Note: I only refered to Sailor as a “cracker” because he said the term would not offend him if the intent was good. I intend good things by using this term, and anyone that is offended is a thin-skinned prig that deserves what he or she (wait a minute! make that just “he”) gets.
Oriental is equivalent to n*gger.
Puhleeeeeseeeeee
My father is a decorated and several times wounded combat veteran from the WW2 Pacific Theater and Korea. He has always refered to Asian-Americans by their country of ancestry or more generally with, in his mind, the interchangeable words Oriental or Asian. It took 25 years of concerted effort, several of his offspring marrying Asians or people of Asian decent and having a few grandkids carrying Asian genes to finally cure his use of racial epitaphs when aggravated.
However, since some of the people posting obviously do not understand the difference, allow me to learn you something. SOME people may find the word Oriental distasteful and may even see racial overtones, but that is not anywhere anyhow comparable to blatantly racial slurs such as g**k, slpe, chnk, np and jp you revisionist lame dork brain weasel dick pencil necked self righteous vaginal fart spawned festering herniated douche bag of a spoiled ignorant syphilitic gravy sucking slack jawed bilious lice infected chancrous numb nut politically correct JERK.
One more thing, look it up in the dictionary, last time I checked Oriental is not defined as a rug or a carpet. Sometimes “oriental rug” is used as an example of the definition “things orient.”
so glad China Guy has aligned himself on the side of ‘eradicating ignorance’.
my quote is
which does not claim that Nigger is the same as oriental, but that ‘oriental’ is nearing the point where it’s generally considered to be offensive in mainstream polite public communications.
Perhaps I should have prefaced it with ‘in the US’, but, when you listen/read the news in the US, the word “Asian” is used to describe people, the word “oriental” if used, is used to describe objects. (Gee, I’m getting this sense of deja vu - perhaps 'cause I’ve said this before.)
So, China Guy your tirade and insults aside, hopefully you’ll see the difference between what I said and what you claim that I said now that I’ve spelled it out for you.
Now, while I certainly don’t think China Guy needed to get so insulting, I think there was some basis for his assumption that some direct comparison was being made between “nigger” and “oriental”: To quote wring:
I got the definite impression from that full quote that you were trying to say that it is generally considered offensive in “mainstream public communication” to use the word “nigger”, and it is “nearing that point (if not there) for ‘oriental’ vs. ‘Asian’”. I saw a direct connection there between “nigger” and “oriental” in that statement. Now, I think there was some ambiguity in that statement, because I misunderstood it as well. To quote my previous post:
I mean, I obviously thought that you were saying that “oriental” was elevated to the same offensive level as “nigger”. And no one corrected me, no one. So why shouldn’t China Guy assume that (since my statement was not refuted) that no one found my assumption (or his, as it turns out) to be innacurrate?
so, if you’re unclear, what’s wrong with asking? (ironic, though isn’t it, that the tirade came from the contingent that claims the other side is ‘too quick to see offense’? )
I guess to me, ‘generally considered to be offensive in polite communication’ is a thresehold. And there’s levels past that as well, so, for example, it’s generally considered to be offensive in polite communication to call some one ‘stupid’ or a ‘bitch’ or ‘cunt’. None of them are ‘ok’, some will get you more grief than others.
So, for me, all of those terms would be inappropriate in polite conversation, (in my terms, some a misdemeanor vs. a felony vs. death penalty, ok?), but it still wouldn’t equate one with the other.
This is the pit so shoot first and ask questions later.
If you don’t want people to make the automatic conceptual leap between the n word and oriental, don’t put them in proximity. Perpetuating catch phrases like “Oriental is a rug” does not combat ignorance.
Check the thread, I’m not part of the “too quick to see offense” brigade.
And I agree with WRING on “yosemite there’s a b-i-g difference to me between some one who is ignorant of current practices, and some one who is willfully, intentionally, and proud of their ‘unPCness’ by insisting on using terms that have been identified as being considered crass, rude, offensive, insulting, painful, etc etc etc.” I live in Asia, I’m ignorant of the current practices of Asian-Americans, and I’m getting a lot of generalizations for asking critical questions to educate myself.
ARCHMICHAEL, this is the pit so if you wanna call me a Nazi please do so here in unambiguous language. If that was not your intent, choose a better example than a swastika next time.
No China Guy, I was not calling you a Nazi. I don’t even know how you came to that conclusion. Here is my post for those who don’t feel like reading the whole three page thread.
I thought I was quite clear on what I was saying. You have a penchant to take an issue that you know (or should know) is personal and strip them of all emotional content. You probably wouldn’t understand why American Buddhist avoid using the swastika out of consideration to the Jews. I am beginning to think that you have a reading comprehension problem, or a willfull blindness to arguments that you can’t refute.
