For the record, and for clarity and to head off any assumptions, the above is my position that I posted the other day.
okay, again, you can't just say "this Asian person isn't offended!" and then pretend this is some sort of gray area. let's unpack this article:
It is now politically incorrect to use the word “Oriental,
okay first line and we're already off to a bad start.
As an Oriental, I am bemused. Apparently Asians are supposed to feel demeaned if someone refers to us as Orientals. But good luck finding a single Asian American who has ever had the word spat at them in anger. Most Asian Americans have had racist epithets hurled at them at one time or another: [lmao]. But Oriental isn’t in the canon.
you don't have to be called something insultingly for that something to be a problem. language can be racist even if it's not a slur. there's a certain scientific term that was used to refer to black people that's now considered incredibly offensive, but I don't think I've ever heard of people hurling that word at black people to disparage them. I'm not sure if the Asian equivalent term was used as an insult either OH WAIT
And why should it be? Literally, it means of the Orient or of the East, as opposed to of the Occident or of the West.
okay last I checked I can buy a book called Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, not Occidental Adventures, but sure.
The problem with “Oriental,” San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jeff Yang told NPR, is that “When you think about it, the term … feels freighted with luggage. You know, it’s a term which you can’t think of without having that sort of the smell of incense and the sound of a gong kind of in your head.” In other words it makes Asians sound exotic because it was in circulation at a time when exoticizing stereotypes were prevalent.
“In the U.S., the term ‘Oriental’ has been used to reinforce the idea that Asians were/are forever foreign and could never become American. These ideas helped to justify immigration exclusion, racial discrimination and violence, political disfranchisement and segregation.” Lee also claimed that continued use of the term “perpetuates inequality, disrespect, discrimination and stereotypes towards Asian Americans.”
yes, exactly, "Oriental" is a dated term that carries a lot of racist baggage. we already say Asian or East Asian (also Southeast Asian) so it's not like dropping it is a radical idea either.
I don’t see it that way; I see self-righteous, fragile egos eager to find offense where none is intended.
oh right, I forgot, we're just being too sensitive
A wave of anti-Oriental discrimination is not sweeping the country.
this hasn't aged well
Are we really going to waste time, energy and millions of dollars to rebrand our entire discipline — rename our schools and boards, redesign corporate identities, websites and publications and send out thousands of revised diplomas — all to wipe away an insult that doesn’t exist?
yeah, this happens all the time. it also happens when things get updated and replaced, it's disingenuous to paint a picture of wasting "millions of dollars" to replace stuff you were probably going to replace anyway, it's not an enormous undertaking to replace "Oriental" with "East Asian" while you're at it. "but what about branding?" same with branding, people change brand identities and advertising strategies all the time, this is probably especially the case with alternative medicine as opinions can shift drastically over time.
We have more important things to worry about. Big pharma is busy patenting[...]
and she ends with a red herring. hmm.
I had to look up who Jayne Tsuchiyama was and her practice is now labelled as "Eastern medicine", and I'm not sure she's entirely aware of anti-Asian racism in this country. she's not exactly a prominent voice in the Asian American community, but that's not the real issue I guess.
look, if East Asian people aren't a hive mind (and clearly we're not) you can still do better than taking a neutral stance and letting the status quo continue. you can educate yourself about Asian American history (especially the history of the mid to late 20th century) and maybe you can understand why you shouldn't just take a neutral stance because this one Asian person thought it was okay.