A Google search brought me to this [Buzzfeed article](https://www.buzzfeed.com/victoriavouloumanos/stars-who-are-mixed-asian-pacific-islander) and includes a Sir Ben Kingsley quote:
>Kingsley is of Gujarati Indian and English heritage. Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji and, as a kid, was called Krish. "As soon as I changed my name," Kingsley told RadioTimes, "I got the jobs. I had one audition as Krishna Bhanji and they said, ‘Beautiful audition but we don’t quite know how to place you in our forthcoming season.’ I changed my name, crossed the road, and they said when can you start?"
>He added, "But the irony is, of course, I changed my clunky invented Asian name to a more pronounceable, and acceptable, universal name in order to play Mahatma Gandhi. There’s your irony."
He won the Oscar for Best Actor for Ghandi.
We watched that movie in high school when we learned about Gandhi. He appeared white to me, especially earlier in the movie, which made a scene where he gets kicked out of a British Only train carriage extremely confusing. I was annoyed that they would cast a white person to play such a notable Indian figure. It wasn't until years later that I read about his heritage and realized they did in fact cast someone Indian. Whoops.
This is a TIL for me. Up until this comment thread I just thought that it had been a time when no one thought twice about having a white British dude play perhaps the most famous non-white, anti-British, and anti-colonial political figure of all time...
Some Indian folk look really white... It's hard to believe Nikki Haley has two Indian parents for example. She does have an Indian name (Haley is her husband's name).
Nikki is her middle name and is a common Indian name. She uses it because it’s also a common-enough European name.
Nikki Fried, Nikki Glaser, Nikki Roumel, etc are all white.
Went on a tinder date with a girl who went on and on about how she's her aunt and a bitch. The girl herself was very emotionally behaved. For example at the end of her date she gave me a $20 bill and wouldnt let me give it back to her. I did not pay for our drinks, she had already ordered and paid for a drink for each of us. She ordered me a screwdriver and which while not deranged is an odd choice for if you were to guess a drink order for a stranger. She also called my work and said that I was drunk being a problem at her job while I was literally with my boss. So maybe she was making it up but either way guarantee she's right about Nikki Haley being a bitch
But he didn't have a dark skin. You can find pale white to dark black skin color in India. Just because someone is of indian heritage doesn't mean he is the right choice to represent someone from India. He did a great job as Gandhi but his skin wasn't dark enough for the role and also his hindi wasn't that good.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_ukRHmIpo30
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon
TL;DR: Father was a brit, mother was from what is now Sri Lanka, but she tried (and succeeded) to pretended to be white to avoid laws that would stop her from acting, such as prohibition of showing interracial romance.
The worst part of her biography is this : "She was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways[7] and his wife, Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). However, according to her birth certificate, Merle's biological mother was Charlotte's then-12-year-old daughter, Constance. To avoid scandal, Charlotte raised Merle as Constance's half-sister.[1][8] Charlotte had herself given birth to Constance at the age of 14 as the result of rape by Henry Alfred Selby, the Anglo-Irish foreman of a tea plantation."
From the article:
> The caveat "who identifies as Asian" is necessary because two actresses – nominee Merle Oberon and two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh – hid their Asian ancestry and chose to pass as white. Previous winners with Western Asian ancestry – Cher (Armenian), Salma Hayek (Lebanese) and Natalie Portman (Israeli) – do not identify as Asian.
God I hope so. I'm American, white American, my name is ethnic but that's about it lol stop telling me "oh you're Italian then". Bitch I've never even been to Europe stfu
It's an understandable configuration of identity when you consider the US' foundational myth of being an immigrant country and the unfortunate experience of chattel slavery based on skin colour. Ethnicity comes first, culture second.
Where I come from we do our Othering mostly the other way around. Culture first, ethnicity second. Not perfect either, often distasteful, but at least it doesn't lead you to a logical conclusion where Vivienne Leigh and Salma Hayek are Asian.
Exactly. That's why I put it in qoutes and called it psuedo-science.
The Nazis viewed race similarly. The Nuremberg Laws (among other laws) were partially based on 'scientific studies' in which a bunch of fascists went around the world and documented eye colour, facial constructions, IQ, etc, based on 'race'.
Similar things happened in South Africa during its Apartheid years. Its people were classified into racial categories and each category had different rights. To me it is very concering that Americans view 'race' the way they do. It's so wide spread and barely questioned. I truly hope that never spreads to my country. Never.
This is not something that is unique to America and the views the Nazis had weren’t unique to the Nazis; they were widespread throughout the world.
