Maybe it's a generational thing. I'm 72. On a personal level my relatives have consistently used the term Asian when talking about the Korean and Lebanese members of our extended family. My Korean sister-in-law Miyung and her kids (Linda, Lisa, and Kenny) are very comfortable referring to my Lebanese cousin Cheryl and her kids (Billy and Dana) as Asian family relations.
A couple of guys from my old baseball team, Nikki Patel (who is Indian-American) and Jimmy Wong (who is Chinese-American) regularly shot pool in my basement (pre-covid times). At least when they were around me, they referred to each other as Asian. Although when they were with their own peers, it might have been a different story.
I'm pretty sure my doctor, Syed Hassan (from Pakistan and a fellow theatre enthusiast) uses the term Asian in my presence when talking about his family. A couple of years ago when he took his wife and kids to New York, I gave him and his daughter inside tips on getting affordable Harry Potter tickets.
When I'm talking politics with some old college buddies and it's mostly in the abstract, we are more likely to say things like "dealing with the Arabs", "handling the Kurds", and (in reference to China and North Korea) "the Asian problems". So in that kind of situation, I agree with what you are saying (although I never really analyzed why my terminology was different depending on the context). |
