How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels

Re:How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels by sandworm101 on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:19PM (#17920584)

I think it safe to say they mean "Indian American" in a racial rather than national context, akin to "African American". So I'd take it to include people who have ethnic ties to the entire Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan and Bangladesh.

As a Canadian who has lived many years in the US, the casual use of racial descriptors still shocks me. I find is very discomforting to be asked my race on forms, to see national news talk about how different ethnic groups feel about this or that.

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Re:How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels by VectorLock on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @02:22PM (#17920618)

No, they explicitly mean Indian, even more specifically Gujarati Indians.

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Re:How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels by nyolfen on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @04:37PM (#17921689)

indians were categorized as white for govt purposes in the US until the late 70s when they petitioned the government for a census category so they could benefit from affirmative action. same deal as the new MENA category

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Re:How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels by amyjess on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @04:50PM (#17921790)

Indians don't have their own census category now, either. They're officially considered Asian; the census lumps them in with East Asians and Southeast Asians.

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Re:How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels by nyolfen on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @06:11PM (#17922340)

1980 Census

This year added several options to the race question, including Vietnamese, Indian (East), Guamanian, Samoan, and re-added Aleut.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Un...

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Re:How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels by ams6110 on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @10:28PM (#17923507)

As an old white american guy, when I read the headline my first thought was Indian = Native American and was thinking it was somehow related to casino resort hotels on reservations but it still wasn't making sense.

On your latter point, absolutely. And the people who make make the biggest effort to categorize people into hyphenated-Americans are the very ones who turn around and accuse people of being some-kinda-phobic or some-sorta-ist if they don't see the world that way.

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