Hee, as if on cue, I just heard my 84 year old co-worker telling someone about the “oriental woman who’s been driving around her neighborhood for 25 years” (she was referring to a lady who drives an ice cream truck). I glanced over at my half Chinese colleague to see if he had any reaction but he may not even have heard her.
Heh. And just yesterday, my boss, upon telling us about his upcoming trip to Japan, said that “Orientals make him nervous.” In front of two of my coworkers named Ying and Jixang.
This is the same guy though, who has in the past told us about how Obama is a terrorist muslim who wasn’t really born in the United States and that white people need to stop being apologetic about what we did to the Native Americans.
Not wanting to jump the gun, I must ask if this has any relation to my post which came directly before yours. Sorry to be dense; if you’re making a comparison I’d like to reply but if not, I’ll just shut my pie hole.
No, Dougie, this is presumptuous and paranoid:
And your attempts to unilaterally redefine words, and police people’s reactions to the very real racist connotations of those words, that is being controlling.
Nobody is trying to take away your precious Freedumb of Speech.
What we’re doing is using our freedom to point out that you are using yours to be offensive.
I call them as I see them.
“Freedumb of Speech,” indeed.
Perhaps I am offending someone. I am probably offending those who want to control others, and who want to hamstring others’ speech.
I asked, a few posts back, for someone to tell me exactly how “Oriental” is offensive. I got no answer. This suggests to me that the person who refused to answer me considers himself/herself too high and mighty to answer a civil question. That attitude inspires pure contempt in me.
If you want to continue using a word that others are telling you they find offensive, then go for it, it’s a free country. You’re also free to cheat on your partner, loudly fart in public, wear a swastika etc – all ways you can demonstrate your commitment to freedom.
My only point in this thread was to respond to the typical point of “But the etymology is not pejorative!” by pointing out etymology has next to nothing to do with it and never has.
It’s actually easier to find slurs with an apparently benign origin – jap, negro, paki, chink etc.
If this is directed at me, I said I didn’t know. That’s not at all the same thing as refusing to answer.
Some people are offended by the giant red spot on Jupiter. There’s just no pleasing some people.
Yeah and like I say some people don’t like it if you fart in a confined space. If “there’s no pleasing some people”, then just go for it.
At my university, new student and transition programs at the start of year were called “Orientation”. I’d take 'em out and show them which way was East…
I have lived in a predominately asian and oriental country (Japan) for about half my life. They don’t have any problem calling me gaijin, I don’t have any problem calling them asian, oriental, or jap. And I don’t care what you think. Have a nice day bitches. 
Despite regularly being accused of being from the wrong century, I agree “Oriental” as a term for Asian people is something I’d regard as “quaint” or “outdated” rather than actually offensive.
I’ve certainly never heard anyone use the term unironically; it sounds like something from a Ripping Yarn-type story from the days of the Raj when shooting tigers in the face was considered clean, wholesome, manly fun.
I’ve always found it odd the British call people from the subcontinental region “Asian” as pretty much everyone I’ve ever encountered in Australia or NZ considers Asia to be Thailand/Malaysia/Singapore/Vietnam/Korea/Japan/China et al.
Which of course raises the point of “What’s the generic term for people from the subcontinetal region?” “Indian” is obviously appallingly offensive (or at best staggeringly inappropriate) to folks from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal and Bhutan and I’d suggest most folks don’t consider the area part of Asia either.
Not that odd when you consider that in the UK, until relatively recently, most Asians that you encountered were from South Asian countries. Meanwhile, in Australia say, they are much more likely to be from East Asia.
It’s just like how Australia, the UK and the USA can use the same word “football” to mean three different sports.
South Asia.
I have no idea what basis someone might have for suggesting India, Pakistan etc are not true scotsman asia. But they’re classified as such in all the official lists UN, IMF, CIA etc.
I would think that it would be much more objective to approach this matter from a positive angle. Specifically, that is why I mentioned the proctor at the Army pre-induction physical, who directed a group of prospective inductees I was in, to indicate a “race” in a specific place on an induction form he handed out to us. One of five races he referred to as “Oriental.” (As I noted in that post, this was in 1969.) What more specific term was used by anthropologists, for example, at that time, I have no idea, nor do I know what term anthropologists use now. Perhaps a term borrowed from a life science such as anthropology, or social science, might do, unless it is three or more syllables long, or otherwise sounds pretentious and affected. Lots of luck forcing John Q. Public to talk like a Political Science major.
