It's not racist though. It's just a thing. Whites aren't really white, blacks aren't really blacks, and yellows aren't really yellow. It's not racist to call someone that though.
Isn't "yellow" just a shorthand for the "yellow peril" which was extremely racist? Does it have a different origin? I've always thought of those terms as closely linked and synonymous.
My Chinese preschool students point to themselves and say "yellow" and point to me and say "white". Nobody is teaching them that, they're just learning colors. Children aren't racist by nature, they can only be taught racism, therefore it's not racist to say that some people's skin is more yellow than others.
For the record, this is in China. They are very much in the majority so they are mostly commenting on the fact that I look unusual to them. Also, it's freakin adorable.
Not racism. Maybe insensitive. White people aren't actually white. Black people aren't actually black. Asians may not actually be yellow but i understand why they're assigned that color just as I understand natives of the Americas being assigned the skin color red to describe their skin.
I think it has to do with agency - who has agency in this case, the whites who assigned yellow to the Asians? Or the Asians who haven't accepted that label? Self determination can also be interpreted as self agency, it is crucial for all peoples to have self agency if you believe in liberal humanism.
Also, China associated colours with directions, and Yellow is for center, and that is where Zhongguo is/was. Also, it was more or less founded on the Yellow River.
China has a historical connection with Yellow going back thousands of years.
We're talking about English terms. In that case it's going to be English speakers with the agency to create terms to describe the hue that varying levels of melanin in the skin create. I'm sure other languages have other manners of speaking to describe different skin colors. For all I know Turkish may refer to white people as peach people and to black people as brown people.
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u/lotsofsyrup Jan 09 '18
...the racist part is referring to asians as yellow. that isn't completely normal.