We’re all entitled to our opinion, but for the most part being “pc-consious” is a whole lot of bunk and is being somewhat pinheadish.
Hazel, it is becoming clear that your way of thinking is part of this problem! Tell me the flavor of this silly koolaid? Shall I point out your numerous errors?
Oriental is not a concept, it is a real word denoting inhabitants of the eastern most portion of the Asian continent. Roughly north and west of the Himalayas. One could certainly say “eastern Asian” but it takes longer to say that. PC bizarros (not saying you’re one) like to take normal words, demonize them. and often change them into multi-word equivalents and definitions. It is actually devolving the language. Example, instead of the word “short” the ridiculously absurd phrase “vertically challenged.” Anyway, back to my critique of your post…
You say, “they have a certain image of chopsticks, silk robes, carpets, etc.” Are you somehow offended by these beautiful cultural items, a/k/a in your words, “offensive conotations”? No more offensive than spoons, forks, football, or Thanksgiving turkey. These are “American” stereotypes and equally non-offensive. No, “oriental” is not and has never been a negative term. Its amazing how easily people can be brainwashed into believing such nonsense.
I like the term eastern asian too as a synonym of “oriental.” It just annoys me how people decide to demonize a perfectly benign word and then people think there is something wrong with it when there never was.
You cannot “devolve” a language. Language is an arbitrary system that allows humans to talk to one another. The only reason language exists is because humans at some point in time used sounds and gestures to mean certain things. Terms becoming offensive is a natural evolution of language. If anything not allowing language to change is going to “devolve” it more than anything, because it doesn’t allow people to adapt language to their needs. (Of course, good luck stopping language from changing. Let me hear how that works for you)
Have you actually heard anybody make that quip seriously? Because I’ve heard it thousands of times and every single one was a lame joke about political correctness, i.e. the phrase itself supports the very thing you’re championing. Criticizing the phrase kind of undermines your point.
Yes, it is and has been a negative term, as evidenced by the fact that most English speakers think it’s offensive (or at least, most of those who use/know the term). Again, this is the real world, we’re not witches, if you want some magical, cosmic reason the word is offensive before you accept it, you will never find it because such a reason doesn’t exist. It’s offensive because a lot of people (especially the people it described) find it offensive, it’s no more or less complicated than that. Nothing is magically wrong with the word “nigger” either, it just has really bad historical baggage and thus it’s offensive.
Again, I agree that it shouldn’t be offensive. But you simply cannot argue that it isn’t and never was offensive, because that disagrees with reality.
I honor your point as a valid one. However it is probably also a generational thing. All my life until the mid 90’s virtually nobody had a problem with the term and I never heard it used negatively (even to this day). How dare anyone suddenly demonize the word and brainwash people to view it as negative. Some people prefer to use the word fabulous, others the word wonderful. I’ll be damned if someone wants to dictate my own choice of words - a benign word meant in a nice way instead of the silly substitute “asian” insulting the millions of others who apparently live on a ghost continent. I am not the tell it like it is insistor but I am also not about to drink the koolaid of the latest trend in lexicon fashion either.
Here is a racist test for all reading this. Close your eyes tight. Now mentally picture an “asian” If they look like they could be from China then you might be racist. And apparently the guy from Turkey is not worthy of the term asian because the popular “pc” culture will never admit their errors.
Nobody in their right minds think that Turks aren’t Asian or Indians aren’t Asian in the purely descriptive sense. You’re mixing up common usage with belief. Americans will generally imagine a Southeast Asian, Brits will generally imagine an Indian or Pakistani. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just has to do with a quirk of linguistic evolution and the general volume of people from different regions that that culture has had exposure to. Besides, you have to imagine someone. What am I supposed to imagine? Some vague, featureless person that somehow encompasses every physical trait that can possibly be possessed by every ethnic group on the Asian continent and surrounding islands?
Most important, as I’ve been saying, it’s not offensive because people, even those it refers to (or excludes), generally don’t find it offensive – or if they do, not offensive enough to make an issue out of it.
