Being PC: Asian vs. Oriental

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What's the more appropriate term for describing someone (whose ancestors are) from the Far East?

I just asked my Chinese wife and she said I don't know, "Wo ting bu dong". I think asian ethinicity would be correct. Some ethnic asian people I speak to insist they are English. A lot of young Chinese people born in China don't even want to be troubled by knowing the Chinese language.

I've heard the saying that people are Asian and rugs are Oriental.

Asian is way way better than Oriental, especially if you're referring to people.

The korean market here, run by koreans, selling mostly korean food and goods, is called "1st Oriental"

Both terms are idiotic.

The only term useful for labeling the group of people in question: folks with a certain racial look from China, and from nations around China (Japan, Thailand, Siberia, Korea, etc), is "East Asian". Without that "East" in front the term is useless.

The continent of Asia butts against Europe at the Ural Mountains in Russia, and at the Black Sea, and at the Aegean. It borders Africa at the Gulf of Suez. Everything east of that line to the Pacific is "Asia" . Most of Turkey, and all of Israel, Lebanon, and the entire Middle East east of Egypt, are part of "Asia", and so is most of the old soviet union, Iran, and the entire Indian subcontinent.

In the U.K. the word "Asian" usually refers to folks from the Indian Subcontinent (who should be called "South Asians" . In the US its now used as the substitute for the word "Oriental" to mean "east Asians". So you get confusion between Brits and Americans on top of the other problems.

A book I read informed me that "must Muslims are Asian and not Arab" (its true that the biggest Muslim population countries are non Arab countries of southeast Asia, but the Arabian Peninsula is part of Asia, so Arabs ARE also Asians!).

"Oriental" isn't particulary offensive. But it is old fashioned and ambiguous ( my parents generation used "oriental" to mean "Arab" or "west Asian" (like "Oriental Carpets", and "Oriental Jews"), us boomers, and younger folks in the US use "oriental" to mean "East Asian"). The term just lept from west Asia to China/Japan/Vietnam overnight, and skipped the middle part of asia, and no one knows why.

Since the caucauses are within that region, doesn't that mean that caucasians are asians?

Caucasian does have "Asian" in it. Maybe, it is a subset of Asian.

no it means of the caucasus region

"Caucasian" is another (not offensive) but confusing term. Its a linguistic legacy of a debunked centuries old scientific theory.

The actual Caucuses Mountain region of southern Russia is a tiny flyspeck in the middle of the vast swath of land occupied by whats called the "Caucasian" race.

Like the Urals, the Caucuses Mountains are part of the boundary line between Europe and Asia. So if by "Caucasian" you actually mean folks actually from the Caucasus Mountain region (Like Joseph Stalin, or George Balanchine, the two most famous guys of Georgian extraction) then you're talking about folks from right on the boundary between Europe and Asia who could be identified with either continent. But the term "Caucasian" is rarely used that way in the U.S.A..

If you mean "Caucasian" the more common way that its used on American government forms, and police blotters, to identify a particular race then that's another can of worms. "Caucasian" in that sense means White, and/or of any of the "western races of Eurasia" ( round eyed, projecting noses,etc). Its supposed to be used to mean anyone from India west to the Atlantic (including Mideast Arabs and Iranians). But in practice in the USA it usually means folks of White European descent. So "Caucasian" in that sense can mean "Not Asian, but European", or it can mean "western Asian, or European".

In the late Seventeen hundreds a certain thinker in Europe came up with a theory about how the human races appeared: that each major "race" (Black, White, Yellow) had a small central point of origin, and at some point way back in the prehistoric past each race fanned out and migrated from that central point. And for the "White" race (Asian Indians, and Middle Easterners, as well as Europeans) that point of origin was in the Caucuses Mountain region. So he dubbed that race "Caucasian". By the 20th Century the theory was still unproven, and outmoded, and largely forgotten. But the name "Caucasian" for the race stuck anyway. There is no evidence that most White Americans can trace their ancestry to the Caucasus Mountain region, but in the US they're labeled "Caucasian" anyway. Go figure.

East asian seems to be an appropriate term. I think most people find the term asian useful in that it is hard to tell the difference between nationalities. I spoke to a man in a bus station just to be sociable and asked if he was Chinese. He said no he was Korean. A man next to us laughed and said don't worry I am Chinese and can't tell the difference myself. I asked my step son about telling the different races in China and he said don't worry we've given up on it ourselves. Maybe its like me knowing Danish from Anglo-Saxon.

I had a show of portraits of Chinese and Japanese women. The gallery owner called it Oriental Women. I got an e-mail pointing out that this was incorrect.

I would say: try to find out which present-day nation the "Asian" person is from.

Nobody would get offended by calling somebody a "Korean" if the person is from Korea.

People from the "Orient" are from the "East" from the European viewpoint. From their viewpoint, it's possible that they might think that they're the "West," and we are from the "East."

How do you even tell a Russian from an Anglo Saxon?

My parents were teens during WWII when we were allied to China, and fighting Japan.

My parents told me about a poster that was distributed on the home front by the U.S. Government then which explained "how to tell a Japanese from a Chinese". It showed two Asian men with arrows pointing to supposed differences in their features. It was doubtlessly unscientific as heck. Then a New York humorist made a spoof of the poster: a fictional poster claiming to be distributed by the Imperial Japanese government to its people showing two Caucasian guys with the title "how to tell an American from a German". It had arrows pointing out differences in facial features which were ludicrous and laughable to the White American audience (but probably no more laughable than the serious poster would have been to East Asians).

Oriental is a European (specifically Portugese) word to describe things "Eastern". As such, using the word Oriental can be interpreted by some as colonialist.

Asian is geographically focussed, but given that the term includes a wide range of ethnicities from Israel all the way to Siberia, it is often further classified.

Is Korea a present-day nation?

I'd normally use "East Asian" or "Far Eastern". I know many Asian Americans find Oriental offensive (British East Asians are a very small minority and so I don't think they get many opportunities to get lumped together), and I associate unqualified "Asian" with the Indian sub-continent and people who could pass for that.