Based on no source whatsoever, I just always assumed that, because “Oriental” literally means “From the East,” there was an objection to the fact that it’s a label relative to Europe. “Asian” is absolute, not relative, so it’s non-Eurocentric and acceptable.
Seems to me that everyone who has a fit over how “African American” isn’t accurate would understand why people hate “Oriental”. Why do we reserve “Oriental” for yellow-skinned Asians, but not brown-skinned ones? Why are Russians not considered “Oriental”, even though though they are quite “eastern” too.
I totally get why people don’t like Oriental. It’s an old-timey word that basially means “people who are so different from us that we must create an arbitrary boundary to separate our worlds.” Back in the day, not only did Orientalists study the Far East, but they also specialized in Middle Eastern and African cultures. Entirely separate peoples on different continents. But they were lumped together because they were the exotic “they”. Who wants to be the exotic “they”?
It is a word that the peope who are called “Oriental” did not come up with to describe themselves. It is a name that only the colonizer and their descendents deem meaningful.
As for objects, I don’t call them “Oriental”. I use the national origin if I know it, or I just say “Asian”. I don’t call my IKEA furniture “Occidental”. I say it’s European. I don’t think calling a thing “Oriental” is offensive, but I do think it’s kind of strange. YMMV.
I don’t think there is any rhyme or reason to it. “Oriental” is offensive for the same reason “colored” is offensive. It just is because we decided (more or less) that it sounds old fashioned, and was used when racial attitudes were less enlightened.
Regards,
Shodan
There are a number of other words, “four-letter words” included, which are far more offensive than ethnic slurs and just as repulsive (if not MORE repulsive), and which are freely used on this message board by people with not a trace of compunction.
Ftr Asian is used to refer to only Eastern Asians …at least here in LA with more than a million of em. I’ve never heard a Persian, an Indian or an Israeli referred to as Asian.
Ugh. Yet another “Why can’t I say x” discussion? Fine, I’ll play. It’s literally a Eurocentric term assuming that the West is the center of culture. It emphasizes exoticness, otherness, outsiderness, difference, inscrutability, inhumanity, barbarianism, idolatry, opaqueness etc. Using the term implies little to no familiarity with Asian culture or worse, an artificially manufactured image of Asia created in Western imagination – Madam Butterfly, Yellow Fever (in both senses), Weeaboos, etc
I encourage people to read WI Thomas’s classic sociological treatise on Otherness
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2762745?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
You should meet my wife. If she needs to distinguish between South Asians, East Asians, or even Southeast Asians, she can.
I assume that by “LA” you mean Los Angeles. I have heard many people there refer to every Hispanic person as “Mexican,” which many intend as an epithet. I’m not sure I want to rely on their prevailing sentiments to guide me away from offensiveness.
On the other hand, in Britain “Asian” usually means from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.
The term does get used in Australia, but would tend to include East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia here.
“Brown” is the only one of those that is a direct reference to anyone’s colour outside of Springfield or a jaundice ward.
The Latino thing is complicated because much if the discrimination comes from inside the community directed from the majority Mexican/Mexican Americans against Central Americans, especially Salvadorians. Salvadorian women are especially vilified.
I always assumed ‘Oriental’ was offensive for the same reason that ‘coloured’ is offensive: it was used so much with the assumption of inferiority that it came to have that implication.
My seven-year-old hasn’t come across the concept of races yet. If she’s describing someone and wants to include their skin colour, she uses anything from ‘pink’ through ‘pinky-brown’ through ‘light brown’ through ‘dark brown’. (‘I made a new friend at camp and her name is Charlotte and she’s got yellow hair and pink skin and green eyes and she likes Shopkins and…’) She’s got no understanding of the fact that skin colour can be used as a classifier rather than as a descriptor, and I’m in no hurry to speed up the process.
I used to work with a Japanese guy who told us all to call him Nuprin, because he was little, yellow and different.
A little like referring to Muslims as Moslems…or Mohammedans. (Or Mahometans.)
Also, “Asians” bothers some people also. (Go ahead, tell a Saudi Arabian he is an Asian.)
Lots of people might refer to themselves as brown. I don’t think I’ve heard “yellow” except in a ironic context, though.
Which term? Oriental has similar connotations in Australia, or doesn’t it? It’s more acceptable in the UK.
I don’t think I’ve heard the term “Oriental” used referring to people in Australia, except ironically: it’s occasionally used to refer to grocery shops or furniture shops.
Are you saying that I’ve heard only Mexicans calling people from elsewhere in Latin America “Mexicans”? And that those Mexicans are calling Central Americans “Mexicans” in order to vilify them? I can assure you, that is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about white people and occasionally Asians – some privileged, some not – who casually refer to any Hispanic in sight or in their imagination as “Mexican.” It has nothing to do Mexicans vilifying other Latinos.
This. Oriental is a label that assumes The West to be the center of everything. Just like Native Americans have rejected Indian, people kind of take issue with being called whatever Europeans decided they should be called.
I’m in LA also and I’m pretty sure at least some South Asians here use the broader term Asian to refer to themselves. Can’t think of a real cite, but I have a memory of someone on the radio speaking for a campus Asian/Pacific Islander organization and her name was clearly South Asian.
In the same territory as much of the discussion above, it’s always a bit jarring in a useful way when a light skinned person of relatively recent European heritage but now resident in Africa refers to herself as “African.”
For that matter, isn’t the notion of “Asia” itself a European construction?
I don’t hear it but ymmv. White folk here are usually the least racist. Or many Spanish speakers refer to all Eastern Asians as Chinos.