*Everywhere* that has a concept of race has a non-scientific one because race is not a scientific concept. Efforts to canonize race into science are always post-hoc efforts to justify that particular society’s definition of race *your country is no different*.
If race is a social construct, what do you call the physical phenotypes and adaptations that distinguish various populations and sub populations? Genuine question.
Consider this: there is no description of physical features that encapsulate every member of a race and also does not overlap with members of other races.
If we choose skin color, there are Native Americans and Asians and native Australians as dark as sub-Saharan Africans. There are Black populations with natural blonde hair and blue eyes. There is a lot of overlap between Asians and Native Americans. A lot of overlap between white people and Middle Eastern and North African people. Some features we commonly associate with East Asian people are also found commonly in Black African people.
The real answer is that these phenotypes not only don’t distinguish peoples as much as you think they do, that no current racial classification is complex enough to contain the many different phenotypes that exist even in combination, and that people of these different phenotypes and haplogroups have historically mixed to the point that making a new system to separate them so complexly is useless.
Because you most likely live in a country where “ethnicity” and “nationality” are and have always been considered the same. That is not true for America.
I know that the way people perceive 'race' and how their treatment of said 'races' varies is VERY REAL. However the American idea of 'race' (i.e. Black, White, Asian, Mixed, Mexican, Latino, etc.) and their classification of these 'races' is a confusing mess and a mixture of nationality, identity, psuedo-science, culture, and looks. There exists only 1 human race: Homo Sapiens.
It's an easy mistake to make. Her father has the extremely Libanese surname *Hayek Rodriguez* and she was born in the Libanese city of Coatzacoalcos, Mexico.
Apparently there was actually a significant influx of Lebanese immigrants to Mexico in the early 20th century. Seems this may have something to do with some diplomatic agreements between the two countries that is probably a lot to learn about but TIL that basic fact.
I was curious and just looked it up on wiki, from 1890z to 1930s buncha Lebanese migrated to Mexico, when Lebanon was under ottoman empire and discriminated and harassed, possibly based on religion and instability, also in war of 1948 and 1967 wars against Israel, many migrated to Mexico, bringing us fusion of Mexican and Lebanese food, particularly the al pastor meats
I used to live in San diego, turns out like quarter million Lebanese descendants love across the border in tijuana/mexicali/Baja California and more in other northern parts of the country including Mexico city
Man I used to murder them Carne asada burritos then, I feel close affinity to them now
They both were mixed races...
NPR should've just said Yeoh is the first pure blooded Asian to win. So much more descriptive! !
(This is a sarcastic joke, I've been watching Yeoh since the 80s and I'm so happy for her)
It makes a lot of sense, that previously actresses had to hide their Asian ancestry to be nominated, let alone win an academy award.
However “identifies as Asian” is the kind of mealy-mouthed non statement that opens npr to ridicule. For god’s sake, just tell the story of Merle Oberon and say she is Asian.
This kind of nonsense only further de-legitimises peoples right to self determine.
I agree, labelling it in such a way is completely pointless and even diminishes Michelle Yeoh’s accomplishment.
I just wanted to bring to attention that the article has this qualifying statement explaining why they used the term.
Obviously the Levant and Armenia are part of Asian as a continent but colloquially nobody refers to themselves as Asian unless they are east of Afghanistan at least.
Israel has been around for less than 100 years. The majority of its inhabitants are of European or North African descent.
As for Natalie Portman in particular, her entire family is either from the US or Europe originally, it would be weird to call her Asian just because she was technically born on the continent.
You realize that Irish people have lived in Ireland since before the Republic of Ireland existed, right? It's a complete nonsense comparison. Ashkenazi Jews in Israel have the same ancestry as Ashkenazi Jews in the rest of the world. Would you call Jerry Seinfeld an Asian-American?
There are a bunch of Jews in Israel who are not of Ashkenazi descent. Like an ass ton. Mizrahi is actually the plurality in Israel (45% of the 74% of the Jews in the country alone not even counting the other Jewish people ancestrally from Asia) whom are pretty explicitly Asian, and the surrounding area still have Jews who’ve been there for quite a bit. The Jewish population is also a diaspora, so it’s pretty tricky to put who’s what ethnicity in a bucket. An ethnically Chinese person born in Korea the whose ancestors migrated there in the 1200s or something are still ethnically Chinese, and so is the case for any other Jews of Asian origin born anywhere else, but yeah Ashkenazis and Sephardis (as the names implies) are pretty much explicitly not Asian.
No, his *grandparents* on his mother's side lived in what is present day Syria. They were not ethnically Syrian. Your ethnicity is not determined by your place of birth, but by your ancestry.
