Is oriental racist? Alternatives?

[SamBomb]

Oriental for things is fine, oriental for people is pretty racist.

Asian, or whatever country they are from works, Japanese, Filipino, etc..

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think one needs to delve into whether it's "racist," whatever that means, to say with confidence that describing people in the year 2024 as "Oriental" is definitely not the preferred term to use.

 

[Duleigh]

No, the term refers to "from the Orient"; simple as that: anything else read into that is something that does not follow.

We couldn't find any older threads to dig up?

 

[KeithD]

Speaking personally, I prefer Asian to oriental.

This.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Oh, let's not go through this again.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Orenitals are hotels or rugs, not people.

 

[KeithD]

Orenitals are hotels or rugs, not people.

I can attest that the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok is one of the world's best.

 

[Duleigh]

I can attest that the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok is one of the world's best.

I could afford to live on my retirement there.

 

[KeithD]

I could afford to live on my retirement there.

I doubt it. I'm still crying over the bill for setting my 10th wedding anniversary party there.

 

[Duleigh]

I doubt it. I'm still crying over the bill for setting my 10th wedding anniversary party there.

Well, not Bangkok, there's a group of burned out bomb loaders in Phuket and I'm so tempted to go join my boys

 

[MetaBob]

Well, there shouldn't be a problem using the N-word either, because there shouldn't have been a time where that term was used in a system of slavery. But there was. And thus, there is.

I find that weird too. It's a combination of negro and Niger which both me black. It shouldn't be a derisive word to begin with.

The n-word comes from the Latin "nigra", which literally means means "black". "Negro" has the same root.

I found it odd at first that perinatal doctors referred to my wife's tummy as having a "linea nigra", literally "black line", which is apparently fairly common. They often disappear, as it did in her case.

My understanding is that well-meaning whites in days of yore referred to blacks at the time as "nigras" rather than "negroes" because it was considered more polite. Some jargonized that to what we now know as the n-word, intending it to be denigratory which it was and remains, especially when used by non-blacks. I don't use it, just as I don't use "oriental" except sometimes when referring to things (like Mexico's "Sierra Nevada Oriental") rather than people or their features.

"Oriental" literally means "Eastern" in Latin, more specifically "East of Rome". My understanding is that some take offense to the term because it implies a Western perspective the same way that "Far East" has been replaced in recent usage by "East Asia." Its counterpart "Occidental" means "Western".

Caucasian is a word that is used to refer to people belonging to many different parts of the world, including Asia. In fact, Caucasians include people from western, central, and southern Asia.

...

There are Caucasian people in the West of the great country of China who are Caucasian, but have lived in China for thousands of years.

"Caucasians", to my understanding, has two different but related meanings:

1. People who originated in the Caucasus Mountains region of what is now southern Russia and northern Georgia
2. An aspirational term invented in a past century to associate those of European ancestry with those ancestral Caucasians, who were considered the most physically attractive European people, against whom Imperial Russia waged a war of conquest for decades until finally forcing the Circassian genocide culminating in the 1860s. Many survivors were deported to the Ottoman Empire. Many of their women were coveted and enslaved for their perceived beauty, including a woman purchased as a slave c1427 by Cosimo de Medici: his lover Maddalena, who gave birth to an illegitimate son (Carlo) who was raised with Cosimo's legitimate children.

These peoples of the Caucasus remain among the most linguistically diverse of the world and may be the source of most latter-day European populations as well as some that migrated East as far as China, whom Marco Polo mentioned in his writings.

The Caucasus region might also be the source of what the Greeks knew as "Amazons", women who fought in battle alongside their men, especially on horseback with bows and arrows, though the Greeks no doubt exaggerated (and literally fetishized) that participation through the lens of their more patriarchal culture, which Western Europe inherited through them and their Roman successors. The ancient Greeks referred to peoples from the north and east of the Black Sea collectively as "Scythians." Perhaps some of those diverse peoples took offense.

English names for ancestral Caucasian populations and languages also include "Circassian", "Cherkess", "Abkhazian", and "Adygean". For more on the ancient culture of the Caucasus region, I highly recommend two books from Princeton University Press:

Nart Sagas: Ancient Myths and Legends of the Circassians and Abkhazians
John Colarusso, 2002

The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
Adrienne Mayor, 2014

The authors are well-known to each other, and inform each other's scholarship.

I used oblique references to these tales (and others) in my "Real Amazons, Real Magic" stories here, notably Were-Tigress and Cascade Fire.

My apologies in advance to anyone who might take offense at my use of "whites", "blacks", or similar general terms. I do not use them with intent to offend.

 

[KeithD]

Well, not Bangkok, there's a group of burned out bomb loaders in Phuket and I'm so tempted to go join my boys

Hotels are a LOT cheaper in Phuket than in Bangkok.

 

[KeithD]

"Far East" has been replaced in recent usage by "East Asia." Its counterpart "Occidental" means "Western".

Right on Far East/East Asia. I was thinking of mentioning that on this thread. Glad you did.

Similarly, I have two obsolete-language degrees that specify "foreign affairs," a term that later was changed to "international affairs" to avoid the United States/West as being seen as the center of the world.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

 

[Duleigh]

I've never heard that song sound better.
If we're Jamming this AM here's Ki&Ki I love these two, I love their music, I love the Shamisen

 

[vagrantx]

I've never heard that song sound better.
If we're Jamming this AM here's Ki&Ki I love these two, I love their music, I love the Shamisen

Lovely

If we're rocking some homeland music, check out the ແຄນ (can, khaen, khene) from Laos!

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

I've never heard that song sound better.
If we're Jamming this AM here's Ki&Ki I love these two, I love their music, I love the Shamisen

wow they can shred!

 

[Duleigh]

wow they can shred!

I wonder if you can play an American banjo with a window scraper too.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

I wonder if you can play an American banjo with a window scraper too.

Not by a long shot...

But this gal can!

 

[Duleigh]

Not by a long shot...

But this gal can!

WOW!
I wonder if she needs a roadie...

Seriously though, the Shamisen works great for those blues vamps. Could you imagine her teamed up with Muddy Waters or Johnny Lee Hooker?

 

[MillieDynamite]

I forgot about the Express. How can I forget about the Oriental Express?

I can attest that the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok is one of the world's best.

 

[Duleigh]

I forgot about the Express. How can I forget about the Oriental Express?

Go to Amazon and type in Oriental Trading Company

 

[KeithD]

I forgot about the Express. How can I forget about the Oriental Express?

Maybe because it's the Orient Express?

 

[StillStunned]

Maybe because it's the Orient Express?

Yes, "Oriental Express" sounds like the name of an Asian delivery restaurant owned by non-Asians.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yeah, my bad. My head doesn't work all that well when I have a head cold, and I do right now.

Maybe because it's the Orient Express?