But if you go around calling people “negros” and “colored” it’s not going to go very well. For whatever reason, the term “Oriental” to describe people has fallen out of favor. At some point it doesn’t really matter why - if a significant portion of people find it offensive, it would be polite to not use the term anymore.
*as an aside, I was ignorant there were different Japanese ethnicities. I’ll inquire with my Japanese friends.
:rolleyes:
Yeah, the Japanese are socompletely unbiased in their representation of their own identity. I’ll trust the Japanese to tell me about their true ethnicity just after I trust their opinion on when, exactly, Honshu was completely unified.
Because I paid attention to what the people called themselves in their language and in English. I’ll certainly go with how they use their own language over your insistence that they don’t know how to speak that language.
Wait, are we actually ignorant of the idea that terms like “Japanese” can be both indicators of nationality or citizenship but also be indicators of ethnicity that include some people that do not fit under the first definition and exclude some who do?
Of course words have become offensive because of how they are used and not solely from their literal and/or original meaning.
“Nigger” is an English-language mispronunciation, or appropriation, of the Spanish word “negro”, which means “black”. Except that it damn well doesn’t merely mean “black”. It acquired its meaning through use.
Not ignorant (I already said I’m aware that’s how it’s used) just disagreeing. There already exists another term for the ethnicity in question (two, in fact, if you include Wajin) that doesn’t have that ambiguity.
So you think there’s no nationalistic bias in the way the Japanese refer to their ethnicities? That the Japanese, of all people, are just a nation of impartial ethnographers? That’s …refreshing.
Look, I’ll happily call any particular Japanese person whatever ethnonym they prefer. But when it comes to overall ethnography, I’ll stick to the term with the least ambiguity, thanks.
Disagreeing with all the Yamato Japanese, it seems. And Monty, who confuses disagreement with trolling, apparently.
Of course. This doesn’t mean I can’t correct what I see as politically-slanted biased usage in others.
I’m intending the latter. Japanese is not an ethnicity, it’s a nationality. This is self-evidently the case by there existing people who are called Japanese, but are not of the same ethnicity as main island Japanese, and explicitly ask not to be identified as such. People who use “Japanese” as an ethnonym are doing one of two negative things - overriding the ethnic identity of oppressed ethnic minorities, or labelling those ethnic minorities as not “Japanese” by exclusion. I’m not sure which is worse.
Claiming Japanese is an ethnicity is like claiming British is an ethnicity, or American is. Those are both patently on the face of it ridiculous. So’s continuing to label the ethnicity “Japanese”
MrDibble, your posts are seldom completely without a point, but you should know that talking to you can be wearying. Hell, just reading the last couple pages makes me tired. If your sig line was “Your preferred usage is deeply offensive,” that would save a lot of time.
(Hopefully this comes off as good-humored and partially tongue-in-cheek. Partially.)
I get what you’re saying. I don’t agree, of course (see below), but I get it.
I know this. So, I should just accept it, is what you’re saying?
I know this too. But we are referring to the claims of “Japanese” ethnicity as ethnicity, not the ambiguous usage of “nation”, which hasn’t been an issue in this thread so far.
Well, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me the word choice that is less alienating of outgroups, less marginalizing of minority ethnicities (some with better claims to being actual “Japanese” than the majority), less jingo-chauvinistic, less pandering to the artificial history of the majority, less associated with dodgy far-right movements - all those, kind of define the moral high ground.
If you don’t agree that using “Japanese” for the ethnicity is negative for other ethnicities, by all means, argue against that. Convince me that the Ainu and Okinawans are all just peachy-keen with the status quo and I’ll change my stance.
But to just say “It’s what we’ve always used” or “It’s the common word” as though that counterbalanced the moral issues, isn’t going to do it. I claim the moral high ground because the side of the oppressed, discriminated-against, conquered and sidelined is always the moral high ground.
Using sarcasm to Insult you isn’t the same thing as trolling, either.
I guess my take is that it’s not your call to make Dibble. Now admittedly it feels bizarre for an American to lecture a South African about imperialistic attitudes, but hey… internet. Anyway, see below.
The Okinawans may feel… ambivalent on the issue of labels. They may also feel they have bigger fish to fry. My take would be to accept conventional usage, pending info that consensus is shifting among Japanese minorities. Then by all means, sign on if you want. I personally like to lag a bit on these things - but only a bit. I haven’t used the word “Oriental” for years (decades) to describe a person. I switched when it felt gauche and didn’t notice when it ramped up to offensive for some.
