I read somewhere that the reason that the term “asian” is prefered over “oriental” these days is that “oriental” is euro-centric. Since “oriental” is a fancy word for eastern, that makes sense. But still, it makes more sense to me than calling them “asian.” Asia is a very large continent which contains many more peoples than the ones we refer to as “asians,” who are actually from the eastern part of asia. You don’t often here Afghans or Russians refered to as “asians.” And how come the term “far east” doesn’t seem to have politically incorrect connotations? Same with “Western civilization.”
Since when did “handicapped” become “accessible.” Who decided that “handicapped” was no-longer acceptable? Did handicapped people complain about it, followed by sign-makers updating their signs, or did sign-makers make the change on their own, anticipating that the term “handicapped” would eventually become outmoded?
<<2. Since when did “handicapped” become “accessible.” >>
Rather than labeling the person who’s using it, they’re labeling the space itself. That also leaves room for, say, differentiations of wheelchair-accessible, walker-accessible, etc.
It also makes you think, hopefully, that rather than having a “special” kind of parking place near the door, that the person actually has a regular parking place. Their space is accessible to them just as another space would be accessible to the able-bodied person who could step up a curb or get through a small space between cars. They aren’t being given anything that anyone else doesn’t have already.
Actually…
Handicapped comes from cap-in-hand. Meaning a beggar. Meaning that it’s not an acceptable term for a person with a disabilty, as it implies that they are unable to lead productive lives.
This is information i got at a disability awareness lecture. The lecturer was a person who’s mother took thalidomide during her pregancy, meaning he has severe skeletal deformities. He’s also a practicing physician, who lectures me in family medicine and primary care. And he takes particular offence at the term handicapped.
Wow, I never knew about the cap-in-hand thing. I always assumed that it just meant that a person had an extra challenge, like a golfer with a handicap.
Because if it is politically incorrect to make a two part OP, then it must be incorrect to make a two part answer.
As to the Asian vs. Oriental question, I have no idea. However, I dislike the term Occidental since it sounds like something I would use on my teeth. So, I’ll never use Oriental, if they promise not to use Occidental.
At first it was people who were handicapped that needed access to buildings, parking, etc., but that has been expanded to other disabilities besides the handicapped. Alcoholics are now being protected under the disabilities act (do they get to park in the accessible spaces?). So it would seem that besides the origin of “handicapped” being objectionable, it also does not cover everyone included in the group.
As to the signs, I would imagine that the sign people were more than happy to have to change the signs and are probably coming up with a new symbol to replace the one now used, which is no longer inclusive enough.
As Asians on this board have mentioned before in many threads, “Oriental” is perceived as being more descriptive of artwork or home furnishings. You can have an Oriental rug, but you will have an Asian person.
Irishgirl, got a cite? http://www.m-w.com suggests that handicap comes from hand-in-cap, which refers to a game in which money was kept in a hat (and presumably in which some players were handicapped as in golf). While it is possible that there is a connection between this game and the use by beggars of caps in hand to collect money, there doesn’t appear to be.
alan smithee.
nope, i don’t got a cite, but, like i said, i got my info from a man who BELIEVES this to be the origin or the word, and thus finds it ojectionable.
now, that’s what HE hears when that word is applied, and whether it’s the actual origin or not is kind of irrelevant. but that is the reason most disabled people object to the term.
“nope, i don’t got a cite, but, like i said, i got my info [sic] from a man who BELIEVES this to be the origin or the word, and thus finds it ojectionable.”
“now, that’s what HE hears when that word is applied, and whether it’s the actual origin or not is kind of irrelevant.”
Maybe it’s irrelevant to him but to me the fact that a person spouts off some nonsense makes me wonder whether anything else they say has a basis in fact. Are you sure this person is a real physician?
“but that is the reason most disabled people object to the term.”
Is that really true? Do you have evidence? I would think that most disabled people are more intelligent and better informed.
I’d suspect that Edward Said’s book Orientalism had a lot to do with reservations about using “oriental”. While I don’t feel capable of summarising his argument, there’s rather more to it than that the term is geographically euro-centric.
Hehehe. I have a Fillipino friend, and I myself am (ethnically) from Bangladesh. Whenever someone would say “That…asian kid”, we’d both look up. Oh, and I live in the South, if you haven’t guessed.
I personally don’t care what people refer to me as, as long as I don’t think it’s derogatory. Hell, people could call me Purple Monkey Dishwasher, and I’d just laugh.
I am 1/2 Russian, by my paternal grandparents who came from Russia. But they also came from the city of Irkutsk, which is just a small distance north of Mongolia, as well as as in the middle of Asia as you can get.
When I first learned this, I was in 4th grade. My school was conducting the yearly achievement tests. The first page of it was demographic questions, such as sex and ethnicity. For the latter, they had a simple list: white, black, Asian, American Indian, and “other”. (I don’t think “hispanic” was used until the 1980’s .) I figured that I was Asian since that was where my grandparents were technically from. I bet someone at the test data center wondered why I was white one year and Asian the next.
A thread posted a few months ago got me trying to figure this one out. I did a lot of internet searching, emailed the web masters of numerous Asian-American studies sites and checked around.
The best I found is that Oriental was originally popularized as a colonial British term. As such, it had an inherent negative bias.
