Is calling someone Oriental a bad thing?

Willy_the_Wonka

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Osiris

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Yes but you don't hear about asian rap stars using the word oriential in their songs or homeboys shouting out "What's up my oriental" in the street.

Exactly why I have issue with black rappers who choose to use the "N" word in their lyrics and get pissed when someone calls them that.
 

prepstudinsc

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My mother is friends with a family in which the husband is originally from Armenia (he moved to the US for college and stayed). After a recent dinner party, my mother relayed a story in which this man and his children got into an argument about the terms "Oriental" and "Asian". He said something about an Oriental person, the children told him that it was not PC to do so. His explanation is that because Armenia is technically in Asia, he is Asian, but he is not Oriental--distinguishing his Caucasian heritage from an Asian/Oriental heritage.

This is why labels are not precise. A person of British or Dutch heritage born and raised in Africa would be African, but not Black. If they moved to the US, technically that person would be African-American, but not in the customary usage.

Is that as clear as mud? lol
 

dongalong

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I was told by a Korean American that it is offensive to call him oriental, I had to remind him that the English language we were communicating in comes from England and that the Orient was to the east of England and people from the Orient were known as Orientals.
That seemed to convince him.
 

scanjock8

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Outdated, and to some offensive.

From an online dictionary:

USAGE NOTE Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Oriental—meaning “eastern”—is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive. However, Oriental should not be thought of as an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. As with Asiatic, its use other than as an ethnonym, in phrases such as Oriental cuisine or Oriental medicine, is not usually considered objectionable.
 

SpoiledPrincess

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I don't perceive Oriental as being offensive and I have used it on occasion to narrow down where someone is from, Asian is such a wide term and covers so many different groups whereas Oriental only includes people from China, Tibet, Japan and a few other south eastern countries. My dictionary (Longmans) defines Oriental as being a member of any of the peoples of the Orient. I'm going to carry on using it as I don't intend it to give offense and if someone was to call me a taffy I wouldn't mind in the least, life is far too short for me to spend all my time deciding certain terms are offensive.
 

jason_els

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The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel...

What's wrong with being considered exotic, full of romance, and intrigue? There have been despotic empires and there are still despots and inscrutable customs! I'm not entirely naive enough to believe every Chinese person is Fu Manchu or every Japanese is Nanki-Poo, or every Tibetan is Sam Jaffe. To us, the place is exotic, just as I'm sure we in the west are exotic to them.

It's delightful to know there are mysteries in the world no matter what culture you're from. Keeps things interesting and all.

Technically, given the International Date Line, these people are in the orient compared to the rest of the world. By old world standards, Europe was the west and now there just happens to be more west than we ever thought there was. The scientific name for the people of the Orient as we understand it, is Mongoloid just as black people are Negroid and Caucasians, who may be ivory white or near black as Bangladeshis, are Caucasoid and I'd never use mongoloid or negroid, given their derogatory common understanding, among anyone other than a group of ethnologists, or anthropologists.
 
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My mother is friends with a family in which the husband is originally from Armenia (he moved to the US for college and stayed). After a recent dinner party, my mother relayed a story in which this man and his children got into an argument about the terms "Oriental" and "Asian". He said something about an Oriental person, the children told him that it was not PC to do so. His explanation is that because Armenia is technically in Asia, he is Asian, but he is not Oriental--distinguishing his Caucasian heritage from an Asian/Oriental heritage.

I agree with you completely! People mistake Asian as being Chinese or Japanese, but "Asian" encompasses so much more then that! An Indian friend of mine considers herself Asian, South Asian. So what if somebody else thinks she is Indian and not Asian? She is still apart of the same "Asian continent". However, she definitely isn't Oriental.

I think anybody who doesn't like the term has probably just heard that that it was "offensive", without putting much thought into it.
 

Drifterwood

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QFE.

This is a very good explanation and I thank you for taking the time to write it.

In my opinion, if people from Asia en masse prefer to be called Asian because of the historical connotations, I have no problem obliging them.

I completely agree, and would go further and point out the irony and arrogance of one group deciding whether or not it is offensive to call another group something.

There is also considerable ignorance here. Asia breaks down to South East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. That still leaves a grey area in my knowledge for Georgia etc - maybe the Caucasus.

All these areas are reasonably culturally and ethnically distinct, so I don't think it's too much to ask that you use these terms.

If you happen to be in any of these regions or know someone from there, you should take the trouble to know exactly where they come from and refer to them as that. Don't call a Korean, Japanese FFS. If you want a real dilemma, do you call someone from Taiwan, Taiwanese or Chinese?