Mrs. Kunilou would prefer (when the situation arises) to be called an “American of Asian descent”, but realizing that it’s a bit of a mouthful, she’ll be happy to settle for Asian-American. She’d prefer to simply be an American, but many people insist on labeling.
The problem she has with “Oriental” – in addition to the rugs and furniture thing – is that it raises too many images of “inscrutable”, Charlie Chan, Hop Sing the Chinese houseboy, bad Buddy Hackett comedy routines, etc. If you think that’s being “PC” try asking an African Amercian what he thinks of the term “Colored” even though at one time that was the more acceptable term.
I think that the shift has to do with sexist men calling oriental women, “ornamentals.” Though it is frequently accurate and complimentary, it objectifies the women. Thus objects are oriental people are asian. But, my Russian ex-girlfirend hates when people insist that she call them asian. She says, “I’M asian. You’re oriental.” She looks Norwegian (with a little bit of a round face like maybe there’s a touch of mongolian in there) but was born in Siberia.
It was always my understanding that “the Orient” was a specific area of Asia. China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia are in the Orient. Places like India or any of the -stans are not Oriental countries.
My 2 cents’ worth is that I have a hard time calling somebody “Asian” who has never been to Asia, or “African” who has never been to Africa. White people are not European unless they’re from Europe. Get my drift?
If you were born and raised American and you’re Black, you’re not African-American. You’re American and Black. I go to school with Africans (from Africa with citizenship of an African country) and African-Americans (recent American Citizens who immigrated here recently from an African country). I go to school with Asians (not American Citizens) and Asian-Americans (recently moved here from Asia and became Citizens).
My point is, why do you want to be called something you’re not? I’m of Mexican descent (even though I look white), but I’m not Mexican. I’m not Mexican-American. I’m American, 100%. I’ve never lived anywhere else, my allegiance has never lied anywhere else. I’ve been American since I was born, and that’s what I am and what I want to be called. All this other stuff is just silly and divisive.
Do they make these ridiculous distinctions in other countries? Are there African-Englishmen and Asian-Egyptians? Russian-Brazilians and Chinese-Ukranians?
I’m sick and tired of the [put your country here]-American classification. I’m of German ancestry. Am I thus a German-American?! As my above post said, my wife is from Hong Kong and just recently got her U.S. citizenship. It irks us to no end when someone refers to her as “Asian-American.”
I’m an American. My wife’s an American. And I don’t care what ethnicity or ancestry you happen to have: if you’re a U.S. citizen, then you’re an American.
I wonder why so many people are obsessed with ethnicity… I thought we were supposed to be blind to it.
There are occaisions - admittedly far fewer than usage would suggest - when specifying ethnicity rather than nationality are justified. The problem is that nowadays the same term is often used for both usages leading to misunderstanding and offence. Does anybody have a list of aceptable terms in this instance?
Such terms ikk & confuse me too because they mix up the two orthogonal concepts of nationality and ethnicity. I would consider your wife to be just plain American. Were I interested in her ethnicity (quite why I would be I cannot think but just for the sake of argument) I would say she was asian (or oriental - the point of the OP) and consider her nationality a seperate issue.
I wonder a Nigerian visitors to the US have ever been called an African American and whether he/she was offended?
I remember back during the O.J. Simpson incident, an “African-American hair” was reported to have been found at the crime scene, and I was thinking, How do they know it didn’t belong to a citizen of Canada? Of course, to describe it as a “black hair” would not convey the intended meaning. What was wanted here was something like “Negro”, though of course, that term is outdated, if not downright offensive, nowadays.
When I think of what comes to mind when I think of the terms “Oriental” and “Asian”, I realize “Oriental” does make me think more in terms of older oriental culture, idigenous dress, etc. while “Asian” brings more modern images to mind, e.g. Korean or Japanese businessmen wearing western clothing. Sort of in the way when I think of “the thirteen original colonies” I imagine people wearing revolutionary-war-era dress, not modern American clothing, even though they were Americans back then. Does this make any sense?
As far as interchanging “Caucasian” and “white”, many caucasians are very dark-skinned, for example in India. Even white caucasian isn’t specific enough. In California, the San Jose Mercury News would use the term “Anglo” to refer to white, non-hispanic caucasians. (When someone wrote in to complain, saying she was offended because she wasn’t anglo even though she was a white non-hispanic caucasian, their response was “That’s just what we call you.”)
kunilou, if and when you have kids, your wife can drop the Asian-American label for the term “Soccer-mom” <runs away>
Oh, let’s go even further. I’m French-Canadian-Welsh-Austrian-Euro American. But don’t stop there. If my wife was Indo-Asian-Near-Eastern-Czeck-Norweigan-American, I’d love to see what my children put on the “ethnicity” spot on their ID papers.
Did no one understand my post? Which part? All of it? Never heard a young oriental woman refered to as an ornamental? Confused that Siberia is part of Asia too? Where am I confusing you? I know of one particular Cambodian woman who has expressed to me specifically that she prefers Asian because she had been offended by the ornamental comment too frequently. My Siberian ex-girlfriend suggested that we start calling them yellows. My niece, who’s favorite color is yellow, immediately said that SHE wanted to be yellow, but my Cambodian friend was even more offended.