I also noted that you chose to completely ignore my challenge to you, so I challenge you again in this thread. You have peppered the other thread with requests for non-personal reasons why ‘oriental’ should not be used and ‘Asian’ should be used. This is a ridiculous statement. What is a non-personal reason? For what non-personal reasons do you not use the terms ‘Gook’, ‘Chink’, ‘Nip’, ‘Jap’ & ‘Slope’? That most Asian-Amercians personally prefer to be referred to as ‘Asian’ as opposed to ‘Oriental’ is not enough for you?
Let me call consult the Magic 8-Ball. Will China Guy address my challenge. Not fuckin’ likely.
Hey, it only took 20-some-odd posts before “Nazi’s” made an appearance. Whoooo-hah!
Yeah, definitely a bit ambiguous!
OK, I understand where you’re coming from, and I don’t disagree. Thanks for clarifying.
And I definitely found your previous post somewhat ambiguous. And it didn’t help that after I stated my assumption that “oriental” and “nigger” were now on the same level of offensiveness, no one corrected me, or told me I had misunderstood.
uh, can we get a ruling on the swastika example from the PC police? Ditto with the n word as part of the same subject matter vis-a-vis oriental?
As for non-personal reasons. Apologies to anyone that is sensitive about these words. This is an off the cuff reply and not based on extensive research, other people emminently more qualified have layed out the evidence years ago. That said, “Np" is an abbreviation for “Nippon”, which is what the Japanese call Japan. "Np” would be the bastardization of the word used most widely during WW2. It was never used in a positive sense, but always used negatively or degrogatorily. “Dirty Np" was a common expression where “dirty” did not refer to “cleanliness” but “cowardlyness”. Japanese in Japan do not currently refer to themselves as "Nps”. Could be mistaken, but dollars to donuts, Japanese have never referred to themselves as “Nps." Nor has the Japanese diaspora ever refered to themselves as "Nps.” “J*p” is short for “Japanese”, and see the above reasoning.
Oddly enough, I can’t remember off hand the entomology on “chink”. I believe it is a derivation of China and Chinese. “Chink” was (and still is) an adjective that carries the meaning of, “a narrow crack or opening”. “Chnk" when referring to Chinese is and always has been a derogatory term. The Chinese have never referred to themselves as "Chnks.”
I don’t know when “gk" came into being or where it was derived from. It was a term in widespread use by WW2. "Gks” were Asians and they were the enemy. I am ashamed to say so, but have heard my father in the past (broke him of this habit, at least he hasn’t uttered this in my presence since being on a Tokyo subway in 1993) “I used to shoot gooks like you in the war.” It is not and never has been anything but a derogatory term. Asians have never referred to themselves singly or collectively as “G**ks.”
“Sl*pe” was a Viet Nam war era word. It was used by most US fighting men to describe the enemy, and in general all Asians. It was a depersonalizing word. It is a charactature of Asian racial features, and referred to eyes being slanted in comparison to the standard cacausion “rounder” eyes. It is not and never has been anything but a derogatory term. Asians have never referred to themselves singly or collectively as “slopes.”
Satisfied? Is this different from Oriental or Asian?
I don’t know who the bigger asshole is here. You for asking or me for answering.
China you already got clarification on the n/
oriental thing.
(spaces put in so that ‘n’ doens’t appear near oriental, lest you get confused again :rolleyes: )
N - is at or near the top of everyone’s list for ‘one doesn’t use that term to refer to people in polite society’, as well as gook, chink, spic, (and a whole lot more that I can’t recall at present). Oriental (when used to reference a person vs. an object) is generall not used in polite society either. Does this mean that you’d get the same level of disapproval from others when using it? probably not. But, since you followed the other thread and you should have noted that in one main stream media source the same 30 day stretch there were 14 uses of “oriental” (mostly used in reference to objects or quotations from literature of a by gone era), and some several hundred uses of the word “Asian” (so, if one or the other term was used to identify a person, it was very much more likely to be “asian”).
That suggests strongly that ‘asian’ is the preferred public polite term. I would think that a similar study of other media sources would find the same results.
And, at this point, I’d have to consider you in the classification of ‘willfully ignorant’ since you keep insisting that there should be an additional reason to use “asian” over “oriental” than the oft repeated "the people to whom it refers have expressed a preference for ‘asian’ " , sighing and asking ‘once again’ for the ‘non personal’ reasons etc etc etc.
You know, my sister (Elizabeth) prefers to be called “Liz” - she doesn’t have a ‘reason’ other than “I like it better” either, so I suppose you’ll have to just keep annoying the bejesus out of her should the two of you meet.