Well we have had “luck”.
Most people don’t want to offend other people, so they avoid using words that will do that. In the US, “Oriental” has become archaic, at least as a description of humans and not objects.
In a way it’s useful to have these terms: it makes it easy to identify people for whom just avoiding a handful of terms to avoid pissing people off is already too much to ask.
From your answer I can conclude that you have one skill in this matter, and only one: forcing people.
You make no effort to propose a suitable alternative for terms which, you claim, are offensive. And if nobody on your side of the matter knows any better choices, that weakens your argument, as far as I am concerned.
I would not go ahead and use pejoratives such as “jap” just because there are no alternatives. But if you kill you should also plant. So far as I can tell you have no interest in planting, just killing.
I don’t want to wait with bated breath for you to answer me. Hence the last sentence in my post of 9:14 p.m. (PDT) last night.
Every post now it seems I have to kill this straw man. No I’m not saying restrict your freedom of speech. I’m saying this word offends, therefore, to me and most people, it seems simple enough to not use it.
But if you wish to offend, do it, whatever.
well except for the times where I’ve done just that. For instance, I was asked how to refer to people from India, Pakistan, sri Lanka etc and I replied “south Asian”.
No one has asked me what to use instead of “oriental”, so how about simply “East Asian”?
It’s funny that several times you’ve gone on these rants based on an initial assertion that’s demonstrably false.
I don’t think anybody in this thread has indicated a stubborn intention to continue using “Oriental” to refer to Asians despite an awareness that the term is not preferred by Asians. I think that charge, which has been leveled often, is entirely spurious. The question, as stated in the OP and repeated often thereafter, is why?
The answer has been that it is an archaic and Euro-centric term that dehumanizes the people being referred to. But how does it do so, since before the 1990’s the term “Oriental” never had a negative connotation? The answer to that one is old (archaic) white (European) people were racists and imperialists, so therefore all their terms are insensitive by association.
Surely one can see why people who might still be using the term “Oriental” (few as that may be) might object to being lectured not only about their current terminology but also about their implied guilt? Maybe some people feel that if the shoe fits, wear it; but a good number of these “insensitive” old white guys (and men and women of all other persuasions who didn’t get the memo) were born after the civil rights movement had already culminated in the Civil Rights Act. They share none of that guilt, and have probably been sympathetic with those ideals since grade school.
A second point of objection is that it seems arrogant to approach someone who has been using a word longer than you have and telling them that your new interpretation of that word is more valid than their old one, and that you will judge their meaning based on your opinion of the word rather than their intent in using it.
Also, I cant believe this thread has gotten this long without someone pointing out that the term “Hispanic” that is being thrown around with such abandon has also been re-purposed as an insensitive slur. “Latino” is the correct term now.
I may accept your argument as you now present it, but I would like to know the numbers of the posts you say you are referring to.
<< well except for the times where I’ve done just that. For instance, I was asked how to refer to people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka etc and I replied “south Asian”. >>
[Shrug] Heck, I would just say “Indian,” Pakistani," or “Sri Lankan,” as the case may be. [Bland emoticon goes here]
If that’s levelled at me then you have misread / misinterpreted what I wrote.
A couple of posters suggested that I am trying to take away their freedom of speech and force them to speak another way. So I’ve responded that no, they can speak however they want, I am just saying if they care about offending others they should not use this word.
This is not the same thing at all as accusing any posters of right now continuing to use Oriental.
However, now you mention it, I don’t think such a charge would be entirely spurious. There are a couple examples in this thread where posters seem to be saying they’ll continue using a word they know offends.
For example dougie monty earlier said he’d continue using “Indian” as a description of native americans, simply because it’s fewer syllables.
It’s easy enough for you to search backwards, but ok:
Here is the post where I explicitly say I’m not trying to curtail freedom of speech.
I, like others, also questioned why you brought the first amendment up, implicitly saying it’s nothing to do with trying to force people to speak a certain way.
And here is the post where someone asks how I think we should refer to people from the region of earth that includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh et all, and I simply reply South Asian.