There IS a difference between where you were born and what race you are. There are medical implications for one thing. So, specifying racial heritage amongst Americans does have a use. It would be nice to have a clearly defined term that didn’t offend anyone. My dictionary defines Asian as an inhabitant of asia, not even necessarily a native. Oriental, similarly, is an inhabitant of the Orient. So, that doesn’t get us anywhere except that it says, “especially a native of an Oriental country or tribe.” Also, my American Heritage Dictionary is from 1978 - an award I got for outstanding performance in 6th grade Mathematics (lol).
Asian, to me, brings to mind the large green mass on a Risk board worth 7 units if it can be held for a full turn. Just down the road from me there is a place called Kim’s Oriental Grocery. That’s where I buy lots of wonderful foods that I can’t get at a supermarket. The Korean Owners also rent Oriental video tapes including American Movies with Sub-titles in Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cantonese, or Mandarin. I was hoping for voice over, but they didn’t have any.
The Oxford Modern English Dictionary, 1996 edition, page 703- oriental 1. of or characteristic of Eastern civilization; 2. of or concerning the East, esp. E. Asia; Oriental- a person of Oriental, esp. E. Asian descent.
So why am I frowned upon, at the very least, when I use this term to descibe a person? Though I have actually only used the term once, with disasterous results.
I never would have given this thread a second thought except that someone pounced on me about it a while back. I had a really righteous 19 year old verbally smack me about using a word that only describes objects to refer to a person. Whoa, hey, it may be outdated, but please…
Don’t get it, but I’m white so that must make me the bad person… I really wouldn’t have used the term if I thought it was offensive. When did it become that?
I don’t know. Reminds me of a comedian I saw on TV a while back who was talking about visiting Taiwan or Hong Kong, I forget. I’ll try to capture his dead pan timing:
“So, yeah, you know, they, they call Americans ‘white devils’ over there, but, well, er… you know, they don’t mean anything by it”
ZenBeam, our kids are teenagers and Mrs. Kunilou is proud to be a kid-shuttling-minivan-driving-go-to-their-games-and-cheer-American.
And for the record, folks, Mrs. Kunilou does not go around calling herself Asian-American anymore than I walk around calling myself balding-white-American. She was born in Cleveland, for crying out loud. Her family has been in this country as long as mine. She took Latin in high school.
However, in the spirit of the original post, IF SHE HAS TO BE CALLED ANYTHING she would rather be refered to as an Asian-American. She will not be offended if you refer to her as Oriental. (I just called her and asked her so I could be sure about that.) But if you have to call her anything besides her name, she would prefer Asian.
As for our kids, the oldest one seems to have settled on “multi-racial” but she reserves the right to change her mind.
Let’s say you dad is name Mike. You are Mike Jr. While you are a kid a realatively powerless, everyone calls you Junior. When you finally have enough power to to tell people “STOP CALLING ME JUNIOR!”, they say "well we have always called you junior so there is no reason to stop. But there is. The term “junior” is connected to your father and defines you in terms of your father. You would prefer to see yourself as an enity unto yourself with a name that reflects that.
And that is what is wrong with the term “oriental”. While it is not overtly offensive, it is patronizeing. Oriental is a colonial term. It’s kind of like how you or I would get sick of being called a “yankee” over and over again.
You know, EJsGirl, if you weren’t already married, I’d ask you to marry ME!
You’ve summed up EXACTLY what I was talking about. “Oriental” is not, and never has been, a derogatory term. I respect the belief held by some people that the term refers to objects and not people, but is this belief UNIVERSALLY HELD? I think not. Do most people, even the ones who prefer “Asian”, think “Oriental” is a racial epithet, an insult? Again, I think not. I personally would love to verbally smack around the person who verbally smacked YOU around.
Again, people have the right to prefer to be called “Asian”, for example, Ms. Kunilou, and that preference should be respected. WHEN IT’S MADE EXPLICIT! But should people really take offense at such an obviously non derogatory term? Pardon me for thinking they shouldn’t. And personally, I really have better things to do than get offended when a person uses the term “Oriental”.
As I said previously, I think tolerance is just as much not being quick to take offense as it is to be so circumspect that you don’t unintentionallygive offense.
Oh you whiners. It is an annoying term that people would rather not be defined by. Sure, it’s your right to be annoying, but it does piss people of off. If you insist on pissing people off by exersizeing your right to refer to people by names they don’t want to be called…well…deal with the consequences, which is you will be called an annoying insensitive jerk.
An annoying term? Like “whiners”? Or “annoying insensitive jerk”?
I don’t know about you, but I’m half Japanese, half Chinese. That makes me “Asian”, “Oriental” or “Japanese-Chinese-American”. I am one of the “people” in question, and terms like “Oriental” don’t bother me at all, thank you very much. Permit me the dignity to decide what I would and would rather not be defined by, please?
I guess I wasn’t sufficiently clear, when I said:
And I quite agree with you that to call someone by a term that they explicitly don’t wish to be called would indeed be annoying. Please note the word “explicitly”, however. “Oriental” is not generally equated (at least where I come from) with “Jap”, “Nip” or “Chink” or several other words which I think most of us agree ARE offensive.
Now, I might be going out on a limb here, but I truly believe that, while most of “my fellow Asian Americans” prefer the term “Asian”, most of us aren’t “pissed off” by the term “Oriental”.
On the other hand, the stereotype of “us” as camera clicking tourists in Hawaiian shirts and shorts has got to go.
<runs away>