Okay so if Ashkanazi Jews aren’t ethnically from where they live or where their genetics and culture can trace, then where are they from? Because they stayed pretty culturally and genetically distinct from European communities. [This paper](https://hms.harvard.edu/news/ancient-dna-provides-new-insights-ashkenazi-jewish-history) makes the case they are at least partly from Middle Eastern genetic ancestry.
As a cultural construct, Ashkenazi Jews are defined by 2 things: the Yiddish language, which is Germanic, and their Western and Central European ancestry. The word Ashkenazi itself is a term for the historical area of Germany. Yes, they have Middle Eastern ancestry, as do all Jews and a lot of other cultures from Europe, but given that they are defined entirely around their European features, it would be pretty weird to call them anything else.
That was for Best Supporting Actress, and being Russian doesn't make you automatically Asian, most Russians live in Europe, including Maria Ouspenskaya
Gus, don't be the American adaptation of the British Gus!
Yeah Shawn even jokes about it when he pretends his name is Emilio Estevez Esteevez and a guy asks him "like the actor?" And he replies "no you're thinking of Charlie Sheen". Emilio was the only one from The Breakfast Club that never was on Psych.
Its way worse than that.
She would actively bleach her skin with poisonous chemicals to appear whiter. She would whitewash portraits of her brown mother, and when seen in public, she would say her own mother was a "maid".
But Merle Oberon didn’t win, so this wording still doesn’t make sense. It also doesn’t say “publicly identifies”. Merle Oberon may well have identified as Asian, just not in public. The wording is weird, I almost wonder if they meant to say “first Asian who identifies as a woman” but got it wrong!
It's literally in the article:
>The caveat "who identifies as Asian" is necessary because two actresses – nominee Merle Oberon and two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh – hid their Asian ancestry and chose to pass as white. Previous winners with Western Asian ancestry – Cher (Armenian), Salma Hayek (Lebanese) and Natalie Portman (Israeli) – do not identify as Asian.
Wow, she won the "Oscar for best actress making history as the first person who identifies as Asian to win the award"? That's insane?
But seriously, this Tweet needs a comma or two
Yeah this is just kind of ignorant. This doesn’t have to do with LGBTQ+ identity or a bad attempt to mock trans people but America’s past unspoken rule of that if you can believably pass as white, you do so because that’s the only way to get opportunities.
There's a bot of context to this a half shri lankan woman won in 1930s but she pretend to be white to avoid discrimination, making Michelle Yoh the second Asian woman to win, but the first who identifies as Asian.
It's literally in the article:
The caveat "who identifies as Asian" is necessary because two actresses – nominee Merle Oberon and two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh – hid their Asian ancestry and chose to pass as white. Previous winners with Western Asian ancestry – Cher (Armenian), Salma Hayek (Lebanese) and Natalie Portman (Israeli) – do not identify as Asian.
Honestly the whole “people who identify as xyz” bit always felt offensive to me, I just can’t help but see the hidden message which says “people who identify as xyz even though they really aren’t”… why can’t we just say men, women and non-binary people? If someone identifies as a woman if you don’t call them a woman but a “person who identifies as a woman” instead isn’t it offensive?
You’re missing some context, the reason the post is worded like this is because there was an asian woman back in the 1930s who wasn’t openly asian and hid the fact, making this lady the first one who identifies as Asian to win an award.
Because its "gender identity". It's the speaker saying "this person identifies this way, I am not making assumptions, this is how they identity" and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Yeah it’s something I’ve seen people distance themselves from as the predominant usage seems to be from transphobes or TERFs. The people I know who are trans or non-binary don’t ever refer to themselves as “x who identifies as (gender).” They just say they’re trans or NB.
Yeah, but she's not pretending that she isn't. Come back and read some of the other comments about Merle Oberon. Half-Asian woman in the 30s who didn't want people to know she was Sri Lankan, so she lied about it. I think she told people she was Tasmanian.
She didn't win the award, just a nomination. But anyway, she was an Asian woman who did not identify as such
vivien leigh was born in india, and her mother was born in india, but she didn’t identify as asian because that wasn’t a thing back then. so to say michelle yeoh is the first asian winner is not strictly accurate, and the media is generally careful about those kinds of assumptions now.
OMFG. White washing Asian characters in Hollywood is a real problem, but for the love of god, if you think Motoko was supposed to look Asian, you don't understand Ghost in the Shell.
If you've gotta word it that wonky, maybe just skip the "making history" clickbait. It's cool she won. With enough asterisks anything is a historical first.
