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I can’t think of many situations in which a non-Chinese Asian-looking person is called “chino” to their face by someone who is aware that this person is not Chinese and without being friends, though.
And yes, “chino” is a term/nickname loosely applied to people with slanted eyes without any Asian ancestry and to any kind of East Asians without negative connotations. But no, it’s not universally accepted. Some people are OK regardless of their nationality/ancestry, some people directly hate it because they have different roots and want to have them acknowledged, some people may even have Chinese ancestry but embrace their nationality and don’t like being treated like a foreigner/outsider, and some people simply aren’t very fond of nicknames and prefer to be called by their names. On the other hand, not everyone calls Asians “chinos”, especially if they know a person isn’t Chinese or of Chinese roots.
To summarize, there is a mix of a strong nickname culture and a relatively lower relevance of identification by ancestry, but it’s not so black and white.
The part in bold is most often seen in the USA by Hispanic Americans and some Hispanic immigrants after living for a while in the USA. This has to do with the strong emphasis on heritage in the USA and their acculturation process into American society. In general, people in Latin America aren't "touchy" about this.
Case in point, this was done in Santo Domingo a month ago. It's in Spanish but the guy interviewed says he is a Dominican-Japanese born, raised and his entire life has lived in the DR. Yet, he himself says that people refer to him as "chino" and in fact, when asked aren't the Japanese different from Chinese, he responds "everything is the same." lol A Latin American of partial Japanese descent often referred to as "chino" and rather than getting offended or other things which are more typical in the USA, he simply accepts in jest and keeps a smile in the process. It's simply a description and applied to him because he has slanted eyes, that's it. No need to get offended and the redt of the nonsense.
3:04 - 3:53 and 7:18 - 7:48. He also appears later in the video but it has nothing to do with he being referred to as "chino." BTW, when ge approaches the microphone the people are chanting "el chino, el chino, el chino." lol
Another cultural different¡ce noticed in the video is that he has no issues showing his braces, yet in the USA there is some sort of taboo regarding this. In fact, while in the DR people give a big smile with an open mouth with braces for photos, in the USA people with braces tend to not smile with an open mouth in photos.
BTW, when he approaches the microphone the people are chanting "el chino, el chino, el chino." lol
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Another cultural different¡ce noticed in the video is that he has no issues showing his braces, yet in the USA there is some sort of taboo regarding this. In fact, while in the DR people give a big smile with an open mouth with braces for photos, in the USA people with braces tend to not smile with an open mouth in photos.
Notice AntonioR is implying that calling a Japanese person Chinese is right in their culture, and I'm just an American that doesn't understand their ignorant Latin American customs.
Imagine a whole crowd of people shouting "China" in the face of a Japanese-origin woman. That's the most ignorant Archie-Bunker **** in the world - but totally normal to them. And I'm certain that everyone knows that the Fujimori family is Japanese but it's customary to just call them Chinese anyway.
Lol, stop overreacting and making a mountain out of a molehill for the sake of some useless virtue signaling, man. I didn’t deny anything nor did I say it couldn’t happen, but that therearen’t many situations in which it could happen. Fujimori family is very high profile in Peru, not your random Asian neighbors who run a small business/visit your own store, and from what I see partisans are used to calling them this way while father and daughter accept it. Similar case with former Argentinian president Menem I guess, which was nicknamed “el turco”, although he was of Syrian-Lebanese ancestry. I’m sure you can find videos of followers chanting “turco… turco…” and so. All of this hardly correlates to everyday situations in which common people interact to each other, hence my previous comment.
I never said it was morally good or bad either. In fact I never call Asian-looking people this way, just for accuracy rather than any sense of righteousness. The issue has more ramifications in Argentina, where any Spanish became a gallego, any descendant of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire became a turco, any Jew became a ruso, etc. Personally, I’m not attached to any of these names, and I discourage its use.
This reminds me that in certain parts along the Caribbean coast of the DR (Greater Santo Domingo included) and in all of Puerto Rico people call an orange it's proper name in Spanish (naranja) but more often "china." When asking for orange juice they say "jugo de china." That is actually one of the signs people from the Cibao assume someone is from the capital, because no one in the northern DR calls an orange "china."
We should see the "indignation" of Tritone in three, two, one...
Fujimori family is very high profile in Peru, not your random Asian neighbors who run a small business/visit your own store, and from what I see partisans are used to calling them this way while father and daughter accept it.
"They're used to calling him 'Chino', and he accepts it. What's wrong with that?" LOL
Is it O.K for someone to call you a Mexican to your face, if they so choose? Would you accept Mexican identity - and not be offended?
There are barely any Asian people in Colombia but they are often regarded as 'chinitos' for their slanted eyes. Please note this is more common in informal speech.
Funnily enough, people in cities like Bogota refer to little kids as 'chino/china'. I'm not sure why but it has nothing to do with slanted eyes.
"They're used to calling him 'Chino', and he accepts it. What's wrong with that?" LOL
Is it O.K for someone to call you a Mexican to your face, if they so choose? Would you accept Mexican identity - and not be offended?
You remind of the meme that says “by the power of white girl, I’m offended in your behalf”.
This is not about Latin American culture but language and communication, and the problem is that languages and communication in general don’t work the way postmodernists expect or wish. At the end when they fail to understand them because of the wrong premise, and they retreat to an ethnocentric POV in which other people are just either ignorant or immoral. In other words, inferior.
Languages aren’t rigid, especially the colloquial/informal speech, which ultimately may influence the standard form. Words and meanings change very fast through space and time, words themselves can have various meanings at the same time, and such meanings can have blurry boundaries even within a region. Moreover, translations word to word between languages are often imprecise. The Spanish word for “whale” is ballena, and “dolphin” is delfín. However, while in English dolphins are a kind of whales, in Spanish delfines are NEVER whales. So you shouldn't expect chino and Chinese to exactly match their meanings. Languages are twisted...
Then you have false friends between languages, words whose origin is the same but meanings drifted until they became completely different. English word “American” and Spanish “Americano” are false friends, often discussed in these forums.
Then you have words with more than one meaning, and here we are... nobody bats an eye if an American talks about a Caucasian person who wasn’t born in the Caucasus region nor has ancestry in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia or Southern Russia. This is EXACTLY the same as calling any East Asian a chino, but the term made it to the standard form!
I also remember there was a little controversy regarding of whether Elon Musk was an African American or not. After all, he was born in the African continent, and has American citizenship. However, the general consensus was that he ISN'T an African American. A Tunisian American of Berber ancestry is not usually seen as an African American either, and to make it worse, the word Africa originally meant a region in the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Nile. So, by the original geographic location, they are the truest Africans. But languages don’t work like this. Languages work organically. Meanings drift, change, stretch… words emerge, fall in disuse, keep regional, vernacular, or eventually become standard.
Unbelievable, isn't it? I mean, in the sense of amazing, not like untrue. Languages...
Here in Ceará, in the Northeast of South America (a part of the world that we recently discovered after the first round of the elections that many Brazilians don't want to be part of Brazil - but that's another subject) there is a particularity that emerged in recent years of calling all East Asian people as "coreanos" (Koreans). Japanese, Chinese and Korean people are all called "coreanos" by some people here.
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