Well, I’ll share my impression of what has caused the change over the past 20 years or so.
[As a caveat, I come from white bread no crust roots. Speak Mandarin fluently, speak basic Japanese, spouse is a Chinese citizen, duaghter is a dual national Chinese/American, have a degree in Mandarin, lived in East Asia for 15 years, and grew up in the home of a decorate WW2 Pacific Theater and Korean Conflict combat vetern who used what were clearly derogatory terms to refer to Orientals/Asians.]
Certainly in the mid-80’s, Asian-American female politically correct college students at the University of California, Davis, were happy to be called “ornamentals” by their buddies. My half-Japanese girlfriend and her Asian friends all thought it was “cute”. Please note, these were the same people that occupied “Nelson Mandella Hall” 24 hours a day, and were arrested at a UC Regents meeting for protesting aparthied.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that even 20 years ago, Oriental seemed a bit old fashioned or archaic. Asian was certainly a more used term. Many Universities still had Oriental Studies or Departments of Oriental Languages. My former Chinese professor said that the term “he’s gone oriental” was not a complementary one and used in the 1950’s. However, gradually the term Oriental left a bad taste but my prof didn’t have an explanation why.
My guess is that two catch phrases came into being. I’m not sure who originated these catch phrases but they have taken on a life of their own. The first is that “Oriental is a rug”, by implication that oriental refers to things and not people. Maybe the word “oriental” is evolving that way, but check the Tammerlane dictionary quotations. I saw on on-line default dictionary today that had the “oriental is a rug” and that it is now considered a slur. Go back to Kipling (who some people think is a racist, I think he’s a product of his time and will gladly argue with those that hold the former view), who uses the word “oriental” a lot.
The second catchphrase is some degree of “oriental is equivalent to niggr/negro/colored.” Personally, while this may be an easy analogy to make, and IMHO may even be a pretty good one with the term “colored”, it is too easy to become “or**ntl is the same as ngg*r.” One races struggle is simply not the same as another races. Equivalent perhaps but not the same.
Regardless, once these two catchphrases entered the US mainstream, then it’s all over. Personally, I’ve dug around a lot trying to figure this issue out in *my mind *, and the best explanation I’ve come up with is that the word oriental is a colonial era term, and has a inherent negative bias. Certainly, none of the dozen or so Asian-American studies programs and University groups with web pages that I contacted were able to provide more of an explanation.
That old thread that I cited above, I repeatedly tried to pin down posters as to why Oriental was offensive. Most just said they didn’t like the term. Of course, I was a younger poster and definately a jerk in that 5 page thread. Regardless, I would really appreciate if someone could explain the historic context or non personal reasons that make “oriental” such a distasteful one now.
