Showing posts with label political correctness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political correctness. Show all posts

Thursday, September 14, 2023

The Term ‘Oriental’ Is Outdated, But Is It Racist?

LOS ANGELES TIMES – OPINION: It is now politically incorrect to use the word “Oriental,” and the admonition has the force of law: President Obama recently signed a bill prohibiting use of the term in all federal documents. Rep. Grace Meng, the New York congresswoman who sponsored the legislation, exulted that “at long last this insulting and outdated term will be gone for good.”

As an Oriental, I am bemused. Apparently Asians are supposed to feel demeaned if someone refers to us as Orientals. But good luck finding a single Asian American who has ever had the word spat at them in anger. Most Asian Americans have had racist epithets hurled at them at one time or another: Chink, slant eye, gook, Nip, zipperhead. But Oriental isn’t in the canon.

And why should it be? Literally, it means of the Orient or of the East, as opposed to of the Occident or of the West. Last I checked, geographic origin is not a slur. If it were, it would be wrong to label people from Mississippi as Southerners.

Of course I understand that some insults have benign origins. “Jap,” for example, is simply a shortening of the word Japanese, but that one stings. As 127,000 Japanese Americans were carted off to internment camps during World War II, they were repeatedly referred to by their fellow citizens and the media as Japs. It was meant as an insult and understood as such. Clearly context is important.

The problem with “Oriental,” San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jeff Yang told NPR, is that “When you think about it, the term … feels freighted with luggage. You know, it’s a term which you can’t think of without having that sort of the smell of incense and the sound of a gong kind of in your head.” In other words it makes Asians sound exotic because it was in circulation at a time when exoticizing stereotypes were prevalent. » | Jayne Tsuchiyama | Wednesday, June 1, 2016

I stumbled upon this article yesterday after a discussion I had had with a cousin of mine about the word 'oriental'. Apparently, she had used it in discussion with a friend of hers; and her friend cautioned her about the use of the word, and asked her if she should be using it at all! I was dumbfounded. Visitors to this website will have noticed that I use this word rather frequently, because I like the word. In fact, it is a rather beautiful word. I knew that some people were a little sensitive about the word, but I took no notice, putting it down to wokeness and/or political correctness. I am neither woke nor politically correct; and nor do I ever intend to be.

For your information, when I use the word 'oriental' or Orient, I use them in their geographical sense. No more, no less. In my humble opinion, they are lovely, benign words. By the way, I was never aware that anyone should ever think they were "outdated". That never even occurred to me. I shall continue to use these words in my writing. I am not giving them up to please the politically correct brigade. FYI, I also like the words occidental and Occident. The words Orient and Occident go hand-in-hand. This nonsense of banning words that might be offensive should and must stop.

Furthermore, while I am writing about this, I am totally traditional in my use of pronouns. I use the words 'he' and 'him/his' and 'she' and 'her/hers' unapologetically. I am not going to use 'them', etc., in order to avoid their use. You bastardise the language if you want to; I am not for bastardising the language. If you come across such usage on this blog, it will be either because they are the words of others or because I have used them inadvertently. Moreover, and for total clarity, I use 'he/him/his' for persons who have 'dangly bits' and 'she/her/hers' for persons who don't. For those transitioning, I shall await to be informed of their choices. But having never met anyone who has transitioned, I doubt that it will become an issue.

I hope I have made myself crystal clear. I also hope that no one will take any offence, because no offence is intended. – Mark

Wednesday, April 05, 2017

Sorry Justin Trudeau, But Radical Islam Is a Problem


TORONTO SUN: In Justin Trudeau’s Canada, if I mention the Islamist ties of Akbardzhon Dzhalilov, the 22-year-old suspected of carrying out the subway bombing that killed 14 in St. Petersburg, Russia on Monday, am I guilty of Islamophobia?

What if I also mention that Khalid Masood, the man who mowed down scores of pedestrians, killing three, and stabbed a police officer to death outside the British Parliament last week, was a convert to Islam? Am I guilty of a crime against Canada’s new politically correct speech codes? » | Lorne Gunter | Edmonton Sun | Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Outrageous! Priest Out after Objecting to Muslim Prayer in Church


Brian Lilley explains why the story of a Reverend who lost his job for defending his faith, is a warning of what we can expect when we have leaders that refuse to stand firm on our western values.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Season's Greetings: Political Correctness Worries Raised Over Christmas, New Year


As Europe prepares to celebrate Christmas - it's also stepping up security measures. The German Chancellor has ordered a security review following Monday's attack on a Christmas market, in which 12 people were killed, and dozens injured.

Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Canadian Cop Charged after "Racist" Comments about Alcohol, First Nations


(LANGUAGE WARNING:) Gavin McInnes of TheRebel.media talks about Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar, who was disciplined for comments about the death of an Inuit artist in Ottawa.

Friday, October 07, 2016

Gad Saad’s Chat with Sam Harris


We cover political correctness, forbidden knowledge in academia, Islam (including immigration and reform), and the current US presidential election among other issues.

Saturday, December 05, 2015

Wimpering Students Need to Grow Up Or Get Out of University


THE TELEGRAPH: Political correctness was admirable. Now it has gone too far on campus. Far too far. It is time to fight back

A university should be a “safe space” – for free speech, for challenging dogmas and assumptions, for putting forward innovative ideas, for robust debate, for discovery, for intellectual courage. It should not be a safe space for preserving the timidities and assurances of pre-university childhood and adolescence.

Yet that is what university students on many American campuses now demand. They want to be warned in advance if course material contains references to subjects that could distress them. They want to be exempted from reading texts that touch on such matters as sexual abuse, divorce and suicide – which immediately puts Thomas Hardy, F Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf off the syllabus. It has even happened that professors have been driven from their jobs by students accusing them of being insufficiently “politically correct”.

On some campuses, students have set aside “safe spaces” with cuddly toys and puppy videos where those stressed by uncomfortable topics can avoid them. The atmosphere of hypersensitive inability to handle challenging ideas invites caricature: today’s American students, it seems, want mollycoddling and reassurance, not education; they want security, not intellectual and personal growth. And what happens in America is too soon copied elsewhere – including in Britain. Read on and comment » | AC Grayling, Master of New College of the Humanities in London | Friday, December 4, 2015

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Op-Ed: Paris Pays the Price of Europe's Inability to Recognize the Real Enemy


ARUTZ SHEVA: The real enemy is radical Islamism, not one Islamic group or the other.



What happened in Paris on the horrifying night of Friday November 13, 2015, is Europe's chickens coming home to roost. For decades Europe turned a blind eye to the virulent humans rights violations of despotic, radical Islamic regimes across the Middle East. Within Europe, and across Western intelligentsia, a politically correct ideology took hold. Backed by an omnipotent politically correct mainstream media-- violent, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic rhetoric and behavior by radical muslims [sic] at home and abroad was either given a free pass, or got little to no media coverage. Meanwhile, Israel was singled out for biased, hypocritical and immoral condemnation. And by ignoring what is the real threat to Western civilization and democracy, Leonardo Da Vinci's immortal words turned into a devastating reality: "he who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.”

France, Europe, and the West will be making yet another terrible miscalculation, in the aftermath of this horrendous attack, if they interpret these attacks as only emanating from the Islamic State. The issue is much broader than that, and is a clash of civilizations (as the term was coined by Prof. Samuel Huntington), between democratic modernism and theocratic medieval barbarism. The West needs to recognize and acknowledge the enemy, namely radical Islamism. Sadly this is not a fringe movement, as PC ideologues would like to believe, and enjoys widespread and popular support.



Read the whole article here » | Noam Rotem | Tuesday, November 17, 2015