Will OA sales plummet in Washington?

[Friadoc]

I ate there last year...

Mike

It seems to be a small world,

...but then again, we are talking about Klamath Falls - I once, while on a trip to Eastern New York to see a lady I cared for at the time, met a lil' old lady, in Chicago's O'Hara whose daughter had just been in Klamath Falls.

It seems no matter how far away I go, people know someone - aside from me - from there.

 

[kenjib]

Salutations,

Interesting thoughts. Thank you.



Unfortunetly, that part of my mind is already occupied with the belief that people don't have a right not to be offended.

Respectfully submitted
FD

Most welcome. You have a completely valid viewpoint and as I'm sure everyone already adequately knows many people would both agree and disagree with you. There's no need to debate it here though. Such debate is almost invariably a fruitless pursuit.

Take care FD,

Kenji
(an "oriental" person in Washington)

 

[Desdichado]

Thanks, Kenji, for that capsule on the historical usage of the term.

However, I have to wonder how much the historical usage is what matters and how much the current usage is? I doubt anyone of my generation, at least, would accept that when they say Oriental they are referring to the Westernized ideal of Asia.

By the way, what's the whole deal with lumping all of Asia into one big entity anyway? Why is Asian any better than Oriental in that regard, since it even more denigrates the ancestry of said individuals by assuming some kind of unification culturally, ethnically, or linguistically which doesn't exist.

 

[heirodule]

Oh, and since when is it offensive to call someone from the Far East Oriental? That's just the latin word for east. What's the rationale there for why it was ever supposed to be offensive in the first place?

To take offense at Oriental, you have to have been indoctrinated by Edward Said, whose book Orientalism takes umbrage at the way "the west" has "oppressed" and "appropriated" the culture of "the east". In his case, he mostly meant the Middle East, but leftist Asians didn't want to feel left out of today's modern campus racial greivance system, so they bought in and started challanging departments of Oriental Studies on campus.

You can read more about Said and his critics here:

Jonah Goldberg

Review of a Bernard Lewis Book

 

[Umbran]

Ooh. Politics. Yummy.
So, anyone want to try to link this back to gaming?

 

[Gizzard]

I was pretty surprised to find that some of my Asian friends here in SF didnt like the term "Oriental"; I grew up in LA and considered it a very neutral word, if shaded towards being archaic (similar to the word "Colored").

But words are very charged things; I dont think that the people I know are acting out some sort of "western power v. eastern oppression" intellectual exercise. The word "Oriental" reminds them of the 50's-60's-70's when their families couldnt buy houses in certain neighborhoods and when petty racism was part of daily life. I think you get a similar reaction today if you call someone "Colored".