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"Oriental" - is it derogatory?

Mr. White

Mr. White

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I'm a white guy from San Mateo. My wife is a Chinese gal from San Mateo. My dad is 65 yo from Virginia. He said oriental one night at a family dinner and my wife was very offended. My boss is an old guy and he says it all the time. I have a contractor working on my house and he said it today in reference to Asian people.

Are the barf Asians offended by term? I've never used it myself.
 
The term oriental can be applied to inanimate objects (furniture, cuisine, etc), but not people.
 
Yes, I leaned many years ago it is derogatory. Not sure why, but I know most Asian folks are offended by it.
 
hmmm.....
 

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Outdated? Sure. Offensive? Nah. My Japanese grandfather used the term regularly.
 
It's kinda referring asians as an object rather than as people and addressing them as less in society/class than the person saying it...
 
V4 said:
It's kinda referring asians as an object rather than as people and addressing them as less in society/class than the person saying it...
Click to expand...

I think you mean ornamental
 
It's typically only used by old farts, many of whom served in Vietnam or Korea and used derogatory names for the enemy.

Why can't they just say Asian? The fact that they prefer saying Oriental even though it's been eliminated from acceptable terminology for many years speaks volumes about their intentions.
 
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It's not inherently offensive, but it became so over time. Americans used it for a long time to describe anything/anyone from the east, and as such it was a gross generalization, and also an exoticization. Someone who is Chinese has a distinct identity from someone who is Japanese, or Korean.

Furthermore, it falls into the class of words that are used to describe things that are "not us."

It's like "colored." We're white, they're colored. Well, in fact, I've rarely seen anyone who is white.
 
It's like going to Safeway and looking at all the instant ramen...

There's chicken , beef, shrimp, pork flavor but wtf is oriental flavor..?

Someone lick my nutsack and tell me how I taste like...
 
Orient Express picking up steam ...

For Europeans, it invokes romantic connotation related to the Orient.
 
Considering the words my 90 year old step father uses. Oriental would be an improvement.
 
sandyxb said:
Orient Express picking up steam ...

For Europeans, it invokes romantic connotation related to the Orient.
Click to expand...
Oh, fancy you should bring that up. AFAIK the Orient express ended in Istanbul , ... Not in China you know!

What this means is that the European word Orient is not precisely the same as one used by 'old American farts ' as someone said above.

I personally have never heard that word used here in America. I guess it depends..
 
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