Why Do We Say "Asian American" Not "Oriental"?

we've all heard the word oriental but it's probably safe to assume that when the word pops up in conversation today it's more likely referring to an object like oriental rugs or the train line the Orient Express rather than to individual people or broader ethnic groups but outside of providing a word for the decorations in your grade on apples parlor or a setting for an Agatha Christie murder mystery the word oriental wasn't always such a rare occurrence in fact it was only in 2009 and 2016 that former Governor Paterson of New York and President Obama had the word Orientals stricken from both New York State and federal laws respectively and in the case of the removal of oriental from federal laws in 2016 the bill was passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate and since we all know how rare bipartisan support actually is it was pretty clear that this term had to go so when did this outdated identifier get changed and why well to start off we should first ask ourselves what is the origin of the word oriental and how has it been used well the word oriental has a very long history and was originally used to indicate countries or regions by direction so orient was the term for countries of the East while Occident referred to countries of the West namely Europe before later expanding to include the countries of North America an oxidant which has an even less frequent use in the modern lexicon an orient have both been in use since the 14th century but the original use of oriental wasn't limited only to countries such as China Japan and Korea but included most countries east of Europe such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt so that's how regions got names like the Middle East or the Far East because Europe was taken as the starting point and other countries were measured in comparison however orient and oriental continued to be used into the 20th and 21st century and often in ways that implied racial other ring or held connotations of negative difference but in his 1978 work Orientalism scholar and theorist Edward Saeed notes that the Orient was not just a geographic term but also a mark of the history of colonial conquest in the Middle East East Asia and northern Africa Syed writes the Orient is not only adjacent to Europe it is also the place of Erbs greatest and richest and oldest colonies the source of its civilizations and languages its cultural contestant and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other in addition the orient has helped to define Europe or the West as this contrasting image idea personality experience and Professor Erica Lee author of making Asian America history notes ax in the late 19th through the mid 20th century in the u.s. the word oriental was tied to anti-asian sentiments violence and xenophobic legislation such as the lynching of seventeen Chinese migrants in California in 1871 and the Chinese Exclusion Act which lasted from 1882 until 1943 this rise in anti Asian rhetoric starting at the tail end of the 19th century was often couched in the language of Orientalism or the Yellow Peril although the phrase is often closely associated with the u.s. Lee traces the origin of the phrase Yellow Peril to german kaiser wilhelm ii not to be confused with the kaiser roll US senators and european leaders expressed a misplaced panic that oriental nations and cultures would eliminate their Western counterparts professor Lee is quoted in an article for NBC saying the 1880s was a time when American anxieties over the economy race and our place in the world led to increased scrutiny of immigration as something harmful to the u.s. other proponents of striking the word oriental from common usage also note that it not only carries the baggage of historical harm and mistreatment but also implies that people of East Asian descent who are often generational US citizens and resident are not incorporated as full members of our society but it's important to note that not everyone is Fahim Utley against the use of oriental and her 2016 op-ed for the LA Times the term oriental is outdated but is a racist dr. Jane Sugiyama who practices oriental medicine notes that oriental is used frequently in her field of study so while she agrees that the word is out of step with current practice she also argues against the rebranding of her entire specialty and writer Cat Chow notes in her piece for NPR my oriental father on the words we used to describe ourselves her own mixed feelings towards the term on the one hand it carries the weight of historical racism and contempt for people of East Asian cultures and the other it's still used by people of Asian descent today in ways that are not intended to be derogatory so we've gotten a pretty good rundown on how the term oriental arose and how it was used as a derogatory term and when it started to get phased out but that brings us to our final question when did the term asian-american first began appearing in popular discourse well that occurred in the late 1960s and is credited to the late historian and activist ugh EOKA who worked in the field of Japanese American history and was one of the founders of the UCLA asian-american study Center in 1969 and the backdrop of other struggles around questions of identity it Chioggia divides the term to promote pan-asian american alliances the movement continued to grow throughout the 1960s and 70s adding to the collective organizing that was already occurring around civil rights black power anti-war protests women's rights and free speech to name a few protests on college campuses and the formation of pan-asian organizations like the asian-american political alliance called for solidarity among Asian migrants and asian-americans from all backgrounds to promote justice and this movement often collaborated with other political wakening z' of the same era just check out our episodes on the etymology of the word gay how Martin Luther King jr. got his own holiday it's a true story of Rosa Parks and 18 as the age of adulthood in the u.s. if you want more context on how all of this ties together in the 1960s because it's always the right time to binge-watch origin of everything so how does it all add up well in the case of legislation both state and federal the term oriental is definitely out because of its connections to xenophobia and racism but it also still remains in use in certain specific cases because culture is very messy and evolving and the terms that people use to describe their own identity are individual and unique but it's also worth pointing out here that when oriental was removed from federal laws and replaced with Asian American in 2016 it also included a replacement of the word Negro with African American Negro was also dropped from the US census in 2013 so it appears that both of these shifts are meant to indicate a hyphenated cultural understanding while limiting language that is outdated and designed to no exclusion of certain people and cultures and the phasing out of oriental in favor of Asia asian pacific-islander or asian-american depending on context also allows for more cultural specificity than using a blanket term that is meant to cover every country to the east of Europe so what do you think?