Wow. Do you want me to list those posters for you? :rolleyes:
I’ve read your position, and glad you have participated but if you’re going to further the debate, please add some more insight or at least offer up a better rebuttal than “Says you!”
Moving on… let’s see what the Answers.com has to say (http://www.answers.com/topic/oriental):
And Princeton’s WordNet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=oriental):
Well, if you don’t like the first two posts, don’t respond to them. The third brought up what I thought were valid issues, explained as cogently as I could. What strawman are you talking about? Gimme the strawmannishness of it.
Just so you clearly understand: my central problem with the PC objections to the word “Oriental” is that by attaching the taint of bigotry to it, you eventually make it equivalent to “nigger” and “wop” and other genuinely bigotry-laden terms, and thus make is useless for the applications for which it is useful. To me, “oriental” has a strong connotation with culture and art, which is why I don’t typically use it to describe people.
That’s the central problem I have with the PC objection to the term “oriental” is that describing it as a racist term just isn’t appropriate. Some people percieve it that way, many others perceive it as “quaint” or “off” but not a term of racial derision, as the PC patrol would have it. Why should I cede the point to the PC patrol? Make 'em prove it like any other Doper has to.
You pretended that “Oriental” was being reviled as “racist” when no one had actually provided any claim that it was racist. Sounds like a straw man to me.
In fact, the only claim of “racist” activity was that one poster noted that racists used “Asian” the same as the other people the poster knew. Similarly, the article by Gordon Lee to which two of us have linked makes no claim that “Oriental” is racist, only that the people who first chose to use “Asian” were trying to carve out an identity at a time when they were relegated to being the “model” and “nice” (and invisible) minority.
So you are rudely objecting to something based on an error of your perception, not an actual offense perpetrated by someone else.
You can list as many posters as you want, but I stand by my claim. People who insist that it’s wrong to describe people as “oriental” do so because of that foolish, “Oriental is a rug, not a person” nonsense.
You cited answers.com, which in turn cited the American Heritage Dictionary. This entry does not say that it’s incorrect to describe people as oriental, though. Quite the contrary; it emphasizes the inconsistency of taking offense at this allegedly Eurocentric term, while tacitly accepting other Eurocentric descriptors such as “Near Eastern” and “Middle East.” This dictionary acknowledges that many do consider the term to be offensive, but also underscores the inconsistency of this claim.
Indeed, the Global Language Monitor points out that this offense is essentially an American phenomenon, and emphasizes that in Europe, the term “Oriental” is preferred. To say that the term “oriental” only applies to objects, and not to persons, is to make a ridiculous distinction – one that sacrifices accuracy on the altar of political correctness.
I’m sensitive enough to object to the use of gwai luo as a synonym for “Westerner”, and I can’t even get a twinge of outrage for “oriental.”
Personally, I don’t take cues from the media. And I hope you understand that one person’s temptations to belief (mine or yours) are not compelling.
I can believe Miss Manners might have that view, but I’d be interested in seeing a cite. I’d also be interested in a cite as to how many people “enough” is.
It’s worth mentioning Edward Said’s Orientalism as a point of information in this discussion. Said argued that grouping some cultures as “The Orient” essentializes disparate cultures, and creates damaging, false dichotomies between “East” and “West.” The word “oriental” comes from the largely imperial discourse of Orientalism, and arguably carries some of the imperialist connotations of that discourse.
But perhaps you have to be an asian academic to find the term offensive (and some do). Its all a little too post-modern for me, and I don’t really buy all the implications, but I think Said has a point. Why are we content with the word “european” as a descriptive label, and not “asian”? The Turkish are as different from the English as the Indian are from the Chinese. What is the circumstance in which you do not know someone’s nationality when the term “east asian” will not suffice?
I think that, in general, the more specific term the better. And I cannot envision a situation in which Oriental is the most specific available term.
This point is only semi-valid. Yep, there are plenty of PC police that trot out “Oriental is a rug” and many of them have nothing beyond to offer in a discussion. You want to bait the PC police, then you can use a variation of “And Swiss is cheese, do you have a real point?” You might find that a lot of people have more depth than just that IMHO dumbass catchphrase.
That said, just because you and I find “Oriental is a rug” to be a dumbass catchphrase, doesn’t mean that many Asians in the US rightly or wrongly find the word “Oriental” distasteful. It’s their call, not yours. Since “Asian” is a much more popular, common use alternate word without the baggage of “Oriental”, then it says a lot more about you than any PC police if you insist on using “Oriental” to refer to a person. It’s called common courtesy.
When I first heard the objection to Oriental for people on this board a few years ago, it gave me a giant WTF? In fact I was quite the jerk on one 5 page thread and related pit, that I believe were thankfully lost during the Winter of Our Missed Content. However, I must have contacted 20 different Asian American groups since then trying to figure out what the deal was. I can’t say it has ever been an overly satisfying explanation to me. One person, who earned her US citizenship instead of being born with it, stated she never wanted to be defined as “being east of her former colonial masters.” Others explained that as a colonial word, it was never used as a complement or salutation. In fact, in the 1950’s, according to my Caucasian Harvard PhD Chinese professor, “going Oriental” was used as a slur. As in, “he’s gone Oriental” or become abnormally engrossed in an Oriental culture/viewpoint/language.
