Politically Incorrect Explanations and Racial Realities (Not Steroetypes)
Dean
Although I long ago gave up any serious objections to this, it has long bugged me that we now use the word "asian" to describe people who we used to call "oriental." Not only because I've never once in my life used the term "oriental" in a racist way, but because "asian" is even more meaningless than "oriental."
"Asian" could literally describe almost anyone from Asia, which happens to be the largest land-mass in the world. It includes India, Pakistan, Siberia, Russia, Mongolia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and more. Sixty percent of the world population is "Asian", and these include everyone from pale pasty blue-eyed people to dark mahogony-skinned people, and every point in between--including very white people with thick lips and curly hair, and black people with thin lips and sharp noses and straight hair.
Yet here in America, we use the word "Asian" to describe one particular type of person: someone with medium-tan and slightly yellowish skin, straight dark brown or black hair, black or brown eyes, and eyelids that are thicker-than-average and have an extra fold in them, giving them a slighly "slanted" cast.
In other words, "asian" now means "oriental" to most Americans, and the only difference is that if you say "oriental" they think you're a racist.
I only mention all of this because I recently read this interesting post by a friend who lives in Tokyo about the acceptance of public drunkenness in Japan, and I am convinced that most Americans who read it will have a hard time understanding what he's talking about. Not because he's talking about people who are drunk in public, but because he keeps quoting news stories about "red-faced" people, or people whose faces turned "bright red."
What? What's he talking about?
Here's something that 30 years ago anyone could have told you, but which nowadays would scandalize the neighbors or your average college professor: "Oriental" people (i.e. those thick-eyelid, yellowish-skin people who hail from places like Korea, China, and Japan) have a common racial characteristic you probably never heard of: when they drink alcohol, even in fairly moderate amounts, their faces tend to flush excessively. They tend to turn red, almost like a badly sunburned white person.
Ever had a few too many and felt all hot, and like you needed to fan your face? Yeah, that's what's happening. Only with "asians" (what we used to call "orientals" before suddenly that was declared "racist") that flush reaction tends to be more dramatic and immediate.
There is--or should be--nothing particularly embarassing about this. It's maybe worth a joke or two, nothing more. It's like the fact that some black men have sensitive facial skin and have a hard time shaving their beards, or the fact that white people sometimes get a "redneck tan" (driver's side arm brown, inside-arm white). It's just something that happens. It's like getting worked up because someone says, "girls have bumply chests" or "boys have funny voices when they're teenagers." It's just not--or should not--be a big deal. Yet somewhow it is. I have just revealed to you a big bad "racist stereotype": Japanese (and also, as it happens, Koreans, Chinese, and other people from that region) tend to turn bright red when they've had a few too many alcoholic beverages.
Now that I've told you that, you can read this report from Sean Kinsell, and suddenly it makes sense. Remarkable, no?
Since I'm writing about this, here's one of my other favorite racial taboos, something that a lot of people in America are still hung up about, especially white people over the age of 40. Indeed, some of them are so hung up about it, they will deny this story and tell you I'm lying--but they're full of it.
Back when I was growing up in the '70s as a white kid, most white adults knew that there was something called a "black smell." That's right, black people tended to "smell funny," and none of us knew what it was. Some of us even thought it was racist to notice it--like, if we smelled this smell, it must mean there was something wrong with us. Weirdest of all, with some black people you could say, "I never smell that." So what did it mean? Did they shower more often? Or... what? They just didn't have it on them. What the hell was it?
Were we all racists, and imagining something awful about black people and their body odors? That must be it right?
Nope. Back then, a lot of black people used hair treatments to straighten or relax their hair. The best-known product for which was known as "Jheri-Curl." And most such hair-relaxers had a slight odor sort of like lye soap. It could get into your clothes and furniture if you were careless and used it too much without cleaning up thoroughly afterward.
And that's all "the black smell" is or ever was. Oh and by the way, the hair treatments have evolved and these days don't have quite that pungeant odor most of the time.
By the way, sometimes back then some black political activists would say that black people who used hair-relaxers were "trying to be white," and were traitors to the race. Which is also just silly: look at all the white women today who use curling irons to make their hair curly, or collegen injections to make their lips bigger: are they "trying to be black?" Or just trying to prettify themselves and look different?
Oriental comes from orient, which means the point of origin. The 'orient' is the origin of the sun, or the east, that is where the term comes from.
Funny that this would be considered an insult, considering Japan is called 'the land of the rising sun.'
'Beijing' means northern capital, 'Nanjing' means southern capital, Xi-an means western peace but was called the western capital at one time, and in Mandarin the eastern capital is 'Dongjing' - otherwise known as Tokyo.
What of Americans who are of Egyptian heredity? We call them Egyptians but are they not "African Americans" too? How about Americans from other northern Africa countries?
From there, ironically enough, "Oriental" became seen as a term of judgment and inferiority. Why ironically? Because Said actually used the term "Orientalism" to describe any Western studies of other cultures, and made the bulk of his case in regards to his own culture, the Middle East. "The Orient" as it's commonly known wasn't the focus at all. Yet "Oriental" as it's commonly used became anathema.
Personally, I find Said's thesis to be purest bunk, for two reasons. First, if you're looking for objectivity, there are two groups you simply can't trust: outsiders, and insiders. In other words, no one is truly objective. (Exhibit A: Edward Said.) Just as outsiders may not understand the details of a culture, insiders may not appreciate details of their culture that are only really obvious in contrast with other cultures.
