What happened to the rest of Asia?

[mbarrick]

OK, so it was a month ago, but I was just thinking about the Asian Excellence Awards and wondering what happened to eastern Russia and all the "-stan" countries, the Indian sub-continent (although one posthumous award was given to an Indian), and the middle east? Last time I looked there were a just a few people of Jewish descent in the American entertainment industry. Is Israel not in Asia anymore? There are also quite a few popular Arabian-descended people like Paula Abdul, Shakira, Jamie Farr, Paul Anka, and Salma Hayek to name a few. When did Asia become just China and Japan?

Comments

Turkey

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Turkey actually brings up a good point. If someone is Turkish are they European or Asian? The country straddles both continents (like Russia). Does it then matter where someone is born in Turkey or Russia whether they are "Asian" or not? And if so, how does that logic carry though to people born outside of Asia? If a Turk born in Isantbul or a Russian born in Moscow is not Asian, then how is Lucy Lui, born in New York, "Asian"? Race is already next to impossible to delimit. The whole effort of trying to hide that something is about race behind geography is screwed up from the get go, and especially so with a continent that has native inhabitants of all but one race.

Re: Turkey

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

I would consider Turkey and Turks now to be European rather than Asian or even Middle East

Problem is most Europeans don't view Turkey as being European because they are a muslim (albeit a secular) country and they feel threatened by that factor. Mind you, Albania (Europe's other secular "muslim" country) seems to pose no contradictories to this line of thinking however.

I think some of it is racial nationalism, much like how Germans and Poles have often equated Russians with being basically "Mongols" or "Asiatics"

Re: Turkey

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Of course Albania's exisitence as a Muslim country is the direct result of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks. The discomfort with Turkey is a direct result of Turkish imperialism. Albania, as a lost frontier province of that empire, doesn't have the imperial stigma.

You're quite right that it is racial nationalism. Ultimately I'm questioning the use of "Asian" as a racial term. It's even more shoddy than "African" (since on the one hand there are in fact three races native to Africa if one is going to stick to the 19th century ideas of race, and ultimately we are *all* of African descent on the other).

Re: Turkey

[(Anonymous)]

In terms of "African", I even don't consider countries like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, or Egypt as being "African". To me their more Middle East than Africa. Sudan and Mauretania are grey areas because they straddle the Sub-Saharan divide.

As I view it, terms such as European, Asian, and African are determined by race and little-to-nothing to do with the continents of the same name. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a European and not a North American - even though I was born and have resided my whole life in North America

Re: Turkey

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

When it comes to north Africa, particualy the west, don't forget that those countries were invaded from Asia and that the indigenous people were(are) racially and culturally essentially European. Hannibal was not an Arab, he was as white as the Italians he invaded.

>terms such as European, Asian, and African are determined by race

That's my point. They make lousy racial terms. No matter how you care to define race, there is no correlation to continental divisions and race. Some races are indigenous to more than one continent and some continents have more than one indigenous race.