On an email with my manager I described a coworker I only worked with once as a small, thin woman that was either born in an East Asian country or has East Asian parents. I don’t know this person’s name. I don’t see a better way to describe her all things considered.
The managers answer: it is disrespectful to describe people according to ethnic background or physical appearance.
My next question for this manager: dear manager, how should I describe this person then?
I don’t know if I’m being genuinely disrespectful or this is a very thin skinned manager. Either way, I had to work with another coworker I didn’t know either. This conversation with manager B ensued:
manager B: ‘today you’re working with mike’
me: ‘who’s mike?’
manager B: ‘that fat guy’
make it make sense.
This might be a regionalism. In the US, someone from India wouldnt be called Asian (even though India is obviously in Asia), but (in my understanding) in UK English, “Asian” will be used for both south Asian as well as east Asian folks, so it’s probably more normal there.
I think it just comes down to which people groups migrated in the largest numbers to which place first.