Why did people used to say, many years ago, that oriental people were "yellow"?

Question

I'm sure that their skin tone hasn't changed in 30 years. Were people from China, or any other oriental country, ever "yellow"? Is there skin tone any different from a Caucasian at all?

Answer 1

People still say they are "yellow". It's just pretty racist

Objectively, if you were going to call "whites" white and "blacks" black, even though their skin colours aren't even close to the colours white or black, is it that much of a stretch to call asians yellow?

Answer 2

I heard somewhere that most Asians came from an area in China near the "Yellow" lake and that's where the term "yellow" came from.

Answer 3

"Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), one of the founders of what some call scientific racism theories, came up with the five color typology for humans: white people (the Caucasian or white race), more or less black people (the Ethiopian or black race), yellow people (the Mongolian or yellow race), cinnamon-brown or flame colored people (the American race or red race), and brown people (the Malay or brown race)"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_metap...

Answer 4

i believe it has to do with the fact that they are very pale white and some to the extreme that they are yellowish white. my wife is from mexico and a doctor has actually said they are yellow.

Answer 5

Oriental is a rug Asian is a people!

A lot of omega 3 fatty acids produce a yellow tinting to the skin, Asians eat a lot of fish.

Answer 6

It's just an exaggeration. There aren't any really white or black people either, they are brown and pink.

Yes, east Asians do have a slightly different skin tone. Europeans have a relatively recent mutation for very pale skin that dates to about 8,000 years old. They have a kind of warm beige tone, it's a shade darker than you get in Europeans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/453196...

http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/images/m...

Answer 7

I've always assumed it was just because they used color words for other peoples: black, white, brown, and wanted to "complete the set" as it were. Something lighter than brown, but darker than white.

None of those words is really accurate (nor is "red" for Native Americans).

Answer 8

Probably hundreds of years ago, humans could not accurately describe someone of a different race and thus use color to ease their description.

As years past,  using of color tend to be look upon as degrading  . It is the same as the  calling of 'whites' &  'blacks' to describe a westerner, african.

Skin tone for all races has not changed for all humans, with the exception of some who choose to do it medically  or have a medical condition that changes their skin color.