RE: the swastika, what sort of ruling were you looking for? Had it been used before the Nazis? yes. However, it has been irretrievably linked to the Nazi regime at this point. That’s too bad, yes. what more were you looking for?
wring, the swastika ruling that he is looking for is that by using the swastika example, I was calling him a Nazi. Like I said, he seems to have a problem with reading comprehension.
So the only reason China Guy does not use terms such as ‘gook’ and ‘chink’ is that they have ALWAYS had a bad connotation. The fact that for most Asian-Americans, ‘Oriental’ now has a bad connotation for them where there previously was not, is not enough for China Guy. If he moves to the states and his daughter is viewed as an Asian person, and she tells him that she doesn’t like to be referred to as an ‘oriental’, I wonder what he’ll say. “You don’t have a right to be offended honey, because the origin of the word is neutral”
For someone who has a pathological need to throw his credentials out there (I have a degree in Oriental Studies. I have lived in China. I am married to a Chinese woman.), China Guy seem to have a hard time grasping the simple concept that CONNOTATIONS CHANGE.
Let me use the swastika example again. And to clarify further for the morons, I am not calling China Guy a Nazi, nor am I equating the emotional history of the swastika to the use of the term ‘oriental’. I am using it as an example to show how CONNOTATIONS CHANGE. The symbol of the swastika was used hundreds of years before the rise of the German National Socialist party. For hundreds of years, the swastika was used by Buddhists as a good symbol. The Nazi’s adopted the symbol and changed the connotation to a bad one. Today the symbol is not used much, or at all because it is now irrevocably associated with hate. Most people of good conscience do not use the symbol. If you understand this concept, why is it so hard to understand that: ‘oriental’ has been used for hundreds of years as a neutral term. Now most Asian-Americans associate the terms with the racism experienced and do not like to be referred to as such.
Part of the thing that bugs me about so called anti-PC people is their insistance that they will only stop using a word if there is consensus among the majority of people. For some, I think they mean a consensus among white people. So we will not use ‘nigger’ because of course everyone agrees on that, but this ‘oriental’ thing is kind of a gray issue. I’ll just ignore that most Asian-Americans have a problem with it, and wait for the majority of people to agree that it is offensive before I stop using it.
Why was the use of the sick racial slur “cracker” accepted and allowed in the thread title? This is just as offensive to me - and others, I would hazard - as the “N” word is to people of color.
Well?
Anthracite, as a card-carrying member of the white power structure, I can say that, while “cracker” isn’t my favorite word, I don’t generally find it too offensive because (in my mind anyway) it refers to a certain type of person, not to whites in general. When I hear the word, I tend to associate it more with terms like “redneck” and “white trash” than with caucasians (I know, “redneck” and “white trash” are offensive terms to a lot of people too). The only general epithet I can think of for whites is “honky”, which has fallen out of use and wasn’t all that offensive a word to begin with, IMHO. Certainly not on the level of the “N” word, anyway. So maybe that’s the way the OP meant to use “cracker.” I think it’s a fairly innocuous usage, at least compared to the way you seemed to take it. Of course, you could have beensarcastic in your post, too - I’m not always so great at picking that up.
Anyway, I really think “not calling each other retards”, as the OP suggested, is going a bit far. “Differently abled/cognitively deficient/mentally challenged” just doesn’t pack the same wallop as far as insults go, and I’m all for using the proper insult for the proper occasion. And hey, if you happen to offend a retarded person by uttering the word, don’t feel too guilty - they’ll have forgotten about it in 3 minutes or so anyway.
The use of the word Asian in the UK often needs careful consideration.
In the 60’s and 70’ we had a serious problem with racism which was fed partly, and to their eternal shame, by our Conservative party (do a search on the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech by minister Enoch Powell).
This was in an atmosphere of fear for many persons of colour as the National Front organised violent marches which had the sole purpose of intimidating them.
The term Asian came to be used as a derogatory one, and even mainstream comedians of the day used it to prop up their content free acts. This was very pervasive for example it was on regular tv family viewing.
Gangs of racist thugs would chase down immigrants in a ‘sport’ they called Pakki-bashing.
Chinese people and anyone of that appearance naturally did not want any part of being associated with the Asian label for fear of the consequences and oddly enough they weren’t, they were just classed as ‘Oriental’ which was seen by the racists as a samll step above ‘Asians’.
Today the term Asians is still understood by most Britons to mean people with the appearance of being from the Indian sub-continent - Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afgahnistan, India.
As a society we have largely grown up, partly because of those who stood up and were PC when the term had not yet been invented.
Using the term Asian in the UK is not usually thought of as being perjorative but every now and then there will be some incident occur, such as the campaigning in Oldham by a British National Party(just another bunch of racists), and there will be serious racist violence in the streets.
With the previous in mind many Britons are careful about using Asian in polite conversation.
