Asian or Oriental?

[BmorePat87]

(03-18-2017, 04:44 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Why is it considered bad form to refer to people from SE Asia as Oriental?  I understand that Asian is now the preferred term of reference, but I'm not sure it means what everyone intends it to mean.  When a person says "Asian", the common thought is a person of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. decent.  But alas, there are more Countries in Asia, and those people look nothing like the stereotypical "Asian" person.  I mean you have people from Russia, India, and many more, and they look nothing like the people commonly associated as being Asian.

So, why can't we still use "Oriental" to differentiate?

The word Oriental itself evolved from meaning anyone East of Rome (the center of the West), so basically all of Asian, to meaning just those from Far Eastern countries (China, Korea, Japan, etc). 

Why did it go out of use? I'm not sure. New York banned the use of it in government documents and I read a transcript abut some reactions to it here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112465167

The Asian culture columnist for a newspaper says that it isn't necessarily an offensive term (just from the Latin word for East, so it's like saying Easterner or Westerner), but that there was some baggage attached to it from older racist campaigns of the 1800's and early 1900's. The guy basically said it's not the biggest deal that needs to be addressed, but when he personally thinks of the word he imagines incense and gongs and all of the images of Asian from the early half of the 1900's. 

I think it just fell out of use much like how Latino is becoming a preferred term over Hispanic and Black is often times more preferred than African American. Inuit is preferred over Eskimo by some people because it's not a native word and Eskimo might have derogatory origins (it might mean "eaters of raw meat" or "excommunicated" (non Christian in a negative way) ) but it might also come from a french word for using nets, lol. 

Anyone from South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) wouldn't be considered Asian in the US or Australia as that term is mostly reserved for East Asians, but in other places they would be called Asian.


It's just one of those things that evolved in US culture. Asian has taken the place of Oriental and we use more specific terms for those from South Asian.