Asian, Oriental, and other terms of endearment

[Benjamin Barrett]

I mentioned earlier that my grandmother stopped using the word Oriental
after an incident where a neighbor was put through sensitivity training for
using it, but she was only 79 when it happened (soon to be 80) :-0

Benjamin Barrett
gogaku at ix.netcom.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On
> Behalf Of Pearsons, Enid
>
> Unless I am reading too hastily, there appears to be an assumption in this
> thread that all older people (i.e., the parents and grandparents
> mentioned)
> are prejudiced, narrow-minded, socially and linguistically insensitive,
> incapable of change, and ignorant. That has not been my experience. Nor
> would I want to believe that all younger people are smug, arrogant,
> prejudiced, narrow-minded, and prone to generalizing about their
> elders from
> manifestly limited experience. Let's not exclude ageism from the list of
> attitudes we all want to avoid.