A THREAD ON WHY USING THE TERM ‘ASIAN’ TO REFER TO SOMEONE IS HARMFUL

this thread doesn’t only apply to non-asians, it applies to EVERYONE reading this, especially east-asians. please read this and feel free to dm or reply if you have any questions!

first i want to say that ‘asian’ is NOT a race. idc what americans learnt in school, asian is not a race and never will be. asia is a continent and has various races inside it. the people living in asia AND the people of native asian heritage are considered asian.

this is what everyone thinks an asian person is. (it’s the first pic that comes up when u google “asians”)

vs a few pics of asians from the different regions in asia (besides east-asia). keep in mind that this doesn’t even represent a quarter of people in asia. in fact it wouldn’t even represent like 5% of asia hhh

asia is a continent that consists of 48 countries and each of the countries have their own divisions and Multiple ethnicities. take south asia & SEAsia for example- i could never ever finish talking about the amount of ethnic groups in there because of how diverse it is.

so why is it harmful to refer to people as ‘asian’? because it enforces the stereotype that all asians are east-asians (east asian refers to chinese, japanese, korean, etc). this also leads to the erasure of all other asians and their struggles.

also when u generalise asians, other asians don’t get representation. e.g saying that “you should be happy you got asian representation in the first place” when the asian rep in question is a korean woman, is just really illogical because she’ll only represent korea or east-asia.

i’m tamil (a race/ethnic group that originated from eelam in sri lanka and southern india) and i live in southeast-asia. in real life, people have NEVER ever told me that i’m “not asian enough”. but once i started interacting with people from other countries on here, i’ve had

people tell me that i’m not a real asian. i also made a thread on darkskinned south asian women and people in the qts were saying that theyre blackfishing because “asians can’t be darkskinned”. it pisses me off so much.

when can we use the term ‘asian’? we can use it when we’re referring to asia as a whole continent. e.g

“here’s a list of problems happening in asia”

“(insert artist) should come to asia!”

“asian fans deserve better”

“asian society doesn’t take mental health very seriously”

now i’m going to list a few common phrases that i’ve seen people use that generalise asians, and what you should say instead :)

“racism to asians is so normalised”

once again asian isn’t a race. instead try “racism to asian races are so normalised” and make sure you address asians from all regions when doing so

“asians are facing so much racism because of covid-19”

correction: EAST ASIANS face racism because of covid-19. so try specifying next time.

“stop fetishising asians!”

it’s “stop fetishising east asians”.

“she made asians feel represented” (when the person in particular is lana condour )

make sure you specify. “she made east asians feel represented”

“denormalise racism to indians, arabs, and asians”

do i even need to point out what’s wrong here? indians and many arabs ARE asian.

“it’s always asians doing stuff like these”

specify what kind of asian pls ? there’s east asian, south asian, southeast asian, west asian, central asian and if i’m not wrong southwest asian too?

anyway, if any east-asian reading this could make an extra effort to stop referring to yourself as just asian, it would really mean a lot for other asians.

also if you’re white pls don’t even try to fight me on this hhh

that’s all for now, i might add more stuff to this thread if i need to later on

also sorry i spelt lana condor’s name wrongly

i’ve had people ask me “so what race are you” it’s really iffy tbh, because of how diverse asia really is and how white people have truly fucked our identities up for us. me and my asian friends usually just say which region of asia our heritage lies in (for me it’s south asian)

i forgot to mention here that i don’t think people realise that there’s so many races in asia. there’s native asians who are black, and white people living in asia are technically considered asian too. literally anyone can be asian bc it’s a continent not a race

since a lot of ppl are getting me wrong- there’s nothing wrong with referring to urself as asian if people ask. but when talking about asian struggles or asian representation or basically anything that only refers to a specific group of asians- specify !!

! https://twitter.com/skeletonjacket/status/1318149581721382912