June 28, 2009

Which term is to be used for people with small almond shaped eyes?

mongolia
nayan asked:


In most references assume the "Mongoloid", "Mongolian" and "Asian" Eastern Europe, the term is used for people who have eyes in the shape of a small almond. "Mongoloid" is also sometimes used for people with Down Syndrome. "Mongolian" sometimes can also mean people who are citizens of the country Mongolia. And "Asian" East and can also sometimes include people with big eyes. Thus, just as they show a person close scented white with big eyes and a Caucasian is there any word to describe the freedom of people eyed in the shape of a small almond?

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Comments on Which term is to be used for people with small almond shaped eyes? »

June 30, 2009

Q @ 11:29 am

Terms like mongoloid, negroid, and caucasoid have fallen out of favor. "Mongoloid" is especially troublesome because of how it has been used to refer to people with Down syndrome. The story behind that is that doctors and scientists used to think that the races of the earth had a hierarchical order of development, with some races being higher than others. Whites (caucasoids) were said to be on top. A child with Down syndrome was considered to be an evolutionary throwback to an earlier stage of human evolution, a Mongoloid stage, so just as people from Asia were inferior to whites because primitive, people with Down Syndrome were inferior and primitive (and since people with Down Syndrome tend to have somewhat almond-shaped eyes, this was used as support for the theory). You can see how discredited, and offensive this theory is, now. So using those terms now just evokes that way of thinking and that discredited science.

So here are the preferred terms:
People from Mongolia are Mongolians.
The people you are referring to are called "Asian." Sometimes people will say "Asian and Pacific Islander." It's not a perfect distinction, as, say, Turks are Asian, Israelis are Asian, and Indians are Asian, and they don't fit the category of people you have described, exactly. If you want to make a further distinction, then say "East Asian" (which means China, Korea, Japan). It's still not a perfect distinction, and the reason for that is that people just simply do not fall into the neat categories of race that scientists used to use. This is one of the many reasons why scientists have abandoned the concept of race as a scientific concept–race is really a cultural construction.

July 3, 2009

jim z @ 10:01 pm

My wife is Chinese and prefers Asian. I call the race oriental because Asia is continent and not a race. There are a few races indiginous to Asia. The same is true for Africa.

July 6, 2009

chin @ 3:59 pm

beautiful ?

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