You see, said best friend had always told me this pissed her off because she, her family, and all her Filipino friends considered themselves to be “Pacific Islander,” and not even remotely “Asian.” I never questioned her assertion on the matter, seeing as she was the Filipino and should be the expert on her own heritage.
However, jjimm’s comment made me wonder. And I Googled. And I learned from here that after WWII
Well, gosh durn it. Who am I to believe? My friend and her immediate group here in Southern California, who choose to label themselves according to their beliefs, or the professionals who make careers of defining geographic regions and studying Filipino culture?
Not to hijack a pit thread or anything, but my question is not rhetorical. I really want to know!
I’ll just echo LaurAnge here and note that at least in the brief excerpt given, the word “oriental” never appears as a descriptor of people. In fact it never appears at all. “Orient” and the specific epithet orientalis do.
There has never been any problem with the words orient or oriental as place or object descriptors. It is only as people descriptors that it tends to be frowned on these days ( at least in the U.S. ).
So Chinese people in China may in fact agree with Evil Captor, but we certainly can’t tell that from this press release.
Does the OP think he’s being ironic? Because, as pointed out several times now, the word isn’t offensive when used to describe things - only people. So despite the attempt to come off as smug and condescending, the OP just comes off as ignorant.
I had never heard of anyone being offended by the term ‘Oriental’ describing people until I moved to California. Interestingly, it is only the hyper-sensitive PC whiteys that are bothered by this term here-- NOT any of the Asian people I have spoken to.
And I don’t even want to hear you start in on “whitey” because, well, who gives a fuck?
“Orientals” conjures up images of Charley Chan, Kato (Clouseau’s “little Oriental friend”) and slit eyes. Images of servility or stupidity, figures of fun or deceit.
“Asians” is rather problematic in that it is used in the USA (and Canada?) to refer to Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese, while in Britain, as has been noted here before, “Asians” are Indians, Pakistanis (and at a stretch Sri Lankans, I suppose), including those who fled East Africa in the 1970s.
The real problem stems from the fact that we’re not very good at telling them apart. But they have the same problem with us, adn a few very un-PC words to call us too, I might add.
Indeed SOAS (the very well respected School of Oriental and African studies in London) includes Tagalog in its curriculum.
Incidentally, I once wore a SOAS t-shirt when I was living in Hong Kong, and my Chinese friends were totally bemused. “What has Africa to do with us?” they asked. Indeed, they seemed quite insulted, and not in a good way.
FWIW, strangely enough, this very topic came up with a Chinese (male, if it matters) friend of mine, just this evening.
In his opinion, Oriental as referring to a person of Asian descent he considers insulting, when in reference to a thing, as in Oriental rug, it’s fine, but he prefers to be called Asian.
Why use the term at all, if it is in any way offensive, especially for something that carries a bit of prestige, like the name of a newly discovered species? My suspicion is that most Chinese just don’t care about the term “oriental” – and that’s just the ones who know there’s some kind of controversy about it.
I honestly think the controversy was ginned up by some ivory tower types and then taken up gleefully by the PC types, the brown shirts of language as it were. Always glad to stick a thumb in THEIR eyes in when I can.
Actually, it’s only in the US that the term ‘Oriental’ has become out of favor. It should not be shocking that people who actually live in the Orient, have no clue about the PC debate of Oriental versus Asian that goes on in the US of A.
Because they’re NOT using the word “oriental”. The name of the species is not English. A simple misunderstanding is okay, but maintaining that the species name has any relevance to English etiquette is just willful ignorance at this point.
Oriental is so generic, you know? We are broken up. South Asians (Indians, for one) aren’t anything like Chinese! Yet they call all of us Oriental. I’m just asking for a little courtesy, that’s all.
Really? Who? Where? I ask because I have never, EVER, in a long life of collecting usages, both offensive and benign, have heard an Indian person called an oriental.
A reasonable request, but may I counter with a request of my own, that you make an effort to not be offended by it? You see, MOST people in the USA neither know it is suddenly an offensive term nor can they fathom WHY anybody would be offended by it. Despite the Charlie Chan references made here it has NEVER been used as an insult in any case where Asian or Chinese or whatever substitution you prefer would have reduced the intended insult. “Filthy, scheming Asian” is no more or less insulting than “Filthy, scheming Oriental.”
This is a “problem?” Since when are “exotic,” “romantic,” and “intriguing” negatives? Really, really COOL is how most people view them.
I understand you get offended, but your reasoning seems a little odd: ‘Asian’ covers everyone from Turkey through the Central Asian republics, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Siberia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Korea, and the whole of South-East Asia all the way down to East Timor. Surely that’s way more generic, if not moreso, than the specifically ‘Far Eastern’ meaning of ‘Oriental’?
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