Can’t we all just stick with “yellow peril”?
And as for “Oriental” yeah, nobody wants people to incorrectly think of them as mysterious or exotic. Or intelligent, another stinking bit of cultural myth surrounding yellow perilers.
Evil Captor, I’d like to quote my esteemed colleague gobear, who originally said in this thread:
The original thread is about “positive” Jewish sterotypes, but there are some other decent points about stereotyping to be gleaned from that thread.
I have to say the exact opposite.
I was in my twenties before I heard “Oriental is a rug…” because that was a given. Perhaps it is a regional thing (I’m from the PacNW, Shoshana mentioned something about that earlier in thread), but “oriental” was not a word that polite people used when referring to other people. It just wasn’t. For me, it has always been that way. And this is at least since the late 1970s - 25 years seems like more than enough time.
Back in the mid-80s, when I was still a working journalist, I attended a newspaper conference in Miami. One night, I went to dinner with two reporters from the LA Times, one asian and one caucasian. I worked at a daily in East Texas.
During the course of conversation, we began talking about newsroom diversity. I was making the point that my newspaper was working hard to bring more diversity to the newsroom, but it was difficult to attract minorities to East Texas. During the conversation, I said “oriental.”
Boy, they both ripped me a new one. They made me feel like the backwoods yokel I am. I’ve never used the term “oriental” again.
FWIW, those are all former NBA stars and the white guy is none other than Bill Walton, who had surgery years ago to fuse his ankles to his feet bones, or something wherein he literally cannot jump anymore.
LilairenBwahahahahaha. This is great, I’ll be using the Swiss is a cheese line. Seriously, a year and a half ago I was just completely shocked by the Oriental is now a “bad” word in America. I spent a lot of time googling and emailing Asian-American groups to try to really understand what was going on here as I have lived abroad pretty much since 1985.
Seems to me that “oriental is a rug” is a cheap and meaningless catch-phrase taken up by a small minority as a rallying cry. Certainly, I have yet to be pointed to academic studies on the use of “Oriental” in the US.
Said’s book “On Orientalism” gets thrown out a lot. I have read numerous websites and extensive excerpts but never the original. For what it is worth, it is my understanding that the book is not taken seriously in the academic community.
The other “smoking gun” as to why Oriental is such a no-no is that it stems from Orient, from Latin orins, orient-, rising sun, east; from present participle there of oriri, to arise, be born. I have had Asian-Americans explain that this puts Asia in a linguistically sub-servient position. Personally, I’ve got trouble buying that arguement.
The “best” explanation I’ve seen is that “Oriental” is a colonial word. Makes sense to me. I certainly don’t like it when some British uses “yank” as a perjorative term (as in rhyming cockney septic tank, yank). So, to be “east of somewhere” or labeled with an archaic colonial term may be meaningless to some of you, but the words do have the power to hurt some people. That should be enough reason to use Asian.
I would really like to have fiestymongol, archmichael or any one of numerous Asian dopers share their thoughts. I am especially interested in what might have been covered in an Asian Studies class. Certainly, I would like my Asian daughter to be able to articulate more than “oriental is a rug” if she ever has to confront this issue a few years down the road.
Well, as long as we’re having a somewhat polite conversation in the Pit, I thought I’d chime in about this point. I think this is the same point as your next point about colonialism (which I stupidly forgot to include in the quote, but whatever). As it was explained to me (IANAnAsianPerson, fyi) it’s not east in and of itself that is troublesome, it’s that “east of here” is an expression of colonialism, in that “east of here” implies that “here” is understood to be the reference point, and that other things are defined in terms of their relative relationship to “here.” I think this is the crux of the subservient idea.
If we were neighbors, I might say that I live “here” and you live “next door,” which would be fine since you would probably also say that you live “here” and I live “next door.” However, if I started expecting you to identify your own place of residence as “next door”, that would be weird and inappropriate. Why should you define your home as it relates to me?
This might fall apart in light of words like Western or occidental being used to describe the colonizing culture, or former colonizing culture, as it were. However, maybe it doesn’t fall apart so much if you take into account the notion that the colonizing culture by definition had the power to accept or reject those terms, while the culture being colonized did not.
I’m not even sure how much stock I place into this, I’m just reporting it as it was explained to me.
I echo in general the desire to use the nationality when possible. Since I’ve had a few Vietnamese friends over the years, I tend to think of them as Vietnamese and would never describe them generically as Asian or Oriental, though I admit I might describe others that way because I’m not as familiar with thier unique homeland and culture.
That said, I really don’t want to destroy use of “oriental”, because “occidental” is such a cool word and it would make no sense without it’s counterpart 
But there are really multiple filters for language. There’s the generic “PC” filter, what we might think of as broad categorization of some words as being always offensive. I don’t see that “oriental” has risen to the point of being so blatantly offensive regardless of context that it must be filtered out of usage on this level. However, if a friend of mine mentioned to me that he did not like himself or those of his shared heritage described by that word in his presence, I would naturally accede to his request to cease the use of that word when around him. There’s the “PC” filter, then the “politeness” filter, and those are two entirely different things.
Mrs. Sublight feels the same way about it, and she’s Oriental, err… Asian, err… oh well.
There was recently another thread on this very issue. For anyone who’s not aware, “Asian” is the preferred term. “Oriental” is considered an obsolete word when referring to people, and is generally frowned upon. If you are worried that “Asian” is not specific enough, you can use the particular country of descent, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Philipino, etc. Three things amaze me about this issue:
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That some people, in this day and age, have never heard about this.
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That out of those people who are unaware, some assume that since they don’t know about it, that it must not be true. Even after being informed that “Asian” is the preferred term, they will go so far as to try to “disprove” it etymologically.