Really, I would like to say that there is a body of scholarly work out there with examples and surveys on this subject, but I can’t find it and I have looked. I’m no expert on Edward Said, but I read a lot of stuff on the web that he wrote or was summarized by him. Seemed to me he focused most on the middle east. Finally, for what it’s worth, his work was not taken seriously by the academics.
Some things to keep in mind. Asians in Asia, use the terms “Asian” and “Oriental” more or less interchangeably. In the British Commonwealth, “Asian” generally refers to the Indian sub-continent, while “Oriental” refers to East Asia. People of Asian decent in Hawaii generally seem to not mind the word “oriental.”
In Asia/Orient, there is no common pan-Asia organization or conciousness unless it is MTV Asia. There are simply too many different ethnicities, languages and land mass for any type of group unity. In the US, some people from Asian/Oriental backgrounds have adopted “Asian-American” or more commonly “Asian.”
Don’t worry, some people object to “Far East.” As one webmaster from India who recently earned her US citizenship explained to me “I would never say I am from East of somewhere.”
At the end of the day, defining what is “Asian” and “Oriental” and applying it to the people of multiple countries, ethnicities and a large non-contiguous land area makes any term virtually meaningless.
Checking in, and wondering why one term that originated in a European culture is less objectionable than another. After all, “Asia” was (as far as I can tell) originally used as the name of a Roman province in what is now western Turkey. Gradually, as European knowledge of what lay beyond the Mediterranean expanded, the term was expanded to include the whole “continent”; an exactly analogous process gives us the present meaning of “Africa”.
Well, Mr. Death, good question. Again, in my quest for understanding, it boils down to “Oriental” popularized during the colonial expansion in Asia, and was therefore inherently biased. Not East versus West but those backward savages versus civilization and progress. People from this part of the world were referred to as “Orientals” or “Asiatic.” Read Kim by Kipling for a feel of how these words were used. “Asiatic” was clearly not a positive term, and the only remaining vestige would be Harvard’s Asiatic Quarterly Review. As they are Harvard, somehow can get away without changing the title.
I have asked Asian-Americans many times myself on how “Asian” and “Oriental” are different and to summarize the answers it was “Most Asian (Americans) prefer the term Asian and not Oriental”, or “just accept it.”
As of 1985, in politically correct Californian universities, the Asian students I knew had no view on the word “Oriental.” It had not yet become a cause for the Asian-American community. Sometime after 1985, when I no longer lived in the US, the word “Oriental” has become under politically correct pressure.
My own theory is that two catchphrases came into use. The first “Oriental is a rug.” Check a dictionary for “Asian” and “Oriental” and you won’t find this definition although you may find this as an example. The second is that “Oriental” is equivalent to the ‘n’ word. At worst, “Oriental” has a leftover colonial negative bias, but by no means is it in the same leage as “nggr.” Furthermore, I personally think ASian-Americans should come up with their own example rather tha hikjacking an example from the African-American civil rights struggle. A better choice would be the “People Formerly Known As Orientals.”
If anyone out there has some better information on the “Asian” versus “Oriental” thing, I would really like to see it. Like I posted before, I’ve been looking into this issue for the past several months and found virtually nothing.
Ahem, not taken seriously by other academics? Are you smoking crack? Vigorously contested? Yes. Trenchantly critiqued? Yes. Not taken seriously, bloody hell man, you can’t shake a stick at any serious reading list made since 1985 in re Euro/Western interaction with “non-West” without tripping over reference to his arguments.
I would estimate that most scholars found his critiques too strong, exagereated and often unbalanced, but on the other hand that he had very valid points. One more item, he did indeed focus on the Middle East, being a Palestinian, but his work treated the academic phenomena of Orientalism which itself covered most Western writing on “The East” – englobing non-white and non-black folks outside of Europe and the New World. As such, his critique applied equally to this current usage of Oriental. Now you can do and critique his critique (I certainly would, not being a fan of Said) but its bloody nonesensical to characterize it as you have.
I’ll leave alone your bizarre reading of the Asian thing since its been done in GD before.
The reason I use “Asian” personally is because I’ve always throught it was more correct than “Oriental,” politically correct. As in, “Oriental” means “eastern” but “Asian” means “from Asia” as a contrast to “European” or “African.” And then once I learn more about a person, I’ll describe him as “Japanese” or “Korean” or “American” or “Bob.”
And the word “handicapped” seems to me to emphasize that a person is less abled than “normal,” as if it were a value judgement. Again, I prefer the term “accessible” because I think it’s more accurate, not because it’s less offensive.
I think this effectively summarizes why certains words and phrases fall out of fashion. If enough people find a word that is used to describe them derogatory, they will find a suitable replacement. If you don’t find a word used to describe someone else derogatory… maybe because it’s not describing you.
Until someone on these boards gives me more to go on, I’ll stand by my bizarre reading of the Asian thing.
As for Said, I think it might have been you that gave me a whole slew of links that I actually spent about 8 hours reading. Guess I have to actually get a copy of his Orientalism and read it myself. Not taken seriously by academics was from my old Chinese professor (a Harvard PhD for what it’s worth). Also date myself since I’ve been out of the US since 1985.
.) I figured that I was Asian since that was where my grandparents were technically from. I bet someone at the test data center wondered why I was white one year and Asian the next.