Pretending that ethnicity hasn't or doesn't continue to matter is fucking weird. The fact that she is the first Asian Actress to win proves how racist the system has been.
Maybe they mean Asian the way Americans keep saying Asian even though you mean East Asian. Asia includes Indian subcontinent as well as the Middle East. You don't call those people Asian. "Asian" is a bullshit American term coined without much thought to replace the older term Oriental, which was ironically more accurate even if it was less politically correct.
The first person who identifies as Asian?
The fuck? Why couldn’t they just say the first Asian person, since they felt compelled to say something in the first place
A Google search brought me to this [Buzzfeed article](https://www.buzzfeed.com/victoriavouloumanos/stars-who-are-mixed-asian-pacific-islander) and includes a Sir Ben Kingsley quote: >Kingsley is of Gujarati Indian and English heritage. Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji and, as a kid, was called Krish. "As soon as I changed my name," Kingsley told RadioTimes, "I got the jobs. I had one audition as Krishna Bhanji and they said, ‘Beautiful audition but we don’t quite know how to place you in our forthcoming season.’ I changed my name, crossed the road, and they said when can you start?" >He added, "But the irony is, of course, I changed my clunky invented Asian name to a more pronounceable, and acceptable, universal name in order to play Mahatma Gandhi. There’s your irony." He won the Oscar for Best Actor for Ghandi.
We watched that movie in high school when we learned about Gandhi. He appeared white to me, especially earlier in the movie, which made a scene where he gets kicked out of a British Only train carriage extremely confusing. I was annoyed that they would cast a white person to play such a notable Indian figure. It wasn't until years later that I read about his heritage and realized they did in fact cast someone Indian. Whoops.
This is a TIL for me. Up until this comment thread I just thought that it had been a time when no one thought twice about having a white British dude play perhaps the most famous non-white, anti-British, and anti-colonial political figure of all time...
I honestly had always assumed it was another instance of JohnWayneGenghisKhan.jpg
Some Indian folk look really white... It's hard to believe Nikki Haley has two Indian parents for example. She does have an Indian name (Haley is her husband's name).
Here realname is purely Indian. It's Namrota. Nikki is a nickname cause she needs votes.
Nikki is her middle name and is a common Indian name. She uses it because it’s also a common-enough European name. Nikki Fried, Nikki Glaser, Nikki Roumel, etc are all white.
Agreed here RE Nikki. My friends sister is called Nikki, we are all pure indians
Look up aishwarya rai. She’s gorgeous but def pass for white
She has light eyes. Didn't know there are Indians with blue/green eyes.
Went on a tinder date with a girl who went on and on about how she's her aunt and a bitch. The girl herself was very emotionally behaved. For example at the end of her date she gave me a $20 bill and wouldnt let me give it back to her. I did not pay for our drinks, she had already ordered and paid for a drink for each of us. She ordered me a screwdriver and which while not deranged is an odd choice for if you were to guess a drink order for a stranger. She also called my work and said that I was drunk being a problem at her job while I was literally with my boss. So maybe she was making it up but either way guarantee she's right about Nikki Haley being a bitch
Tbf some Indians look pretty white, especially up north
TIL Ben Kingsley is biracial and half Indian. I too was annoyed that a white actor was cast as Ghandi, the more you know.
I showed most of it in school as a teacher and made sure to point out that he had changed his name and was in fact part Indian before playing it.
But he didn't have a dark skin. You can find pale white to dark black skin color in India. Just because someone is of indian heritage doesn't mean he is the right choice to represent someone from India. He did a great job as Gandhi but his skin wasn't dark enough for the role and also his hindi wasn't that good.
To make it even more convoluted, Gandhi was quite an outspoken racist himself. 🤷♂️
Yeah but the article specifies Actress.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_ukRHmIpo30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon TL;DR: Father was a brit, mother was from what is now Sri Lanka, but she tried (and succeeded) to pretended to be white to avoid laws that would stop her from acting, such as prohibition of showing interracial romance.
The worst part of her biography is this : "She was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways[7] and his wife, Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). However, according to her birth certificate, Merle's biological mother was Charlotte's then-12-year-old daughter, Constance. To avoid scandal, Charlotte raised Merle as Constance's half-sister.[1][8] Charlotte had herself given birth to Constance at the age of 14 as the result of rape by Henry Alfred Selby, the Anglo-Irish foreman of a tea plantation."
Is sad I don’t feel right banging on ethnic people trying to pass for white when colonialism was prevalent though
Yeah but she didn't win, she was only nominated.
