David Yeagley has a column in VDARE where he ends:
American Indians must not concede. The Hindus cannot have our legal, historical name here in America.
To the honor of the “indigenous” Columbus, on this his day, let Asian Indians be called Hindus and the indigenous people of the United States be called American Indians.
This is funny, as a few days ago over at Sepia there was some discussion as to the appellation one prefers to describe Americans of South Asian ancestry (or, self-description). I offered the term “brown.”1 Manish noted that that is imprecise, Latinos/Hispanics/Chicanos have put in a claim to the name, but I don’t think we should let them have it without a fight since they have so many terms in wide usage already.
A few years ago I joked in an email to David that I don’t like talking to Native Americans/American Indians because I resent them to having taken a name that doesn’t belong them. I think David took me more seriously that I’d intended, so it doesn’t surprise me that he wrote this sort of column.
I think many people who are brown would be willing to go along with David and let Native Americans keep “Indian,” though I don’t think those of Christian, Muslim or Sikh faith with origins in India would accept the offer of the term “Hindu” as a replacement. In the end language matters only so much, there are many more important things to preoccupy over. I’ll stick to brown, since I’m far browner than most Latinos who make a big huff about these sort of issues.
1 – In college I had a friend whose parents had come to the US from Vietnam, and I started using the word “brown” to describe South Asians. When he was at medical school he told me he continued the practice, and he started talking about his “brown mentor” to a girl who was South Asian. At first he said he seemed a bit weirded out by the term, but he notice she started using it too.
Posted by razib at 09:25 PM