Ah, that explains why it used to be seen occasionally in British English then - since it was more common to have encountered Muslims by way of India than in Britain itself, back in the day. It’s many years out of date, though.
I’ve never even been near the San Francisco Bay Area, and I’ve known since at least the late 1990s that (in the US, at least) referring to a person as “Oriental” is at best dated and at worst offensive. If you’re just learning this now it’s because you’re out of touch, not because San Franciscans have some weird “fetish”.
The sort of person who, having heard multiple people say they find a particular term personally offensive, dismisses their concerns as a “fetish?”
Also, this :
Is a straight up racist grandma quote if I’ve ever seen one. Bet you’re really impressed by their math skills, too.
Dude, I live almost as far from San Francisco as it’s possible to get in the continental US and I’ve always known it is not a preferred term for people.
You know what’s kind o funny to me? The term “Asian”. How the hell is that descriptive? Asia is the world’s most populous continent. Think about it. It includes China, India, and Russia among numerous others.
I’m not defending the word “Oriental”, you understand, I’m just remarking on how ridiculous connotative language is. Lucy Liu is an “Asian” actress, but nobody ever described Maria Sharapova as an “Asian” tennis player.
Same here. Going to high school in the early 90s in Chicago, “Oriental” was already an outdated word, like “Negro,” and definitely not preferred nomenclature. Not everyone is offended by it, but it’s best to avoid. I don’t automatically assume someone who uses that word is racist, much like I don’t think bad of someone who uses the word “Polack” to refer to people from Poland or those of Polish extraction (I’m the latter; my parents the former) if the context is not offensive. Still, I would recommend folks avoid the word “Polack” if they don’t want to offend someone. Some Poles do find that quite offensive.
I always thought Chinaman had a great ring to it.
And what I liked about the ending of that Seinfeld episode is that another book-club member called out George for not understanding that the character played by George Peppard was gay, which of course he was in Truman Capote’s novel and of course he wasn’t in the 1961 movie.
Apropos of nothing - I’m sorry, we already have a Drunky Smurf.
We learned it’s a fetish? Really? How did you come by that odd interpretation?
If you think it’s only in the Bay Area that you’d be thought of as, generously, out of touch, or more seriously, a bigoted racist if you used the term “oriental” to describe people, this thread has been a total failure on your part. But yes, go ahead and continue to use the term. Shout it from the rooftops.
I see this as worse than using the term “Democrat Party” but around here that is seen as verboten. But somehow you think being offended by describing someone as Oriental is a fetish.
Let me guess -“some of your best friends” are East Asians?
We “learned” no such thing.
I barely know any. Regularly knock back a few beers with some Hottentots, though.
My best guess is a misunderstanding of “taboo.”
No non-American contributer thought the term was racist. I think I mentioned that I am out-of-touch with American opinion. For almost all of the past 20 years I’ve lived in … wait for it … East Asia. Perhaps this will help explain why I might be ignorant of offenses known “since at least the late 1990s”
And I don’t deliberately use racist slurs. Would any of the people who think I’m racist deign to read #26 and see if my usage was so bad in its context?
You guessed right! My wife is East Asian, my kids half-so.
In this thread we learn, once again, that Dopers are eager to see “racism” where it doesn’t exist.
You, sir, have the cranial capacity of an Ethiope.
ETA: God save Queen Victoria!
I may not have said so outright, but I think it should be pretty clear I think the term is racist. Hell, so’s “Asian”, as far as I’m concerned. “East Asian” is a little better, but not much.
No! You don’t say?
I am sorry for you that your wife has kept her ethnicity from you, and you have to use some sort of generic regionalism when describing her to others. Some marriages are like that, I guess.
More seriously - if you think it is not possible to be a racist and yet also be a loving husband to/father kids with a member of that race, I guess you really are out of touch. New Orleans history would be very different, for one thing.
I didn’t make that claim. I do claim that I’m not a racist. In all seriousness, whatever my offenses might be, does anyone here really think any of my posts here constitute real evidence that I’m a racist?
For what it’s worth, no, I don’t think you’re a racist from your posts in this thread. But what I’m trying to point out to you, is that you’re using the same language as one - the same “Some of my friends/family are X” justifications, the same “Why do I have to change my language because they’re offended” excuses…you may not be a racist, but you’re certainly using, invested in retaining, or defending using racist language.
ETA - I suspect you’re doing so because you’re a curmudgeon, not a racist. But you have to be told how it sounds.
If we’re tallying, I’ve lived all my life in Minnesota and oriental has been seen as inappropriate for as long as I can remember.
Jimmy Carr, the famous irreverent british comedian commented on the Nerdist podcast that one of his mini-culture shocks touring in America was how not acceptable oriental is to the audience. And these are people who are going to a Jimmy Carr show, where he asks audience members questions like “Would you fuck your dad to save your mum?” And oriental was a step too far.
While I’m not defending the term “Oriental”, I do think that the term “Asian” has a lot to be desired, mostly because it’s SO vague.
I mean, “Asian” describes someone from a continent, not a specific sort of people. It’s about as unhelpful as “African” or “N. American” is. So you have to qualify it- you end up with “East Asian”, which covers most of what “Oriental” used to cover. Then you have terms that are even more vague and less useful in conversation.
I mean, WTF is a “South Asian”? I know that in practical terms, it means someone from India, but does it also encompass Burmans, Vietnamese, Malaysians and Indonesians? What are they- East Asians? Are people from places like Turkmenistan called “West Asians”? “Central Asians?”
Personally, I’d prefer calling people by their nationality or ethnicity, but for broad strokes, there has to be (or needs to be) a better term than the various flavors of “Asian”.