Incidentally, I agree this is a deeply frustrating conversation. Putting Chinese-American, Japanese-Americans, Korean-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans in the same linguistic bin because of their appearance is more than a little nutty. Except they’ve actually shared a number of similar experiences, mostly to do with challenges adapting to the American language and culture. And the fact of course that American majorities have the fuzziest notions of their different backgrounds. Still it’s a little irritating to me.
I’d agree, if it was just me making the call. It’s not, though, Critical Race theorists have been examining the Japanese take on ethnicity/race for a while now.
It’s part and parcel of the whole indigenous rights movement. Are you aware that there are, in fact, two separate indigenous independence movements in Japan? And there doesn’t have to be consensus in the minorities, IMO. Just enough of a grouping that we know it’s not just crazies/radicals.
Are these any different than the same challenges for any other immigrant group? I mean, seriously, what separates the Hmong immigrant experience from, say, the Sudanese, other than how the two groups are perceived racially?
Again, there’s nothing for me to be ashamed about. I made a mistake, but it was understandable given the context. Nothing more needs to be said about it, I moved on, until you posted
There was no “thread” at the time, mine was the 2nd response. I responded to the OP appropriately given the context of the subject and some of what I skimmed through on his first post. It was perfectly reasonable to post what I did
Again, I’ve admitted laziness. I don’t see the arrogance. And I feel that acknowledging the mistake in this case is good enough, he doesn’t need an apology. To me, an apology should only be warranted by if I had posted something purposefully malicious AND it was uncalled for. You may claim I posted maliciously, but I don’t think it was uncalled for, given the thread title.
That’s fine, I’ll just randomly not respond to a future post you make
I don’t think its uncouth because the subject title was, in my view, pretty clear. Again, I want someone to tell me that they would have absolutely no preconceived notions of a post that started with “The Holocaust: real or fake?” and would be rushing into that topic to call the OP an idiot. I looked at the subject line and felt it was clear enough so I made my post, I feel I was justified in doing so. That’s not uncouth, that’s laziness, that’s assuming that the OP was the 1 out of a 100 people who made a post with that title who does not have the post go in an obvious direction. And even then, its not like I hid my mistake and denied it, I did, I just don’t see where I need to apologize or where I made a mistake in assumption. Sometimes, assuming things works out given prior experience.
Well, if it would make my posts more clear, I wasn’t intending on engaging him in much of a debate. I found this subject to be one-sided and just wanted to say something bad to him and leave. I didn’t assume that he had anything worth debating.
I hope I’m not giving the impression that I’m glorifying ignorance. What I’m trying to do is simply explaining it. Its the difference between an excuse and a reason. An excuse is often unjustified. A reason is not. I gave a reason for why I didn’t read the post thoroughly, and because I feel I’m justified, I don’t think that reason is an excuse
Second, I think your analogy doesn’t work based on the scope of the board. This isn’t one book we’re discussing, this is hundreds of posts in a day. A person can maybe get through a dozen or a few dozen of them in a day. There will be times where the subject appeals enough to someone to click on a thread but the discussion is either too boring or too long for a person to read through each post. I admit that being the 3rd post in the thread, I have less of an excuse, but that’s only because I was so sure of the thread’s trajectory based on the subject that I got lazy.
Last, I think your analogy is off again because we know we’re not supposed to pick our nose or hit on someone else’s wife and both of these are obvious. These are established social cues any of us would know we’re offending. However, lazy skimming only stands out when a mistake is made. If the topic went the direction I thought it would, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Or if I didn’t admit I skimmed it, nobody would ever know. I see my biggest mistake as having been honest about it. I’ll probably lie about it in the future, maybe.
I see what I did more analogous to someone who is a stranger in a foreign land that does not know the customs. Like putting up the “V” victory fingers signal in Australia or some other country where it means something obscene. Now I didn’t know about it, its perfectly fine where I come from, and its stupid for people to get mad at it because I didn’t do it on purpose. Yet why should the person apologize for it if he’s not doing it maliciously? The proper thing would be for him to acknowledge he made a mistake, maybe was too lazy to research the gestures acceptable in that country, but there’s nothing to apologize for. He wasn’t really telling anyone to fuck off with his fingers, he was just doing what was natural and accepted where he came from. People who are offended should realize that cultures are not the same and give people who accidentally offend a pass
You posted two wiki links. What msg were you trying to convey? My interpretation of your post was that since there are Oriental cultural centers and other places with various descriptors that Oriental should be okay to describe someone. If that wasn’t the message you were trying to convey then please clarify.