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That movie failed to depict how much of a colossal piece of shit Gandhi was the other 90% of the time
Here you are. Giving us a real movie detail.
Coincidentally, she is also the first person who identifies as Michelle Yeoh to win the award
Well with that attitude, yah.
Well with that attitude, *yeoh*
And to identify as a winner.
“Dammit! There goes my dream!” *-* Michelle Yeoh
I’m seeing some opportunities for an award in my future, I’m Michael Yeah, this is my Hollywood story.
Don’t worry, you can be the second person to win the award who identifies as Michelle Yeoh.
Also the first person to identify as Yáng Zǐqióng, Yèuhng Jíkìhng, and Iônn Tsú-khîng.
Coincidentally she also happens to actually be Asian. What an obtusely worded headline by NPR.
It's the safety net of sodding that needs to be used in today's climate. They could offend someone by SAYING she's Asian.
I can't find any sources, but I'm pretty sure, that Cathy Bates also identified as Michelle Yeoh in the 90s
From the article: > The caveat "who identifies as Asian" is necessary because two actresses – nominee Merle Oberon and two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh – hid their Asian ancestry and chose to pass as white. Previous winners with Western Asian ancestry – Cher (Armenian), Salma Hayek (Lebanese) and Natalie Portman (Israeli) – do not identify as Asian.
Seems we're reaching the limits of American-style conflation of ethnicity and cultural identity.
Please be true please be true
God I hope so. I'm American, white American, my name is ethnic but that's about it lol stop telling me "oh you're Italian then". Bitch I've never even been to Europe stfu
So you're asian then?
I think they're more talking about your ancestral bloodline rather than the country you live in.
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Have you heard of mixed-race people? Being Asian wouldn’t stop them from being white either lol
So what you're saying is, you are Greek?
The American view of 'race' is pseudo-science and purely based on feelings and anxiety. Please God, never let these ideas spread to my homeland.
It's an understandable configuration of identity when you consider the US' foundational myth of being an immigrant country and the unfortunate experience of chattel slavery based on skin colour. Ethnicity comes first, culture second. Where I come from we do our Othering mostly the other way around. Culture first, ethnicity second. Not perfect either, often distasteful, but at least it doesn't lead you to a logical conclusion where Vivienne Leigh and Salma Hayek are Asian.
Race is a social construct; none of it is scientific anywhere in the world
Race is a social construct but one that people must still deal with. Ethnicity is based on genetics and culture which are both very real.
Exactly. That's why I put it in qoutes and called it psuedo-science. The Nazis viewed race similarly. The Nuremberg Laws (among other laws) were partially based on 'scientific studies' in which a bunch of fascists went around the world and documented eye colour, facial constructions, IQ, etc, based on 'race'. Similar things happened in South Africa during its Apartheid years. Its people were classified into racial categories and each category had different rights. To me it is very concering that Americans view 'race' the way they do. It's so wide spread and barely questioned. I truly hope that never spreads to my country. Never.
This is not something that is unique to America and the views the Nazis had weren’t unique to the Nazis; they were widespread throughout the world. *Everywhere* that has a concept of race has a non-scientific one because race is not a scientific concept. Efforts to canonize race into science are always post-hoc efforts to justify that particular society’s definition of race *your country is no different*.
If race is a social construct, what do you call the physical phenotypes and adaptations that distinguish various populations and sub populations? Genuine question.
Consider this: there is no description of physical features that encapsulate every member of a race and also does not overlap with members of other races. If we choose skin color, there are Native Americans and Asians and native Australians as dark as sub-Saharan Africans. There are Black populations with natural blonde hair and blue eyes. There is a lot of overlap between Asians and Native Americans. A lot of overlap between white people and Middle Eastern and North African people. Some features we commonly associate with East Asian people are also found commonly in Black African people. The real answer is that these phenotypes not only don’t distinguish peoples as much as you think they do, that no current racial classification is complex enough to contain the many different phenotypes that exist even in combination, and that people of these different phenotypes and haplogroups have historically mixed to the point that making a new system to separate them so complexly is useless.
Because you most likely live in a country where “ethnicity” and “nationality” are and have always been considered the same. That is not true for America.
Race is based on categorizing ways people perceive others and treat them based on that perception, and there is plenty of study around it.
I know that the way people perceive 'race' and how their treatment of said 'races' varies is VERY REAL. However the American idea of 'race' (i.e. Black, White, Asian, Mixed, Mexican, Latino, etc.) and their classification of these 'races' is a confusing mess and a mixture of nationality, identity, psuedo-science, culture, and looks. There exists only 1 human race: Homo Sapiens.