Casdave, that was a very well written piece, and didn’t expect to find it in the pit. Read the Rivers of Blood speech and it was a real doozy. Asian/Oriental is also going on in a great debate topic a the moment. (Would appreciate someone putting in a link to Orientals, Europeans, Indians, Africans, since I don’t know how to do it).
archmichael, you’re putting words into my mouth. I was an asshole for taking up your asshole challenge in the first place to define those derogatory terms that make fun of the way people look and speak. 'Nuff said. I’m teaching my daughter to be a critical thinker and not blindly swallow hook line and sinker what anyone says, including her Dad. That’s the main reason why I want to get to the bottom of this issue in MY MIND. I could give a rat’s ass if you explained it to your satisfaction. And if you would give 1% of the effort you’ve spent on bitching and instead help me to answer my question, I would actually be grateful. Nekochan made a positive effort in this direction.
Would still like to hear what the PC police have to say on the swastika’s and n word.
A point is illustrated with a swastika example, and most people will make the logical conclusion that at a minimum there is an inferrence to being a Nazi. Even a PC humanoid can’t possibly be so naive as to think that if you preface it with “Now I’m NOT calling him a Nazi” that there will be no link. That’s like the standard “I’m not prejudiced, some of my best friends are (fill in the blank).”
Ditto with the N word. the N word has enough of it’s own baggage and issues that to throw it in like you did regardless of your intent is pathetic. I’ve already told you in politically correct terminology (didn’t insult anyone’s age, sex, religion or sexual orientation) what I thought of that tactic.
Once again China Guy still doesn’t understand the concept that CONNOTATIONS CHANGE. Once again China Guy’s only recourse is to nitpick everything but the main point.
I tried to explain to China Guy in the other thread that CONNOTATIONS CHANGE. He doesn’t get it. I try to use the swastika as another example of how CONNOTATIONS CHANGE. He still doesn’t get. Not only does he not get it, he also thinks I am calling him a Nazi.
China Guy keeps on asking for non-personal reasons why ‘oriental’ is offensive. I try to explain that racial epithets do not need to have non-personal reasons to be hurtful. I use the example that black people do not need a non-personal reason to be offended by the term ‘nigger’. He doesn’t get it. I give him the non-personal reason that the connotation of ‘oriental’ has changed here in the US. China Guy ignores this point and claims that using the ‘nigger’ analogy is pathetic?!? His only come-back is that it is an unfair tactic?!? What? Do you even hear yourself? Hey wring, you using your valid analogy of your sister ‘Liz’ was an unfair tactic! ROFL!
Man this is hilarious. Trying to pound into your thick skull the concept that CONNOTATIONS CHANGE is now considered bitching?
Here is another China Guy quote from the other thread:
Jeez with allies like you, who needs enemies. Doesn’t it give you pause that you have somehow managed to frustrate and alienate the two Asian-Americans who have been the most vocal about this? Doesn’t it give you pause what wring said:
Wait. Let me guess. You don’t give a rat’s ass if he explained it to his satisfaction.
At first, I was angry at the level of your ignorance, but now I find it amusing to no end. I say to myself that there is no way that China Guy can come across more like an idiot, and you prove me wrong every time.
The PC Police thinks that you are all using bad words. We will be sending you to reeducation camps soon.
I find it funny that John Rocker managed to piss off every ethnicity, community, etc, etc because it’s apparent that he hates PC.
Or he is really dumb.
As for the slang “gook”, my only theory (well not mine, but taken from Lee’s ‘The Native Speaker’) comes during the korean war when GIs would raid villages, the natives would yell “meh-gook” meaning ‘Americans’. In chinese is similar with 'mei-kuo" (sorry, my pinyin is rusty). So nowadays I find it funny when an American uses this ‘derrogatory’ term on asian-americans.
One last note: I’ve lived in brazil for most of my life and there’s virtually no racism. I’ve rarely seen cases of racism on tv (except when international news comes on) or experienced it first hand. We refered african-americans (yea well, brazil is part of the americas :P) as negros with no derrogatory context. Then when I came here to States to attend school, lo and behold i’m labeled racist, biggot, etc etc. Oh my poor youth 
Frankly (and bluntly put), if we just used these derrogatory terms around, hopefully it’ll lose its negative connotation with each passing generation and we would run out of words to call each other. Of course, that still doesn’t solve hate-crimes but it’ll at least ameliorate this polical-correctness junk.
Oh well…hope i don’t get burned too hard >.<
Haysoos Kreesto, China Guy. Have you been reading my responses to your questions in this thread?
Why are you getting pissed off? You asked for feedback from Asians, and you got it, but seem to ignore it. Are you looking for an Asian to respond who agrees with you?