"Asian roles almost always refer to Southeast Asians." Really, according to whom?"
This is a particularly American nomenclature, which is important, I suppose, since the topic here is Hollywood movies. Regardless of geography or reality, when most Americans use the term Asian, which is, itself, a pretty recent replacement for "Oriental," they mean Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese...people from Far Eastern countries that would have been referred to in former times as "yellow," as in "the yellow peril." Or, as Oscar Hammerstein II may have put it, people whose eyes are oddly made. (And, yes, I'm aware of the origin of the term "Far Eastern" and am using it simply for clarity here.)
The current term for someone from the Indian subcontinent is South Asian. In these terms, someone from Iran would probably be considered Middle Eastern. Again, this is by Americans. The rest of the world doesn't observe much of this and any people from the continent of Asia are Asians.
The grain of salt that all this should be taken with should be apparent in Americans labeling themselves with an imprecise word that could apply to anyone from North or South America or the Caribbean, but, of course, doesn't.
I have some pretty interesting discussions about this with my European husband who gets confused by all this. |