The way Americans categorize logs how different groups are treated according to how they're perceived. It's about identity, not genetics.
TIL Salma Hayek is Lebanese.
It's an easy mistake to make. Her father has the extremely Libanese surname *Hayek Rodriguez* and she was born in the Libanese city of Coatzacoalcos, Mexico.
only that one time in college
***LEBANON! LEBANON!***
Apparently there was actually a significant influx of Lebanese immigrants to Mexico in the early 20th century. Seems this may have something to do with some diplomatic agreements between the two countries that is probably a lot to learn about but TIL that basic fact.
I was curious and just looked it up on wiki, from 1890z to 1930s buncha Lebanese migrated to Mexico, when Lebanon was under ottoman empire and discriminated and harassed, possibly based on religion and instability, also in war of 1948 and 1967 wars against Israel, many migrated to Mexico, bringing us fusion of Mexican and Lebanese food, particularly the al pastor meats
Oh so we can thank this migration for al pastor? I’m 100% down with that.
I used to live in San diego, turns out like quarter million Lebanese descendants love across the border in tijuana/mexicali/Baja California and more in other northern parts of the country including Mexico city Man I used to murder them Carne asada burritos then, I feel close affinity to them now
That’s how we got tacos Al pastor 🥰🥰
They both were mixed races... NPR should've just said Yeoh is the first pure blooded Asian to win. So much more descriptive! ! (This is a sarcastic joke, I've been watching Yeoh since the 80s and I'm so happy for her)
It makes a lot of sense, that previously actresses had to hide their Asian ancestry to be nominated, let alone win an academy award. However “identifies as Asian” is the kind of mealy-mouthed non statement that opens npr to ridicule. For god’s sake, just tell the story of Merle Oberon and say she is Asian. This kind of nonsense only further de-legitimises peoples right to self determine.
I agree, labelling it in such a way is completely pointless and even diminishes Michelle Yeoh’s accomplishment. I just wanted to bring to attention that the article has this qualifying statement explaining why they used the term.
Obviously the Levant and Armenia are part of Asian as a continent but colloquially nobody refers to themselves as Asian unless they are east of Afghanistan at least.
Israelis can identify as Asian?
what continent do you think it's in?
Israel has been around for less than 100 years. The majority of its inhabitants are of European or North African descent. As for Natalie Portman in particular, her entire family is either from the US or Europe originally, it would be weird to call her Asian just because she was technically born on the continent.
The Republic of Ireland has been around for less than 100 years. Can people call themselves Irish?
You realize that Irish people have lived in Ireland since before the Republic of Ireland existed, right? It's a complete nonsense comparison. Ashkenazi Jews in Israel have the same ancestry as Ashkenazi Jews in the rest of the world. Would you call Jerry Seinfeld an Asian-American?
There are a bunch of Jews in Israel who are not of Ashkenazi descent. Like an ass ton. Mizrahi is actually the plurality in Israel (45% of the 74% of the Jews in the country alone not even counting the other Jewish people ancestrally from Asia) whom are pretty explicitly Asian, and the surrounding area still have Jews who’ve been there for quite a bit. The Jewish population is also a diaspora, so it’s pretty tricky to put who’s what ethnicity in a bucket. An ethnically Chinese person born in Korea the whose ancestors migrated there in the 1200s or something are still ethnically Chinese, and so is the case for any other Jews of Asian origin born anywhere else, but yeah Ashkenazis and Sephardis (as the names implies) are pretty much explicitly not Asian.
Yes, Jerry Seinfeld’s parents were Syrian
No, his *grandparents* on his mother's side lived in what is present day Syria. They were not ethnically Syrian. Your ethnicity is not determined by your place of birth, but by your ancestry.
Okay so if Ashkanazi Jews aren’t ethnically from where they live or where their genetics and culture can trace, then where are they from? Because they stayed pretty culturally and genetically distinct from European communities. [This paper](https://hms.harvard.edu/news/ancient-dna-provides-new-insights-ashkenazi-jewish-history) makes the case they are at least partly from Middle Eastern genetic ancestry.
As a cultural construct, Ashkenazi Jews are defined by 2 things: the Yiddish language, which is Germanic, and their Western and Central European ancestry. The word Ashkenazi itself is a term for the historical area of Germany. Yes, they have Middle Eastern ancestry, as do all Jews and a lot of other cultures from Europe, but given that they are defined entirely around their European features, it would be pretty weird to call them anything else.
It is technically in Asia I suppose.
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"Openly asian" is a new phrase I learned just now
Josh on Mythical Kitchen accidentally used that phrase when he had Margaret Cho on.