Well, okay, I will quibble and say that Turkey is generally considered to be in both Europe AND Asia so some people may not be sure whether Turks are technically Asian or not. (And to be honest, I’m not sure what Turks consider themselves to be)
Well I disagree with some of your points (respectfully of course). Devolving language in terms of taking word which the language has evolved and then substituting either the definition of that word or substituting a phrase. A language evolves by creating new (singular) words which describe a concept that previously would take many words. Go back in time and say the word computer to someone in the 17th century. “A box containing components that can process information, calculate numbers, etc.” Only the German langiage sometimes strings a whole bunch of things together to form a new word, digressing here…
The pc gods have declared war on the benign word, “handicapped”, which itself was a euphemism to replace the admittedly uglier term crippled. Euphemisms are acceptable. But not good enough for the pc worshipers who devolve it into a two word phrase, “physically challenged” which is no more euphemistic than the original.
Terms becoming offensive may or may not be language evolution; it may also be what masses are programmed to think and believe by “popular” culture. In England nobody deems the word “oriental” as negative and I contend it was neither here until people spread the concept that it allegedly is. At one time people propagated the concept the earth was flat, yet it didn’t bestow on it the fact that it is correct.
Changing word terms is a game that has no end and here is why: it isn’t the word, but rather the dark side of humanity that can harbor hate toward others, If the word “nigger” was originally derived from the country of similar spelling or the word “negro” is a latin form of the word “black”, etc, the words are innocuous until people speak them with anger, hatefullness, and derision, then it is an endless substitution of terms. “Colored” was a well-meaning euphemistic description until no doubt it became used derogatively. “Those !#$@% blacks” can make black bad. Funny how “colored” comes almost full circle today to “people of color”. I’d rather see human hearts change than these endless word substitutions, which are bandaids for the real problem.
In England, “oriental” is not deemed negative, same as decades ago here in the USA. "Oriental as negative is a phantom which arose from propaganda, Nobody ever complained before it was foisted upon us out of who knows where. I still say it’s a whole lot of bunk.
Okay fine, maybe “most English speakers” wasn’t correct. “Most people using an American dialectal variation of English” then. Still the same deal.
Sorry, I just can’t get behind any argument with the “masses are being programmed” argument. I just don’t see this shadowy language Illuminati, trying to destroy The English Language and Brainwash Americans by changing the way language works. All I see are honest intentioned people who recognize that, for whatever reason, the people it’s used to refer to find it an offensive term and informing people that if they wish to be nice and avoid offending them, they should probably not use it.
Maybe they’re wrong, maybe even “oriental” people never found it offensive until some campaign to make it offensive began. But political correctness isn’t some grand, evil master plan – it’s just an honest attempt to make as many people as possible feel comfortable. Yeah, even evil plans come with good intentions, but I’m failing to see the great poisonous side effect of this particular movement.
This is interesting. Filipino-Russian heritage guy here, born in the Philippines and raised in the states since I was 3. I definitely look Asian, although most people guess me as Hawaiian, or from Tahiti. I prefer Asian to Oriental, and my guess is that most do as well. That’s why ouryL’s post interesting…
Goes to show that people will be offended at just about anything.
Pompousness and being 8 years late to the party aside, I am compelled to address this…
The counterpoint (and a key argument of why Oriental is offensive) is to question “Where is it East of?” Because if you were “astute to the history” you would know that China fancies itself the MIDDLE kingdom. It’s a Euro-centric word that says “Well we White people are the ones in charge, and we make the rules. You guys over there are East of us, so you’re easterners… nay… Orientals.”
Personally I don’t agree with it, but I don’t agree with the way that NormalDude is going about his mind-liberation and chastising board members to stop drinking the kool-aide either. I will agree that it is making mountains out of molehills though.
The term “Oriental” is actually a sore subject for me, but not for the racial connotations. In college I once went to an Asian student “Leadership training seminar” because the powers that be identified me as Asian and a potential leader in the Asian/Pacific Islander community. They taught us that Oriental was offensive because a) things are Oriental, and b) east of what?
I initially thought this was some sort of joke and laughed out loud. Then I was singled out as a victim of accepting these racially insensitive charges. Well even though I was just 17, I took major offense to that. I asked the leader "Well I guess WESTERNERS didn’t get the memo that being named after a direction was offensive. Furthermore should North Carolina and South Carolina be upset there is no Central Carolina? Clearly the ravages of the Reconstruction still run deep in the modern South.
Furthermore, we’re speaking ENGLISH. We’re east of ENGLAND. Chinese people are no better. We don’t even offer them the benefit of a direction. We just term it with ‘Yang’. I really don’t understand what this presentation is all about."
Then mumble mumble something about fighting racial stereotypes, 2 wrongs don’t make a right, and that we need to be more aware of our situation in life. I don’t remember. I just remember the emotional ostracizing.
