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People should say "East Asian" rather than "Asian" when referring to people/things that are exclusively East Asian.
Using the term "Asian" to describe people/things that are East Asian inevitably causes confusion around the use of the term "Asian". In most American demographic data, "Asian" refers to a person with descent from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and/or South Asia. When reading the data, many people either 1) implicitly assume that "Asian" exclusively includes people of East Asian descent or 2) are unsure about whether or not "Asian" exclusively includes East Asian people. For example, in the recent case about aff. action, many people appeared to implicitly assume that aspects of the case involving Asians only involved East Asians, while in reality, they actually involved South and Southeast Asians as well (South and Southeast Asians also must tick the "Asian" box when applying to college). I've seen similar confusion about census data and medical data in the past.
I think it would be better if the term "Asian" were used to describe people/things that include more than one category of Asian (for example, both South and East Asian) to avoid this type of confusion. In this world, "Asian" would be widely understood to be an umbrella term that refers to the numerous peoples and cultures of its many regions, and if someone wanted/needed to be more specific, they could just specify the region of Asia that they're referring to.
As a sidenote, people also should stop referring to all South Asians as "Indians". It's considered rude to assume a Korean or Japanese person is Chinese just because of their appearance, so why isn't it considered rude to assume that a Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan person is Indian? I understand the size of the non-Indian South Asian population isn't very large, but it is still large enough (about 25% of the total South Asian population in the US according to Wikipedia) for people to not automatically assume that every South Asian they encounter is Indian.
Using the term "Asian" to describe people/things that are East Asian inevitably causes confusion around the use of the term "Asian". In most American demographic data, "Asian" refers to a person with descent from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and/or South Asia. When reading the data, many people either 1) implicitly assume that "Asian" exclusively includes people of East Asian descent or 2) are unsure about whether or not "Asian" exclusively includes East Asian people. For example, in the recent case about aff. action, many people appeared to implicitly assume that aspects of the case involving Asians only involved East Asians, while in reality, they actually involved South and Southeast Asians as well (South and Southeast Asians also must tick the "Asian" box when applying to college). I've seen similar confusion about census data and medical data in the past.
I think it would be better if the term "Asian" were used to describe people/things that include more than one category of Asian (for example, both South and East Asian) to avoid this type of confusion. In this world, "Asian" would be widely understood to be an umbrella term that refers to the numerous peoples and cultures of its many regions, and if someone wanted/needed to be more specific, they could just specify the region of Asia that they're referring to.
As a sidenote, people also should stop referring to all South Asians as "Indians". It's considered rude to assume a Korean or Japanese person is Chinese just because of their appearance, so why isn't it considered rude to assume that a Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan person is Indian? I understand the size of the non-Indian South Asian population isn't very large, but it is still large enough (about 25% of the total South Asian population in the US according to Wikipedia) for people to not automatically assume that every South Asian they encounter is Indian.
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