BRING IT ON…
ugh. just read in the irish times about some old geezer in county clare who has started a filipino mail order bride service. the 64 year-old found his 22 year-old bride as the first customer! how gross, not to mention disturbing as the exploitation of women in developing countries is making its way to ireland!
of course it doesn’t help that in this part of the world (UK and Ireland) the only representations of asians in the media are BANZAI or “Orchid” from Coronation Street.yeh, funny little “oriental” men who speak with fake chopsocky accents. (word to the wise out there: “oriental” is an outdated and offensive term. all of y’all Irish and British people need to get it straight and stop using it. We prefer Asian - or in my case “American” or “Asian-American” will do.) and… the money-grubbing Thai mail-order bride?? What a choice!?!? Let’s not forget that other great (or not) piece of entertainment, Fair City - which has one Asian woman who occasionally appears on the show… as the rich lady’s maid!!
sometimes i get pretty sick of how asians are depicted in american media. then i look at the situation here. and boy, does the united states look pretty good by comparison… still… MAIL ORDER BRIDES!!! will this be the next stereotype i will have to field in this country!?!?!
May 24th, 2004 at 3:40 pm
i hear your pain. but of course, i’m white, so i can’t say i feel it… as you know, people here in ireland sort of smoosh all asian people in one lump. so asian means indian, pakistani, japanese, korean, chinese… when people say ‘oriental’ they mean of east-asian descent.
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.
May 24th, 2004 at 4:27 pm
hey heather…
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.
May 24th, 2004 at 8:45 pm
forgot to mention - the show you posted a link to. very cool - hopefully we can look forward to more of that.
May 25th, 2004 at 10:22 am
excellent point. yes, the thought crossed my mind, as well it should have- since i studied said at uni. (in two classes on orientalism)… i’d like to challenge the subject again- that ‘oriental’ is only a non-weighted word here. maybe the word ‘oriental’ does conjure up visions of opium puffing mandarins on couches, or turban-swathed old men, or women in harims lounging about. maybe she only ‘feels’ it doesn’t because she tricks herself with word games? i dunno.
alas, said passed away last year didn’t he, but his work is still too relevant.
May 26th, 2004 at 12:41 am
i don’t really believe that “oriental” is a non-weighted word in ireland. in hawaii, where asian-americans make up the majority of the population and experience balanced exposure and success at all levels of society i can believe “oriental” is a non-weighted word. and they do use that term in hawaii while wondering why all the people on the continent are crazy. but hawaii has a hybrid culture which embraces asians. ireland does not.
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.