They were not amused and I never did get my leadership certificate. Oh. The beauty of it all? Sponsored by the EAST Asian Studies Department.
Because it’s not always easy to distinguish between the different sub-groups of east Asian or south Asian, whereas it is usually easier to tell if someone is from China/Japan/Korea or Vietnam/Laos or India/Pakistan/Bangladesh vs. not from there.
I myself am ethnically Indian but grew up in the states. Among my close friends and my friends from the subcontinent, I use “brown,” for people from the subcontinent. I would be happy to use that term with everyone, but I think most white people are uncomfortable with it.
My parents are in their 60s, grew up in India but spent their 30s in England. They both think “oriental” refers to east Asian and “Asian” refers to Indians. My mom is slowly starting to change but my dad refuses to. Drives me nuts.
Right, most East Asian people I’ve met even say it’s really hard to tell the difference just based on looks (cultural cues help, but aren’t fool proof either). Even to the point of phrasing it as “if you think you can tell us apart, you’re wrong. We can’t even tell us apart.” (And at least one who put it as “Just like you probably can’t tell a German from a Dutch person on sight alone.”)
Then, to add to that, while people of C/J/K ancestry may not really mind, actual Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people tend to take very high levels of offense between being mistaken for each other. It’s not that hard to see why, the racial tension between those three countries is pretty thick.
It’s really just better for everyone involved to not try and guess nationality.
I’m the Caucasian mother of an Asain son. Oriental, in American English, is not offensive to me or to him, its old fashioned and quaint. Its what my mother (now 70) called my son (now 14) when she arrived before she knew better and what her friends call him.
Sometimes hard to discern subtleties. I can usually see a difference between say German and French, Dutch and British, etc. And pretty good with people from Eastern Asia. The hardest is often between someone from Japan and someone from China. A lot of Koreans have a bit rounder faces I think. Southern China and Southeast Asians are typically darker in complexion as are Philipinos.
Anyway, if not the benign “Oriental” then I vote for East Asian. It was rather silly to read earlier about illuminati and conspiracy theory. It is far more innocent than that. It is just amazing how a fad catches on and surely with the best of intentions, but nevertheless uneccessary. Much of this is perceived in when you were born. I am old enough to have witnessed the lunar landing live, and can assure you that “Oriental” was never a “bad word” until a quarter century later. I’ve known many Orientals over the years and they weren’t quietly seething with anger all those years over the term. That’s ridiculous! If today some may find it offensive it is due to the “fad propagation” I have been objecting to in this thread.
Hi Pancakes. Interesting story and also an example of how a fad gets intertwined with a philosophically motivated group that wishes to impose their views on well meaning people. But no, going back to geography there is an absolute and definite east. It is well established and accepted that since the large asian continent with large islands to the east included, begins after an enormous pacific ocean, this has been the standard reference point as being farthest east. It is not a Eurocentric creation. Japan is the land of the rising sun by their own description, which is a similar concept. Lots of things are standardized that originally began in the west. The entire world recognizes 2013 as the current year we are in, regardless of cultural histories. Oops, I let the cat out of the bag…perhaps in 25 years, Chinese or Jewish people will lead a campaign to eliminate the Christocentric numeration of the year.
Your experience in college shows a number of things, and illustrates how often leftist agendas get pushed upon people at an impressionable age. You laughed because it does sound like a joke. Your point of WESTERNERS not getting the memo is actually SPOT ON and a commendable and intelligent argument. Now, years later you will certainly see that their intent on eliminating “racial stereotypes”, albeit a lofty goal, is doomed to fail. Engineering word changes does not attack the core problem, it merely shifts those same stereotypes to another word! I have already heard the quips about “Asian” drivers being bad drivers, or “Asian” supergeeks always getting straight A’s. Except this newer imprecise lexicon may offend other Asians to the west. An Indian friend I have is probably one of the best drivers I have known, and is proud of his ASIAN heritage.
As I pointed out in an earlier quote, if you close your eyes and picture an “Asian” as someone who looks like they could have come from China, then if you really think about it, there is something very wrong and racially presumptive about that.
If I close my eyes and someone says picture an “Asian” I see an entire span of possibilities and never do I gravitate to any extreme end of that massive continent. It is actually insulting to assign the term to a smaller portio of the whole - quite similarly to how my third grade teacher said that the SOUTH AMERICANS she met when travelling there were insulted when she said she was “American.” I concur that “Oriental” has become antiquated, so someone needs to lead the charge on a new fad shift over to “East Asian.”