I’m not an “Asian”

Fellow blogger Pastorius posted this great piece over at the Infidel Blogger’s Alliance. It touches on euphemisms and “media labels” regarding Asians, something on which I have commented before.

Excerpt:

“…There is a group of people in Britain who have distinguished themselves by setting off bombs in subways, preaching hatred of Infidels in Mosques, and carrying placards in the streets calling for a “real Holocaust” against Jews.

The media calls these people “Asians”.

In other words, the media uses a racial classification to name a group of people who are

1) driven by ideology, not race

and

2) more time than not, NOT ASIAN.

…And, really race is beside the point.  I can not think of anything more racist than to blame Jihadi violence, which is driven by the ideology of the Koran, and various Islamist groups (Muslim Brotherhood, Wahabbism, Hizbollah, Hamas, etc.) on Asians.

…The PC Media, under the guise of fairness, are blaming the misdeeds of a few ideologically-driven people on a group of people designated by their racial characteristics.

That is racism.

Can you imagine how Chinese people, and Indians, and Filipinos feel about that?”

Now you may understand why some British Hindus do not want to call themselves “Asians and why some of them are very angry.

For the latest example of this, see this report (emphasis mine):

A priest has been attacked in the grounds of his church, in what police described as a “faith-hate” crime. Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, was injured by two Asian youths at the church, in Tower Hamlets, east London.

although a later BBC report noted that

Tower Hamlets in east London, where the church is located, has a large Muslim community and Mr Khan said the incident should not affect “the hard work of communities in Tower Hamlets to create social harmony.

See also:

Please, no “M-word” here

and Avoiding the M-word from which comes this short excerpt:

The obfuscation is sometimes almost comical.

The New York Times, reporting the Glasgow attack on Page 1, carefully avoided using the M-word to identify Britain’s Muslim terrorists. Instead it attributed the 7/7 bombings to Britain’s disenfranchised South Asian population and reported that the terrorists in Glasgow were South Asian.

(As Joel Mowbray pointed out for Powerline, Indian Hindus are Britain’s largest South Asian demographic.)

UPDATE (Nov 2nd ’08): Courtesy Sh Kak, this Op-Ed from The Hindu which mentions how “forced marriages” – routinely mentioned as an “Asian” problem is actually more of a problem amongst Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities (emphasis mine):

According to the British reckoning, the figures for this sordid practice (forced marriages) are around 3,000 per year. Unofficial estimates suggest that the tally may be even higher. Most victims are known to be women aged between 15 and 24. Another 15-20 per cent of cases involve young men. About 65 per cent of known cases involve those of Pakistani origin, another 25 per cent are of Bangladeshi origin, and the rest are of Indian or various African and Eastern European origins.

Related Post: Why I hate being called an “Asian”