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Originally Posted by debaser
Cool, when I start drawing my sense of morality from a dictionary that might come in handy. As I said, if I know the persons origin I refer to them by that, otherwise oriental is far more specific than Asian.
If I describe a person as Asian, am I refering to someone from Jordan, Russia, Korea or Indonesia? It's a useless moniker, and as such I don't use it.
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If you want to be specific in your use of "Asian," consider the following; these terms are more modern than "the Orient":
- South Asia
- East Asia
- South-East Asia
- Asia and the Pacific
- the Pacific Rim
- the Pacific Basin
Why consider these? Well, that's because aside from "the Orient" being a Eurocentric term that has fallen out of disuse because of its pejorative connotations, it also causes "Oriental" to be more vague a term than "Asian." The Orient traditionally refers to the following areas:
- Persia
- Mesopotamia
- Asia Minor
- Egypt
Come the late 19th century, it widened to include:
- China
- Japan
- Korea
- and surrounding nations
This means the Orient refers to both modern-day Asia and the Middle East. "Oriental" is more vague than saying "Asian." If you truly want to avoid getting people's post-colonial backs up, you might want to shift your views on the word. If you don't know a person's specific origin in Asia, then I'd call them "Asian"--which I'd say is most appropriate. "Oriental" is worse than useless.
As a side note, the British no longer call Americans "colonists." You know, those unusual settler folk over in the New World; kind of strange and primitive, those "colonials." This is because the United States of America is now a nation of its own. Things changed. For the same reason, we can no longer see the value in the word "Orient" as applied to people currently living in Asia. Things have changed. The word should be reserved for references to history and the exotic.