Essentially, the position that you are advocating boils down to this: If any member of a minority group agrees with the PC police on a term, be it “oriental” or “vertically challenged” or “gullibility challenged” then doing whatever the PC police say you should do is common courtesy. Are you sure you want to maintain this position?
To quote a previous poster: :rolleyes:
Moving this love fest from IMHO to The BBQ Pit.
Re this “PC” bit: If I bought a Macintosh, would I then be free to be polite to people? :rolleyes:
I’m pretty sure the PC police object to the word nigger. Are you insisting that we use that word simply to avoid complying with the PC police?
As noted in a twice-linked article in this thread, the replacement of Oriental by Asian was intended as a simple declaration of identity without making any disparaging remarks about the earlier word. If some small number of later people choose to make stupid analogies to support their desire, does that impose some sort of moral imperative on you to be a jerk to the rather larger number of people who have simply expressed a choice?
You miss the point that there are plenty of Asians in America that object to being referred to as Oriental. It’s not about you, me or the PC police.
“If any member” is hyperbole, doncha think? I did contact about 20 different Asian American organizations doing personal research on this issue over the past few years. The response varied but uniformly they prefered not hearing the word Oriental. I don’t have a cite, and I can’t give you a percentage of how many people with Asian heritage in the US object, and how strenuously. That said, it’s more than “any member” and ancedotal evidence suggests enough to offer some common courtesy. I mean, if you’re supportive of minorities and all, it is common courtesy to avoid the term that can give offense in favor of the commonly accepted term that doesn’t.
I could give a flying fuck what the PC police think, and since this is the pit I find the fucking completely spurious bullshit “oriental is a rug” catchphrase goddamn annoying. And I agree that goat feltching rat fuckers that say “Oriental is like ngger” has perhaps created a festering taint of unneccesary racism. But it ain’t about me or issues I have with the PC police.
I’d prefer my kids to grow up in a world where this is not a discussion. Thanks
/wave
I’m too lazy to wrestle with the search function for my previous post, but I hope I didn’t thoroughly misrepresent the sentiment back home. The preference for “Asian” back home appears to be a generational thing-- “Asian” was the term of choice among my generation (I’m 29). I have heard “Oriental” used, but only by baby boomers and older, and Caucasian tourists.
In my experience, the difference between Hawaii and the mainland US is that people from the mainland US use the terms “Asian” or “Oriental” a lot more often than people in Hawaii do. Of course, there’s no way around it when you’re talking about Asian-American people as a group, or topics of interest or relevance to Asian cultures. But when talking about specific people, people in Hawaii are far more likely to name specific ethnicities. In a situation where you might say, “Bob, the Asian guy next door,” Hawaiians are far more likely to say, “Bob, the Chinese guy next door.” This requires the ability to distinguish Chinese people from Japanese people or Korean people, or knowledge of Bob’s last name or some other clue to his heritage, but I think the reason people do it is because in Hawaii, “Asian” is an unhelpful descriptor of a person, as Asians make up the majority of the population. Generic terms like “Asian” and “Oriental” seem to be tossed out more when there aren’t many Asians around.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that is consistent in other regions of the country or world-- that specific terms tend to be used in highly mixed cultures, and generic terms are used in less mixed cultures.
Personally, I prefer “Asian”, and I submit it’s the safer term to use, as I have never heard any Asian insist on being called “Oriental”. But if you’re really conscious about not offending people, ask which term they prefer, or acknowledge that your choice of term might offend and apologize. PC and dictionary definitions and Miss Manners don’t even have to enter the picture. There is no objective right or wrong.
That’s pretty much how I (half Japanese, but look completely white) feel. I don’t think anyone can really get away with describing a person as “oriental” without coming off like a rube.
And if I had claimed that we should insist on calling these people “Oriental,” then you would have a valid point. I did not, though. What I said is that it’s foolish for people to insist on being called “Asian.” There’s a huge difference between the two claims.
Because of this “common courtesy” that you mentioned, I do choose to err on the side of caution – even though I think it’s a foolish and ignorant distinction. And before you protest, I say this as a full-blooded Oriental (oops, “Asian”), born and raised in the heart of the Orient (oops, “Asia”).
Now, if the PC police want to berate me for describing myself as Oriental, that’s their problem. As I said, I choose to avoid this word when describing other people because I do recognize that people attach a certain ignorant and irrational hatred to this term. I do this precisely because of the common courtesy that you mentioned. This does not, however, justify foolish statements like “‘Oriental’ describes objects, not people.” That’s simply PC word-policing gone wild.
There is no term for any “race” that some member of that “race” doesn’t find “offensive”.
Sure. Make the poor Moderator do the heavy lifting.
I am guessing that the post in question was this one?
Small sample fallacy.