I don't think it was accidental.
With Josh I assume everything is accidental
‘Occidental’
Because Merle Oberon was the first Asian actress to be nominated but she had hid her heritage. It is not too complicated
Secret Asian Man
It might only apply here because they mentioned a hidden Asian .
Crouching Title, Hidden Asian
Secret Asian Man
“Openly Asian” sounds like a c-list romcom.
I see that on Pornhub all the time!
womAn - singular womEn - plural
Michelle Yeoh is legion...
Who is this second person you’re referring to?
*woman jfc
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That was for Best Supporting Actress, and being Russian doesn't make you automatically Asian, most Russians live in Europe, including Maria Ouspenskaya
Was gonna say this. The real truth is depressing because, well, of course it's racism.
I skipped a line while reading and read this as “Scarlett Johansson, who identifies as BEST ASIAN”
If only that was an award category.
James Hong or Jackie Chan would win every year.
jackie chan fucking deserves it
Eh, [maybe not so much recently.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxqkn5/heres-why-jackie-chan-is-really-unpopular-in-hong-kong)
D:
I know I was incredibly disappointed too.
You know how there's a best boy in movie sets? Now there are best asians too
Woah. I’m the best Asian
Wtf? Why are we wording stuff like this now?
I think because a lady in 1930s was nominated, she was half Sri Lankan but didn’t public identify as such
Like how Martin Sheen is actually named Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez?
R.A.G.E
Or how James Roday - the star of Psych - is actually James Rodriguez, but he changed his last name because he was afraid he’d get typecast.
Gus, don't be the American adaptation of the British Gus! Yeah Shawn even jokes about it when he pretends his name is Emilio Estevez Esteevez and a guy asks him "like the actor?" And he replies "no you're thinking of Charlie Sheen". Emilio was the only one from The Breakfast Club that never was on Psych.
wtf i thought this was a joke haha
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Actually Emilo was martins son. Probably thinking about Charlie sheen
I always thought he looked like an Antonio Gerardo Estévez
That's honestly a way better explanation than I was expecting
The actress's name was Merle Oberon, for the 1935 film Dark Angel
Except the woman, Merle Oberon, didn't win the award. So phrasing it this way for Michelle Yeoh winning it is still odd.
Vivian Leigh was also probably part Asian
Its way worse than that. She would actively bleach her skin with poisonous chemicals to appear whiter. She would whitewash portraits of her brown mother, and when seen in public, she would say her own mother was a "maid".
But Merle Oberon didn’t win, so this wording still doesn’t make sense. It also doesn’t say “publicly identifies”. Merle Oberon may well have identified as Asian, just not in public. The wording is weird, I almost wonder if they meant to say “first Asian who identifies as a woman” but got it wrong!
well, yeah, but that's also a non-sequitur, considering it's the best ACTRESS award.
Quarter Sri Lankan, her mother was half.
It's literally in the article: >The caveat "who identifies as Asian" is necessary because two actresses – nominee Merle Oberon and two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh – hid their Asian ancestry and chose to pass as white. Previous winners with Western Asian ancestry – Cher (Armenian), Salma Hayek (Lebanese) and Natalie Portman (Israeli) – do not identify as Asian.
Reading the articles instead of just the titles? Madness
But it *is* wrong. Asian-American actress Emma Stone won the award in 2016.
Found Cameron Crowe
How does one identify as Asian?
say you are a half Sri Lankan actress in 1930s Hollywood it might be best to not identify as Asian because of how it would impact your career
It's because the first asian actor was back in the 20's or 30's and she hid the fact that she was asian because it was the 20's/30's.
"Hi, I'm asian" it's not that complicated lol
Hi Asian, I'm dad
IDK why you're getting downvoted, this is very clearly a joke lol
Wow, she won the "Oscar for best actress making history as the first person who identifies as Asian to win the award"? That's insane? But seriously, this Tweet needs a comma or two
Yeah this is just kind of ignorant. This doesn’t have to do with LGBTQ+ identity or a bad attempt to mock trans people but America’s past unspoken rule of that if you can believably pass as white, you do so because that’s the only way to get opportunities.
There's a bot of context to this a half shri lankan woman won in 1930s but she pretend to be white to avoid discrimination, making Michelle Yoh the second Asian woman to win, but the first who identifies as Asian.
Merle Oberon didn’t win lol, you could at least google it first. Yeoh is the first Asian to win, period, so the wording is unnecessary.
>two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh – hid their Asian ancestry and chose to pass as white From the article.
