anyway i got into thie very discussion last week. i was cringing as i heard a friend from dublin say ‘oriental’ (my sensitivity comes from having dated chinese americans and aving asian friends, and growing up in a laotian neighborhood)… and i told her this word was considered a slur, and possibly tantamount to the ‘N’ word- *ahem*. but she said it’s not so here… that oriental has no negative meaning or connotation, and she politely elaborated that the orient came from the latin root east. and we were thus occidental.

so we talked about the terms and what was right or wrong. i don’t know, since it’s cultural, social, historical. i’m confused now, since knowing that it is different here… i don’t want to give the ‘O’ word any more manna or weight than it already has. If for them, it merely means, of east-asian descent… i dunno.

i’m confused. anyway, i think we tend too often to say white-people or asian-people or black-people, or wrse: whites, blacks, asians… instead of saying people of asian descent… which is more like person-first, and attributes second.

some good news is, there are other shows out there: http://www.rte.ie/tv/mono/ if you ever get a chance to see it, is targeted towards younger people and i’ve seen one of the presenters is a woman of east-asian descent.

alas and alack.

my nephews and neice are still talking about some visitors they had from japan… this is probably the first time they spoke to an ‘asian’ person in their whole life. these young people are studying at McGee Uni in derry up here. the kids are still mentioning this experience. it sounds like the visitors just came and chatted about their lives for about 45mins to each class. the kids have had their minds opened and curiosity piqued.

well… anyway. just some thoughts to share.

yeah i know you can’t feel the pain, but you understand why it’s there, which thankfully is pretty common for most americans i meet living here and in the UK.

as for people’s use of the term “oriental” - i don’t really care if people think they aren’t being offensive by using the term - the reality and legacy of the word remains. for example: why do i cringe when i hear some random irish person use the term “colored” to describe a black person, let alone the n-word? because the term has a history, and that history is still there whether or not people choose to acknowledge it. and unfortunately i’ve heard an awful lot of irish people say “colored” as well as “oriental”. it’s igorant, just plain igorant any way you play it, especially when one actually looks at the history of the term “oriental” - a few links:

WHY ORIENTAL IS A BAD WORD
Orientalism

the term has its roots in eurocentric, colonialist thinking. i would love to have a chat with your friend about this, but i might scare her as i am less easily persuaded by arguments that default to simplistic binary east/west paradigms.

alas, said passed away last year didn’t he, but his work is still too relevant.

as soon as people around here in dublin start referring to themselves and other europeans as “occidentals” or the power differential between white and non-white people in this country changes i’ll continue to find “oriental” to be an offensive word, and symptomatic of the extreme lack of exposure and general igorance of some people i’ve met here.