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That still others seem annoyed by Asian people wanting to be addressed as such, and insist that they have a right to use whatever word they damn well feel like. This one I especially don’t get - why not just use the preferred word? It’s no skin off their nose.
When did people develop such an aversion to being culturally sensitive?
Well, we could always appoint someone to do nothing but spin them around in circles until they become…DIS-Oriented!
I’ll be here all week…try the meatloaf. You’ve been a great audience. Don’t forget your wait staff.
[sub]Sorry…I couldn’t resist[/sub]
Because alot of it is biased and just as hypocritical as cultural insensitivity?
This doesn’t mean I’m gonna go around calling every whateverthetermoftheminute person I see an Oriental. In fact, I can’t really think of a situation at the moment where I would have to use any term. My OP was just a little mini rant about how I’ve been feeling about race and “offensive” words while reading the boards lately. Especially the pit which, ironically, seems to be the most PC forum on the boards.
- This is an issue almost exclusively limited to the mainland United States
- I’ve talked with many Asians in Hawaii who saw nothing wrong with the term Oriental being applied to a person
- As posted repeatedly, in other countries, generally the British Commonwealth, “Asian” refers to people from the Indian Sub-continent and “Oriental” refers to people from East Asia.
- Up until sometime in the 1980’s, the term “Oriental” was acceptable to use when referring to a person or group.
- In Asia, the terms are used interchangeably (or have no negative connotation when refering to a person) both in English and languages such as Chinese and Japanese.
[I have lived in the Orient since 1985, so missed both the when and the why of “Oriental” turning into a distasteful/bigoted word. Extended searching for information on this issue turns up little more than “Oriental is a rug.”]
Blowero, hope that answers your first statement. Maybe even explains the second statement. Certainly, the first time I ran into this on the boards about 18 months ago, I had a hard time accepting that Oriental had turned a bigoted word. Mao on a pogo stick, I’ve got a degree in Oriental languages. It doesn’t sit easy when someone counters that really China Guy “you’ve got a degree in bigotry.” And it didn’t make it any easier that when asking a simple question as in “can you explain why Oriental is now a bad word when less than 2 decades ago it was perfectly acceptable” answers tend to be high in emotion and low in content. I was accused to being a willfully ignorant racist among other things in my search for an answer. I was also quite combative about it, which is one reason why I try to answer this to the best of my ability.
I don’t think many people take offense to it in the UK. I also suppose that it is quite a useful term, given the British use of “Asian” solely for the peoples of South Asia (which, having lived in South-East Asia for several years, I found both inaccurate and confusing on my return).
I think so. I’ve met British, New Zealanders and Australians who have used the term with no hesitation. I personally used the term until about five years ago, when it became too much of a pain in the ass, frankly. I heard the old chestnut about “It’s a rug!” from people who felt the term was offensive. It’s a perfectly good term, but the attitudes of whites I know are changing.
I’ve never discussed this with an American of East Asian descent, but I have discussed this with actual East Asians. They tend to refer to themselves as “Orientals.” This has come up in my class before (where I teach English as a second language) and I confess I never know how to deal with it. My students come away from the discussion as confused as I am, I fear. The way I’ve come to handle it is to point out that Oriental isn’t the word commonly used in the U.S. any more, and that it’s better to go with East Asian. I know, I know, in the States people typically use Asian where we used to use Oriental, but I take a page from the English here and I won’t use a term that covers people from the Suez to the Diomede Islands.
Sure, the term Oriental is inaccurate; it presumes that the world is flat and that Europe is in the center. Regardless, we still talk about the West and the Middle East, right? We still refer to Australia as Down Under even though we know the world is round and that it has not top or bottom, right? We still talk about sunrise and sunset even though we know that it’s the earth that moves and not the sun, right? Honestly, as long as we get the point across, I see no need to pick these nits.
Furthermore, I don’t like the term Asian applying just to those whose ancestry is from the eastern part of Asia because of how it obfuscates things. I also object to the term Native American because it eats into the notion of native Americans, which covers those who were born in America, regardless of ancestry. I’ll accept that American Indian and Indian are somewhat outmoded (and also a bit unclear,) so I tend to go with native peoples or indigenous peoples and will continue to do so until someone comes up with something better (and I hope to God they do so soon!) When possible, I refer to the native peoples by their ethnic background, be it Sioux, Navajo, Choctaw, what have you, but I seldom am in a position to do so, and in my daily life, there isn’t much call to do so.
For me, since about the late 1980s, which is when I realized that, no matter how hard I tried to keep abreast of ethnic preferences, the idea behind them was that they’d keep changing and that the PURPOSE of their sensitivity on the subject was constant change: i.e., to keep “others” constantly feeling wrong in general about they dealt with them. (See my previous post in this thread.) Further, if I were so inclined (I’m not) I’d make a gigantic to-to around here about how racist you’re being in thinking that ALL whatchamacallems think alike and agree on what the preferred term IS, and how you don’t have the bonafides to back it up, etc., and turn this into a real Pit thread. In real life, creating the equivalant of a Pit thread is what “Oriental/Black/Jew” conversations are all about, IMO.
The problem as I see it is that some people have the idea that the world is the US. And dude, it is not. There are people outside, some even speak English :eek:. So, please do not go bazooka on us non-gringos (is that a slur now?) if we haven’t got the memo of Preferred Words of the Week. I find it highly offensive when someone tries to tell me that I am being insulting when I don’t mean anything of the such.
So make this your mantra people: There is world outside the US.
Well so do I, but i don’t have a similar to Cisco. Your point?
Well so do I, but i don’t have a similar reaction to Cisco. Your point?
One racist to another:
Racist 1, " You know I can’t stand spics, dagos, niggers, wetbacks, towelheads and orientals.
Racist 2, "orientals? "