Conscious language is more prominent than ever and even with the best intentions, we may come across as offensive and insensitive. In an ever learning culture, I’d like to argue that Asian and Asian-American racism has long been ignored and this extends to Central, Southern, South East, Western Asia, and even Polynesia. The reliance to refer to such a broad region as an “other place” simply beyond Europe is a long standing Eurocentric trope that erases cultures and strips humanity away from our countries to reduce us to foreign aesthetics and unintelligible cultures.
To “orient” derives from the Latin word oriens, meaning “east” and this very understandably crept to refer to even further east over time. Thus, we see orientalism rise with the simultaneous intrigue and fetishization of such other cultures and disgust at their differing ways from the Western European norm. We see trade of foreign goods, sexualization of these “other” women, and a misunderstanding of cultural differences, allowing for a very general use of “oriental” as a blanket term to be a convenient getaway from recognizing and acknowledging all the different cultures. Oriental and tribal patterns, exotic items? Sure, but keep in mind the upbringing of the language that developed these terms and their connotative associations. It’s no secret that European colonialism and imperialism across the rest of the world thought of other cultures as primitive and “exotic,” and we need to get rid of this connotation because of lingering distance created by cultural differences.
Of course, there is a long process of educating yourself and unlearning, but it’s important to recognize outdated and frankly historically derogatory terminology that still exists today. If we’re given the region, country, or specific culture of what we would be referring to as “oriental” or “exotic,” we should be calling it that specific identity as to not further erase culture. After all, a lot has been lost from imperialism and more currently Westernization in the guise of “globalization.” A separate but equally important issue is the adoption of the same “oriental” aesthetics for mass consumption by Western white people, creators, and companies and the normalization of cultural appropriation and theft.
We are beyond home decoration Buddhas, Instagrammable lanterns and lights, pretty patterns and costumes. The recognition and reclamation for our culture can start with the loss of generalization of foreignity by others and adopting better language to refer to what would be “foreign, exotic, oriental, etc.”