Asian Girl By The Railway

Clovis Maksoud, Director for the Organization of Global South, argues that the term "Middle East" is a Eurocentric term denoting the region between Europe and East Asia, because it denies the Middle East's connection with Muslim North Africa. In English parlance, Western Asians like Jews, Iranians and Arabs, and the Central Asians of the former Soviet Republics are not referred to as "Asian" by United States government agencies. The Canadian government uses "West Asian" in its statistics; however people from the Arab countries are counted in a separate "Arab" category.
Pacific Islanders
In normal American usage Asian does not refer to the people from the Pacific Islands who are usually called Pacific Islanders. The term "Asians and Pacific Islanders" or "Asia/Pacific" was used on the 1990 US Census. However, in the 2000 US Census, the Asian or Pacific Islander category was separated into two categories, "Asian" and "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander".