the racial theory that has three races- caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race) because they were big on bone structure over skin tone.

But for the most part these racial distinctions are all pretty hokey and you can check whatever you want. I’m not sure why it’s more valid to classify by skin tone vs hair color vs hand width or whatever. I can understand the unjust classification within certain cultures in isolation because it probably closely associated with certain classes or religions.

But classifying a black-skinned Indian South Asian and a brown-skinned Ethiopian (both also Caucasian) makes no real sense. Even from a social justice persective as which background has it worse off?

Is a light-skinned African-American have more or less systematic oppression than a dark-skinned South Asian? Or a dark-skinned AA vs a light-skinned SA?

There’s all sorts of interesting and confusing scenarios. I’m not sure what to do nor what is right, so I largely just muffle up and/or wait for the loudest shouting groups to figure it out.

Things did not go well for an immigrant friend of mine who was white South African who signed up for an African American law program. But when the all white engineering team won the state championship challenge for minority schools, that was fine. It was a weird quirk in my country where the program was for schools with majority minority students. But most schools had almost entirely Asian and white teams because the schools had small non-minority populations.

[sp527]

When people in the US say "Asian" conversationally, they usually mean "East Asian". The admissions process uses the more formal definition, which means an American who can trace his/her ethnicity to any country in Asia (including India, etc).

[nokcha]

In the US, "Asian" without further qualification generally means East Asian. (In the UK, "Asian" extends to both East Asian and South Asian.)