Why aren’t we allowed to use the word “Oriental” any longer?

Michael Deacon, writing in  today’s Telgraph, recalls singer Damon Albarn  telling Loaded magazine back in 1994 that he didn’t really fancy Oriental women. Deacon doubted whether Albarn would get away with that today – admitting that you are sexually attracted to certain races could be interpreted as racism (well, the way you blow your nose could be taken as racism by some people), and the use of the term “Oriental” might now be seen as pejorative.

Deacon’s right on both counts. But why?

Well, at the risk of being prosecuted for hate crime, I’m with Damon on the sexual attraction front: I don’t tend to fancy oriental women, no matter how beautiful. Given that our sexual preferences are, I imagine, almost entirely a matter of chemistry, and have absolutely nothing to do with rationality or moral choice, how could they be seen as racist? One doesn’t make a conscious decision to go “Ding Dong!” (never out loud, I hasten to add) - or not - when encountering women from a certain racial group. It’s just that, after a while, you realise that you generally find, say, Afro-Caribbeans rather more attractive than, for instance, Indians - or, indeed, vice-versa.  

It does not make you a bad person!

As for the term “Oriental” , I was discussing its lack of currency with dinner guests just the other night. Deacon’s right – whenever I use it, I feel ever so slightly naughty. But this is strange, because, after all, it just means “East” in Latin (strictly, it means “rising”, and the Sun, so they tell me,  rises in the East), so it’s hard to see how it could be interpreted as abusive in any way. Mind you, as we live in a world where a US college professor had to apologise to black students for using the word “niggardly”, one evidently no longer requires any definable reason for feeling outraged. And the same baneful principle is at work in this case - apparently various Oriental-American pressure groups decided they didn’t like the term, so American liberals (like the mindless, spineless, weak-kneed suckers for ersatz victimhood they are) substituted the term “Asian” as an acceptable alternative.

And now, inevitably, because British liberals don’t like to be left behind when it comes to behaving like craven fools, we appear to have fallen into line - and suddenly, we find ourselves using a term which is quite meaningless over here.

“Oriental”, very, very roughly, means “Yellow” – i.e. having skin which is of a slightly yellowish hue (Japanese, Chinese, Koreans etc.). This is dead useful, as it means we can employ “Asian” to refer to Indians and Pakistanis, whose skin isn’t even vaguely yellow. Furthermore, this leaves “South-East Asian” free for people from the Far East whose pigmentation is more light-brown than yellow – Burmese, Thai etc.

Half of all immigrants to the UK are Asian - whereas less than 5% could be classified as Oriental. What is the point of using “Asian” to cover both groups? What, exactly, do the Chinese and the Pakistanis have in common, physically or culturally? Besides, given the notorious racism of both the Japanese and the Chinese, might they not feel offended at being lumped in with other races as all-purpose “Asians”? Aren’t they, in a sense, victims too (the answer, if you’re a liberal, is yes - anyone who isn’t white is, by definition, a victim.)

Finally, (cue gong being struck) “Oriental” has wonderful connotations - mysterious, romantic, exotic, spicy, slightly dangerous. If my skin was yellow(ish), I’d demand to be referred to as an “Oriental”.

Or am I being crass?