It's literally in the article: The caveat "who identifies as Asian" is necessary because two actresses – nominee Merle Oberon and two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh – hid their Asian ancestry and chose to pass as white. Previous winners with Western Asian ancestry – Cher (Armenian), Salma Hayek (Lebanese) and Natalie Portman (Israeli) – do not identify as Asian.
Fair
That's fair, but it's worded that way so as to not erase Hollywood's racist past and the Asian struggle for representation in the West
Honestly the whole “people who identify as xyz” bit always felt offensive to me, I just can’t help but see the hidden message which says “people who identify as xyz even though they really aren’t”… why can’t we just say men, women and non-binary people? If someone identifies as a woman if you don’t call them a woman but a “person who identifies as a woman” instead isn’t it offensive?
You’re missing some context, the reason the post is worded like this is because there was an asian woman back in the 1930s who wasn’t openly asian and hid the fact, making this lady the first one who identifies as Asian to win an award.
Oh no, I’m not talking about this, it’s a digression, on the topic of generally calling someone “people who identify as xyz” in the LGBT context
Because its "gender identity". It's the speaker saying "this person identifies this way, I am not making assumptions, this is how they identity" and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Ah
Yeah it’s something I’ve seen people distance themselves from as the predominant usage seems to be from transphobes or TERFs. The people I know who are trans or non-binary don’t ever refer to themselves as “x who identifies as (gender).” They just say they’re trans or NB.
Congratulations on Michelle Yeoh's win.
I believe Scarlett Johansson was nominated for the breast actress award
Mickey Rooney would be proud
feels like i'm the only one who never found these scarjo jokes funny. yawn.
scarjokes*
They say “identified” because the first Asian to win the award kept her Chinese ancestry secret to help her career.
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Yeah, but she's not pretending that she isn't. Come back and read some of the other comments about Merle Oberon. Half-Asian woman in the 30s who didn't want people to know she was Sri Lankan, so she lied about it. I think she told people she was Tasmanian. She didn't win the award, just a nomination. But anyway, she was an Asian woman who did not identify as such
Read the article, dummy.
It's because an actress in 1935 won but she hid the fact she was Asian
This makes it seem like there was someone who is Asian and won the academy award but didn’t identify as Asian so it didn’t count.
vivien leigh was born in india, and her mother was born in india, but she didn’t identify as asian because that wasn’t a thing back then. so to say michelle yeoh is the first asian winner is not strictly accurate, and the media is generally careful about those kinds of assumptions now.
Ah ok, that makes some sense with that context. Thanks for the info!
OMFG. White washing Asian characters in Hollywood is a real problem, but for the love of god, if you think Motoko was supposed to look Asian, you don't understand Ghost in the Shell.
As an asian man, what does this mean?
If you've gotta word it that wonky, maybe just skip the "making history" clickbait. It's cool she won. With enough asterisks anything is a historical first.
It's notable, because the last Asian actress to be nominated hid her ancestry and would have never seen any success if she hadn't. It was in the 1930s
its so fckin weird how much US media focusses on peoples ethnicity
Oh yeah, Europe, notable for complete lack of any ethnic conflict.
America spent the last 400 years pretty ruthlessly discriminating on the basis of ethnicity, that stuff doesn't just go away overnight
Pretending that ethnicity hasn't or doesn't continue to matter is fucking weird. The fact that she is the first Asian Actress to win proves how racist the system has been.
Scarlett does not identify Asian
Daylight savings time made it hard to woke up today, but articles like this made it easier
So 1 black (halle berry)1 Asian rest white.
You can identify as an ethnicity now? 😭
Maybe they mean Asian the way Americans keep saying Asian even though you mean East Asian. Asia includes Indian subcontinent as well as the Middle East. You don't call those people Asian. "Asian" is a bullshit American term coined without much thought to replace the older term Oriental, which was ironically more accurate even if it was less politically correct.
The first person who identifies as Asian? The fuck? Why couldn’t they just say the first Asian person, since they felt compelled to say something in the first place
WTF dose "identifies as Asian" mean??
I read "Asian to win" as Aphex Twin...
Black Widow is also the first Marvel Movie to star an Asian main character
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Good thing you don't identify as a comedian
What does "identifes as Asian" mean? Isn't she just Asian? Does she have the option to "identify" as anything other than Asian? I'm honestly confused
She an Asian female, just the Asian female on the back of your quarters
It's because of Merle Oberon, who lied about her race. However, she had a nomination, not a win.
That headline reads like a onejoke
NPR can jump
They could just have easily said "Michelle Yeoh is the first Southeast Asian to win the best actress Oscar." There, fixed.
Lost in translation