Longhornjok: [quote author=Donk link=board=meetgreet;num=1056644650;start=0#19 date=06/28/03 at 12:38:28] Your knowledge is limited. "Oriental" is an adjective that can refer to people, objects, animals, or ideas that are from or related to the East. (The term literally refers to the the place of the rising sun.) The equivalent term for things or people from the West is "Occidental" (refering to the setting sun). The more you know . . .[/quote]
Donk, I think that definition may be found in certain dictionaries, but the term apparently has fallen out of disfavor with Asian-Americans:
Nikkei View
by Gil Asakawa
A regular column of pop culture and politics from a Japanese American perspective
Rugs are Oriental; I am Asian...
Here's one of most helpful the explanations... tracing the word back to the collapse of the Roman Empire: "Although some people view 'Occidental' as the opposite of 'Oriental,' meaning the white Europeans, the term originally meant the eastern European or western Asia... What was left of the Roman empire was split into two, the Occidental Empire and the Oriental Empire. This is how I believe the terms got started. 'Orient' is a Latin term for 'east' and 'occident' is a term for 'west.'"
The accepted rule is that "Oriental" is a word for inanimate objects from Asia, but not for people. If you're describing people from Asia, use the word "Asian" -- or better yet, take the time to discern beyond the racial distinctions and find out what country or heritage people are from. Asia is an awful big place, and there are many discrete cultures and traditions from Chinese and Japanese to Korean, East Indian, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Thai.... and within each country, different cultures thrive in different regions. There's a natural inclination to simplify the world and file people under broad categories. But few people would without a thought lump Italians and Swedes or French and English together culturally and ethnically, just because they all happen to be Europeans. For some reason, it seems easier to assume that all Asians think alike and act alike just because they look alike (of course, we don't all look alike either, but that's another column).
No one calls Eastern Europeans "Occidentals," and "Oriental" today is considered by Asians to be a derogatory term because it reflects centuries of a western-centric view of the world, which assumed that civilization and knowledge flowed from Europe to the rest of the world. The cultures of Asia, of course, in particular China, are much older and was refined long before Europeans wandered to other continents...
www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/Article_Detail.asp?Article_ID=5472
