Asian = Oriental, etc.

[Benjamin Barrett]

-----Original Message-----
From: Behalf Of Frank Abate

Jerome Foster said:
>>
Re what to call Chinese and Japanese- the current PC term is Asian. Seems it
was once Asiatic but that lost favor sometime after WWII. Then it was
Oriental but that went out for some reason though my local supermarket sells
Oriental food and there is a market that sells only Oriental food run by
Asians who don't seem to object to the term.
<<

The PC objection to "Oriental" is based on etymology (from Latin _oriens_
'rising'; that is, in the direction of the rising sun) -- that it labels
people from a Western perspective.

---
That may be the PC objection, but there is another objection in that it
simply sounds derogatory. I'd never heard the etymological explanation
before, but I've always considered it derogatory.

I was a Caucasian minority in a Seattle high school and the word Oriental
was not used for people. When I've seen Asian friends confronted with
someone who uses it, they usually just smile or grimace. It's less offensive
when used for food, but it still sounds like an ignorant sting to me.

Of course, I've heard many people use it, but they tend to be over 50 or
else not from the West Coast. (Brits and East Indians are, of course, off
the hook on this one.) One of my grandmother's neighbors was recently put on
PC training for using the word Oriental at Boeing (no warning or anything).
He was shocked and then felt bad, not knowing the connotation. After the
incident, my grandmother asked me about the word and has sworn it off. (We
never could get my other grandmother to remember to stop using Oriental,
though we had corrected her several times.)

Benjamin Barrett
gogaku at ix.netcom.com