Euphemisms for Jihadists in Britain May Boomerang

[jordan179]

I commented on level_head's "Euphemisms for Jihadists":

"Asian" is one of those continent-based racial descriptions that actually describes very little.  An "Asian" person may be Caucasian, Mongoloid or Negrito:  within the "Caucasian" category he may be of European, Indian or Semitic ancestry. 
When the British press describes a perp as "Asian" all they are

Comments

[kalance]

On the other hand, it's not like referring to perps in the US as "Arab" or "Middle Eastern" hasn't led to some problems. Not necessarily on the part of the media, but on the part of people's ignorance. Thanks to Disney and a few others, a lot of people in the US have gotten it into their head that Arabs wear turbans. So, any time the media reports that an Arab group has committed some sort of crime, a bunch of Sikhs pay the price.

Probably a "Damned in you do, damned if you don't" proposition. Since, you're right, when you hear "Asian", people's first thought isn't "Arab", or even "Pakistani". It's probably some group of East Asian. Heck, it gets even more specific than that. Got into an argument a while ago with a friend who insisted that Filipinos weren't "Asian". (His reason was "because they didn't look Chinese")

[marycatelli]

"A bunch of"? Do you have cases and statistics on that?

[kalance]

Well, A quick 2 minute search on Google found two separate incidents in Wisconsin in August of this year, totaling 7 dead; an incident in California in March 2011, and one in September '01 less than a week after 9/11.

All of which have been found to be crimes committed because the perp thought "turban = Muslim"

[level_head]

I've not seen any evidence that Page (the Wisconsin mass-shooter) thought that his victims were Muslim. He was anti-minority, it seems, regardless of the minority, and none of the reports I've seen mentioned any specific antipathy toward Muslims as opposed to Sikhs or blacks or Hispanics.

So that's not (apparently) a case of such mistaken identity.

The actual number of anti-Sikh crime in the US appears to be quite low indeed. And the "spike" of even anti-Muslim murders after 9/11 was modest indeed: I recall stats saying a total of four, out of the entire US.

But there was a spate of fires set, burning Muslim business establishments to the ground. Some Muslims went to jail for this, as they'd set the fires themselves. Some were merely "suspicious," and no doubt some were driven by real anti-Muslim sentiment. But the total incident count was not as bad as you'd think