Then that person might be the US Census Bureau, which defines (or, rather, has had defined for it) the following racial categories (and more, but these two are relevant to the discussion):
“White – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.
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“Asian – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.”
This also basically reflects the general use of the terms in the US, except that a lot of people would would consider Semitic people to be two additional separate races and not part of White, and/or would separate out those from the subcontinent as distinct from “Asians”. It's important to understand that while some of the racial terms have names of continent, they are about a particular model of racial identities, not continental boundaries.
Yea, the US has shown great historical leadership in naming people accurately. Thank God they just called the people there Indians and didn't go all the way and called the place India as well.
So the world has much more sense than to take it's cues from the US, in these matters atleast.
If someone thinks arabs are not 'Asian' is just as dim witted as an Asian saying: Bah! america-shamerica Non-whites are not American.