>but the more valid argument i've heard about "oriental" being
>a "european" is more about world view than it is about
>language. as you know, oriental means "eastern," and has the
>connotation of europe's centrality. yes, yes, the globe is
>round...so it doesn't *really* matter...and also there's the
>concept of the "occidental" and the "western world"...BUT
>those terms are used to describe places, not people.


I have often heard the words "Westerner" and "Western" used to describe people form Europe and America, both in English and Asian languages.

Also, the concept of east-west does not require any European centrality. Modern Mercator projection world maps (with the Greenwich Line as the Prime Meridian) may make it seem that way, but in origin the concept of "east" simply refers to the direction of the rising sun, which was the prime orientation (a word which literally means "to align oneself in the direction of the rising sun) for ALL human civilisations. Han China, Gupta India, as much as Roman Europe (and of course long before then).

And I'd just like to repeat that by the same criteria, the word "Asia" IS FAR MORE EUROCENTRIC. How did a small province on the eastern Aegean coastline(number 28 on this map http://intranet.dalton.org/groups/Rome/romemap5.GIF ) become the name for an entire continent? Only makes sense if you're sitting in Athens; at least the sun rises in the same direction wherever you are on planet earth.

>bottomline, the idea of the "oriental" is a loaded, indellibly
>imperialist and white supremacist construct and has been
>outmoded as the world has become more sophitcated (scoff) in
>its understanding of differences between peoples.
>
>that "oriental is a rug, not a person" speaks to the fact that
>at a certain point in time, people of asian descent decided
>that they'd no longer accept what they saw as an inherent
>objectification that was packed in with term "oriental."
>
>divorcing personhood/humanity from thing or place was/is vital
>in combating racism and white supremacist/eurocentric
>constructs of "the other."

well, I think "Oriental" is similar to "Negro", in that there isn't anything *inherently* bad or racist about the term (at least not like chink, gook, etc.), but just that it is old-fashioned, strongly associated with more racist times. And I agree that's reason enough to get rid of it. Asian has the advantage that it wasn't commonly used in the 19th century or earlier, so it doesn't have that history.

The problem is that used accurately Asian refers to a broader category than Oriental did (at least the way Oriental was used in the last few decades) so it annoys me to see it used as an exact equivalent.

That's why I suggest using "East Asian" if you want to refer to Chinese-Koreans-Japanese as a collectivity.