>> About 6 years ago I began work as a Slide Curator and used the term
>> "Oriental Art" and was kindly corrected by the art historians.  "Asian" is
>> certainly the preferred term in use today.
>
>Why do we have to put up with all this cringing political correctness?
>The term 'oriental' never used to be pejorative, and I still do not
>believe that it is.  Who decided that it was unacceptable to call items
>and people from the Orient 'oriental'.  Is it going to unacceptable to
 
Nobody "decided" that it was unacceptable. Some people are offended by
"oriental" because of the use of expressions like "inscrutable oriental"
and the like. Lots more people are not offended by it or just don't care.
It is associated with stereotypes in some people's minds even though it may
not be in YOURS.
 
My suggestion is just abandon the egregious concept of "political correctness"
and go back to the ideas of, first _accuracy_, and second, _courtesy_. Asia
is at least a well defined geographic entity (albeit a very large one);
"The Orient" is not. And with respect to courtesy, if a significant number
of people find the word offensive, try asking them why they do. You might
achieve a great enough insight into their viewpoint to change your own
use of language; you might not. Either way, you haven't lost anything, and
you might learn something. Don't do something just because someone says
it's "PC"; do your own homework.
 
>refer to items from the world's smallest continent as 'Australian' (how
>about 'Microcontinental Art' - that ought to ensure no-one knows what
>we are talking about).  Have the Pacific Islands been dealt with in a
>similar manner and is that why we have collections of 'Oceanic Art' all
>the items of which were made on the land?
>
>Why is it that people feel uncomfortable with _any_ term used to
>describe cultures/people/places different to the common caucasian?  I
 
Personally, I think the word "Caucasian" is part of the system of "racial"
classification of human beings, a system which I consider to have been
entirely discredited, and I would like to see it abandoned along with its
lexical siblings "Negroid" and "Mongoloid." Outside the conceptual
framework of that aforementioned system, "Caucasian" is just plain nonsense
when applied to people other than Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, etc.
But's that just my opinion, influenced by reading Ashley Montagu.
 
>have heard the word 'Asian' used in a derogatory sense that made me
>feel decidedly squeamish - is this word soon to join the vocabularly of
>the unacceptable as well?  What will you call the collections then?
>
>Are we going to go down the route of 'Occidentally Challenged Art' or
>'Westerly Impaired Art'?
>
>Sorry that a two-line quip turned into a one-screen rant, but
>obsequious political correctness is a pet peeve.  In my tool shed there
>are both spades and shovels and I do not need people claiming that they
>should be referred to as 'soil rearrangement facilitators'.
>
 
--
"Yes, we pot no less than the destruction of the West. Just the other day a
friend and I came up with the most pernicious academic scheme to date for
toppling the West: He will kneel behind the West on all fours. I will push it
backwards over him."  -- Michael Berube              **  [log in to unmask]
..