Ever use the phrase "oriental" to describe some who is Chinese, Japanese or generally looking like they come from South-East Asia? The Home Office does in its statistics. Of course, if you used it in America (or even Australia in some cases) you would be frowned upon as using racist terminology.
Language huh? It's a funny old thing isn't it? You can either advocate the authoritarian oppression of language whilst simultaneously making cheap and easy party political points;or you can be contextual, situational and intellectually honest about it.
Which is right? You decide.
25 comments:
I live in France , it is frowned upon to use the term "homme noir" instead it is regarded as much gentler to use the English term "black man". Funny old world this political correct version of soundbites.
People who are ignorant or biased (or biased by their ignorance) will invarioubly put their foot in it sooner or later whether they are using politically correct terminology or not. Honesty and Common Sense are better guides than PC. PC is for cunts.
I don't mind being called occidental. Does that make me wierd?
I find certain words come in useful if you want to insult or offend anyone, but why would I wish to do that in this paradise on Earth created by New Labour?
"Oriental" is NOT a race - therefore describing somewhat as that cannot be racist.
You cannot censor thought, so just censor the result of thought, ideas, as expressed in language.
George Orwell did it very well in 1984. Newspeak.
Alan Douglas
I remember when I was on tune in Lyon with my French exchange family. To huge embarassment Maylis the youngest daughter (aged 3) pointed at a black man and said Monsieur Noir. I believe she has managed to put this unfortunate episode behind her.
I find the description Oriental allows me to describe those attractive peoples east of Burma. Asians, it appears, describes those Indians, Pakistanis,Bangladeshis, and Sri Lankins who, having achieved Independence from the British Empire, now swarm into Britain to avail themselves of a way of life denied them by their now ' Independent' countries of origin.
I have never heard that describing someone as Oriental was frowned upon in the US, and I lived there for 14 years. It's used all the time in the US to describe people from E Asia when you're not sure if they're Chinese, Japanese or Korean.
The statement is utterly incorrect. Oriental, in the US, is actually flattering because they are so bright and are, in general, so good-looking.
People from Sri Lanka, India, Myanmar, the Philippines, etc are Asians. Oriental is not a carpet bag description. It is a definite racial type.
Sorry Verity, but I think you might have just been lucky.
wiki entry>
As the wiki entry and dictionary entires show, it all comes down to context - again - using Oriental as a noun directed at a person is and can be considered offensive in some parts of the world.
Dizzy - wicki is written by special pleaders. It's not a real encyclopaedia.
In no part of the world that I have ever been has Oriental been regarded as racist - except in that it describes racial characterists. They use it themselves, for heaven's sake!
It's like saying that referring to someone as "an Azhkenazy Jew" is a term of abuse.
In other words, referring to any race is a term of abuse. So how do we describe one another? "Well, officer, it was a tall human driving the car ...".
The left is forcing these divisions where there are none. It is all about control. And stop looking things up in Wicki! It's been outed!
Dizzy - wicki is written by special pleaders. It's not a real encyclopaedia.
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crap argument. The specific article references dictionary and books as it's sources.
You're also missing the point. Which was not about whether oriental being offensive to some people is right or wrong, but rather the fact that lanugage is contextual and situational.
I'm not going to have an argument about meaning, because that is not what I was saying, and I think you know that.
p.s. Wiki has not been outed at all. Like any Encyclopedia it is as only as good as its accurate cross referecing.
It was outed a couple of days ago, but I can't remember where I read it. But we won't argue the point because, obviously, I can't support my argument and I don't want to devote time to finding evidence. So I'll pipe down. But I personally would only use it for provable facts.
OK, but honestly, it is a fact that Oriental as term is perceived by "some" people as derogatory. Whether it is or not is beside the point I was making. I only really raised it because it was a good example of language having contextual understanding.
Thank you for the link, Dizzy, but it is not factual. It is all opinion. There is no academic discipline involved. Just the writer's observations and conclusions.
But actually, I agree with your point of contextual understandings of language.
It is also grotesquely ethnocentric for white people to assume that they are the only ones who refer to other people by their race! Everyone does it. It's a human-wide habit. When I worked in Asia among Chinese, I asked a (Chinese) woman colleague if she recognised someone I had brought to the office a few weeks earlier, and she replied, "No. All white people look alike to me." She wasn't being offensive.
I am in the US, verity, and I have been told in several places by people of different ethnicity that 'oriental' is not to be used in the US to describe people (but it's OK for, say, rugs). I know that at least some of them were taught that at school.
It's not the most offensive racial word, but it is, nevertheless, offensive, I believe; in any case, you pretty much never hear it used here to describe people ('Asian' is almost universally used in polite company).
How bizarre! It's not an offensive racial word at all - unless referring to someone's race is now an offense.
I can believe that they were taught this at school. It is new and it is controlling and fascist. More thought laws.
I guess it's based on what the community in question finds offensive. There could be various reasons for that (and the difference in the situation in the UK, say); Chinese people were treated really quite badly for a long time over here (and singled out for discrimination in the immigration laws, too). Maybe the word attained some sort of overtones then.
The immigration thing is quite ironic, given that East Asians, including those of Chinese descent, are now some of the most successful groups, on average, in America. Nothing like a historical xenophobic and moronic immigration flap to help illustrate the intellectual paucity of the current one.
Is it OK to refer to "the Orient"? I'm afraid all the Orientals do, and there are more of them than of us.
I believe that the area and non-human objects from the area are, indeed, respectively "Orient" and "Oriental".
Any attempt to verify what is offensive to individual groups (or members therof), and then produce self-consistent logical rules to recognise which is which, is doomed to failure, I fear.
I do not believe for one minute that American people of Oriental origin are offended by the word "Oriental". I believe other people, mainly in academia and the Democratic Party are offended on their behalf.
What on earth is offensive about being referred to as your race? Especially as they are the second most intelligent group on earth?
Is it OK with the left to refer to Jews as Jewish?
The left, under the guise of "caring" are controlling monsters and they are dangerous. Let's just carry on with our knock-about freedom of speech.
Should I get you two a room?
'Asian' is almost universally used in polite company.
I think you're right.
It's really *really* annoying when you're doing a porn search for 'asian' and you end up with lots of Japanese links. Don't they know there is a big difference between South-East Asian and Oriental features??
I just find it so bizarre that anyone (the left) would try to convince other humans that describing someone as belonging to a race is offensive. It's so bonkers.
Especially such a clever race as the Orientals all are. Chinese, Mongols, Japanese, Korean - very smart people. We all know that the Chinese invented gunpower in BC, but did you know they invented the magnetic compass around 200 BC? They invented the wheelbarrow in around 100 AD.
The invented India ink. Fireworks. Umbrellas. Kites. Paper (including loo roll). Chopsticks, of course, while we were still eating with our fingers (and so many still are).
Are the race police saying that mentioning that the Chinese are Oriental is somehow insulting? In what way, I would like to ask?
Is it OK to refer to an Azhkenazy as Jewish? Given that they're the most inelligent people on earth, maybe they should make the rules and not the race industry.
There are tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands with their gums clamped firmly on the race special pleading teat. I refuse to be complicit in this idiocy. It belongs in the same bin as "man made climate change".
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