why do pepole say Asian instead of oriental?

[xiandarkthorne]

A friend of mine who is Korean (and grew up in Michigan) refers to himself as Oriental. It never seemed like a derogatory term to me (and neither to him), and I don't know anyone who has used that term who intended it to be derogatory.......I think that language is a much better way of identifying ethnicity than continents, as long as we are talking about the languages of one's ancestors. Better to look at language groups/trees than continents for describing identity.

I don't know about language as a definition since I wouldn't know what to call myself in that case. I have Chinese, Malay, Thai and Burmese ancestry. And while I do not speak any Burmese at all, English is the first language of my family (most don't really speak any Chinese dialect to any passable degree). To make the problem more complicated, we also speak, read and write Malay fluently like all Malaysians. And on top of that, I also speak Thai and Italian. Does that make me a 'MaThaiChItaBu'?

For anyone who's interested, here's how we do it in Malaysia where Malays, Indians, Chinese, Ibans, Kadazans, Dayaks, Thais, Burmese (or if you prefer Myanmarese - I think that's right), Europeans (you'd be surprised how many) and a whole lot of other races live together.

We are all Malaysians so we call ourselves Chinese-Malaysians, Indian-Malaysians, Portuguese-Malaysians and so on. No problem or hang-up about being Oriental or Occidental Malaysian or European dishes or Western food (a common Asian term for any kind of culinary concoction that does not look like it originated in a wok! - we're not being racist...just ignorant of haute cuisine or what passes for it.)

In the past, the 'Malaysian' preceded 'Indian' or 'Chinese' or whatever but then a professor of semantics pointed out that it reduced 'Malaysian' to the status of an adjective instead of its being a statement of nationality. So we turned the words around quite happily.

As for being called 'Oriental', we don' have a problem with it - my naturalized European friends say that since they are citizens of a country in the orient, they have just as much right to be called Oriental now. As for the rest of us, we were born, still live (and will probably die) in the Orient, so we don't really care whether we're called Easterners or Orientals.


Xian

PS
Before anyone raises the question of 'ian' or 'ese' as a suffix fo nationality or race, just think about 'Indese', 'Chinian', 'Americese', 'Englese' or 'Englian' or whatever - would you really want to be correct to THAT extant?

 

[Teddyboy]

It's easier to acknowledge,
East Asian = Chinese, japanese, Korean etc
Southeast Asian (Asean) = Viet, Thai, Indonesian, etc
South Asian = Indian, Sri Lankanese etc

But, most people in The USA seem to refer asians to people of east asian and southeast asian heritage.
while people in the UK refer asians mainly as south asian heritage.

And the word "Asian" is more commonly used, while oriental is not.
Although yes, there are some folks that find "oriental" offensive cause it comes off as demeaning, just like the word "wetbacks".

 

[Smiffy2]

i always thought asian was used to describe people and oriental to describe things.

 

[DarkHelios]

A question. I am curious. How do residents of other English-speaking countries refer to people whose ancestors hail from Africa?

I'm Canadian. I'm usually described as black which doesn't offend me at all.

 

[BabiGayPimp]

I would speculate that since 'oriental' is applied to so many different objects, it's become derogatory to refer to humans that way. But that's just geek speculation; for me, the key is that people of that race have said the term offends them, so I won't use it.

Well, we call many objects "beautiful" and horses "handsome," and I doubt many of us would be offended by such labels applied personally.

I do agree that if large numbers of Frenchmen suddenly become offended by being called French, eventually and out of courtesy I'll get around to calling them by whatever alternate tag they feel comfortable with.

I'm really not hung up on names and labels when there is no malicious intent. For me, Black was just right, African American is OK. I don't get offended when when an older person slips in the occasional "colored." Because I AM that too.

Sometimes I think people get so hung up on language because they can only hold one segment of history in their heads at a time. Certain people, not just objects, were referred to as "Oriental," in polite Western society for a long, long time. But now we have more accurate, through not entirely satisfactory terms, and we are using them until the next upgrade.

We live and learn.

 

[laorish]

In American English, the term Oriental became offensive because it was used as a noun. "We don't hire Orientals."
Now that no-one uses it that way, the word is still offensive in American English.

 

[craion]

Im from southeast asia, but i dont mind being called oriental. If people dont want to be called oriental because ita what others call for a rug or something else, then what if some big company would create something and call it somethng witht the word Asian on it, what would you other asians want to be called then as you would then not want to be associated with that thing which they put the word asian on its name?

and also for there not being a continent called "Orient" what about the Pacific Islanders, is there even a continent called "Pacific Island"?