I know, I know….horrible blogpost title.
Apparently the PC police are out with their pitchforks and torches (actually, most Americans don’t care- just the pc police hammering out their indignation on keyboards, like mine) over Senator Hatch’s use of an “antiquated” term for Asia, deemed “offensive” by those looking to be offended:
WASHINGTON — Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called Asia “the Orient” while speaking on the Senate floor late Tuesday — an outdated term considered offensive to Asians.
Really? What Asians? Which Asians? I’m Oriental. A Siamese single, to be precise. I don’t take offense to the term, “the Orient” or to anyone who should call me “Oriental” instead of using the current census bureau checkbox label of “Asian/Pacific Islander” (I can’t wait for that one to be antiquated; or deemed no longer “politically correct”).
“I believe there are honest, good people on that side of the aisle who want to make this right and make up for what happened here today,” Hatch said. “And I sure hope it’s so because, my gosh, to put this nation’s foreign policy — especially in the Orient in particular — to put it on hold when we could be building relationships in these countries like never before and at the same time, spurring on international trade like never before … It’s a matter of great concern to me.
Hatch is not the first politician to use the term. Vice President Joe Biden called the late Singaporean president Lee Kwan Yew “the wisest man in the Orient” in a speech in September.
Glad HuffPo chose to make mention of that. But as is typical, many don’t bother to read beyond headlines. So I’ve been reading a lot of comments by people feigning outrage and indignation at further evidence of Republican bigotry and “old white man” ageism. Aside from Hatch and Biden’s usage of an antiquated term, what about Harry Reid’s characterization of President Obama’s speaking pattern as “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Even though he was trying to speak in a complimentary fashion, the context in which Reid said what he said is far more egregious as far as racism goes.
Remember earlier this year when the actor Benedict Cumberbatch was publicly shamed into offering a public apology after using the term “colored”? So where’s the indignation over the NAACP which to this day hasn’t removed/updated the “C” in its title to “get with the times” and meet the moral standards of the PC umbrage brigade?
Should “Orient” be replaced in the Christmas Carol, “We Three King of Orient Are”? Because it’s somehow colloquial and offensive by today’s “sensibilities”?
Is it “black” nowadays? Or is it “African-American”? Most black Americans do not come from “Africa”. I have a friend who is white who was born and raised in South Africa. She is an “African-American” in the “truest” sense of the term.
The term “Orient” and “Oriental” evokes in some, exoticism, western imperialism, “the other”…
Some express offense because it “homogenizes”. Well what the devil does “Asian”, do? Why should that be any more acceptable? Or referring to “the West”? Is there anything offensive to Hong Kong or the Philippines being referred to as “the Pearl of the Orient”? How about if it’s referenced that way by Filipinos themselves? Does it matter that I spelled “Filipinos” with an “F” rather than with a “P”?
From the online Oxford dictionary when used offensively:
“The term Oriental, denoting a person from East Asia, is regarded as offensive by many Asians, especially Asian Americans. It has many associations with European imperialism in Asia. Therefore, it has an out-of-date feel and tends to be associated with a rather offensive stereotype of the people and their customs as inscrutable and exotic. Asian and more specific terms such as East Asian, Chinese, and Japanese are preferred. See also Asian (usage).”
In their purest form, “Orient” comes from the Latin and refers to the sun rising in the east; just as “Occitan” refers to where the sun sets- in the west.
A bit of Wiki history on how the term has evolved into a pejorative:
In 1978, Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said published his influential and controversial book, Orientalism; he used the term to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the Arab and Muslim worlds, shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries.
~~~ American English
In the United States, “Oriental” is often considered an antiquated, pejorative, and disparaging term. John Kuo Wei Tchen, director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at New York University, said the basic critique of the term developed in the 1970s. Tchen has said: “With the anti-war movement in the ’60s and early ’70s, many Asian Americans identified the term ‘Oriental’ with a Western process of racializing Asians as forever opposite ‘others’.”[7] In a press release related to legislation aimed at removing the term “oriental” from official documents of the State of New York, Governor David Paterson said: “The word ‘oriental’ does not describe ethnic origin, background or even race; in fact, it has deep and demeaning historical roots”.[8]
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.