And second, this is the same phony reasoning that leads people to believe that whites can't understand black concerns, men can't understand women's concerns, and so on. (And yet never, ever, ever will you hear in polite society that blacks can't understand white concerns, or women can't understand men's concerns. Quite the opposite: the group perceived as the "victim" group is often thought to have special insights into the "victimizer" group, and can read into their words things they never actually said.) Taken to the logical extreme, this "reasoning" can only lead to an unhealthy segregation. (Taken to a truly extreme position: I've heard women argue that only female doctors can understand women's health issues; so by that sort of "reasoning", only heart attack victims should be cardiologists, only cancer victims should be oncologists, and only children should be pediatricians.) This "reasoning" ignores a little human capacity called empathy: the ability for one person to learn another person's condition to the point of understanding it and even seeing the world from that position. And while it's true that not everyone has much capacity for empathy, it's undeniably true that some people have a boundless capacity for empathy. You can't write off a whole class of people (such as cultural scholars) based on the actions of a few. That would be kinda prejudiced, wouldn't it?
And besides: if Western scholars can't understand other cultures, then why should the Edward Saids of other cultures bother selling their books to us? It's not like we'll ever understand them, no matter what they write, right?
In practice, I'm pretty sure that any term for any nonwhite racial group will become officially racist at such time as it gains common currency among Republicans.
It's quite long, but very interesting.
It's an article of faith amongst the international left that the political right no matter country is racist and that USA is a racist country. Add together those two and the American political right is double racist. Any non-white person on the am-right is thus a traitor. Reference Harry Belafonte labeling of Colin Powell as Bush's “house Negro”.
"In practice, I'm pretty sure that any term for any nonwhite racial group will become officially racist at such time as it gains common currency among Republicans."
Quite true. Yet another reason why I'm glad President Bush, a Republican, is still in the White House, and that the Republicans predominate within the House and the Senate. And I say: Clarence Thomas for Chief Justice, after Rehnquist.
I have had it with Political Correctness. I have had it with professional grievance-mongers and guilt-manipulators, subversive rats infesting our institutions, out to destroy America and Western civilization from within, Edward Said chief among them. Edward Said is my enemy.
I have decided that "racist" in any serious sense, in its historic meaning, today refers only to the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and others of that ilk. Racists are those who believe in the superiority/inferiority of certain "races" (not nations)* and advocate policies based on that belief. Racists once predominated in the past, in the American South under slavery and then segregation, in South Africa under apartheid, in Prussia's Third Reich under Hitler. But, today in America, they are a "fringe" element. They have no political influence. They are justly despised and ostracised.
*"Racism is the habit of looking for one's countrymen in other people's countries."
-G. K. Chesterton
In other words, e.g., a patriotic German is proud of Goethe and Schiller. A German racist, by contrast, goes out to prove that, e.g., Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Jeanne d'Arc were really Germans.
Today, however, if some Communist calls me a "racist", I no longer care. It's the same as with "fascist", which today merely means an active, effective anti-Communist. "Sexist", "chauvinist", "imperialist warmonger", "oppressor", "exploiter", "McCarthyite", "Birchite", etc., etc.... I am a Politically Incorrect reactionary elitist -- proudly.
I often call East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.) "Orientals". I like the old-fashioned sound of it. We Europeans are therefore "Occidentals". I like that term as well. The Orient and the Occident, and interesting dualism. The Land of the Rising Sun vs. the Evening Lands (Des Abendlandes).
It is becoming Politically Incorrect to speak of "the Near East" or "Middle East" and "the Far East" in relation to "the West". Another term that was becoming Politically Incorrect even back when I was a boy was "Asiatic". Also becoming Politically Incorrect back then was "Muhammadan", "Mohammedan", "Mahometan". (And yet we still call Mazdaists "Zoroastrians".) In the days of the Crusades, we called Muhammad/Mohammed/Mahomet "Mahound" or "the Accursed Mahound". (He denied the Holy Trinity and condemned Catholics for making images of the Christ and of the Blessed Virgin.)
To avoid confusing Indian Indians with American Indians, a.k.a., Native Americans, I often call them "Hindus" or (old-fashioned spelling) "Hindoos". I often like old-fashioned spellings, e.g., "Stephen" or "Stephan" instead of "Steven". I have sometimes seen "Esquimaux".
I think my favorite of these is "Negro", which was in use when I was a boy (at that time, in opposition to "colored", or the obscene "nigger"). I love "Negro", the look and sound of it. It is old-fashioned, and is redolent of a certain dignity, a certain nobility. I love the kind of image it calls up in my mind. Holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma. Communism vs. the Negro. I also love "Negress" as a feminine form of Negro. I also love "Jewess" for a daughter of Israel.
"Negro" and "white" does indeed "privilege" (as they say today) the more nocturnal. ("White", by contrast, sounds ghostly.) "Black" and "white" ("ebony" and "ivory"?) is simpler and more symmetrical. Reminds me of chess. Perhaps "chocolate" and "vanilla". Simpler also would be to use continent names, "Asian" or "East Asian", "African", "European", and I sometimes do that also. But, more often these days, I continue to use "Negro". The style.
As for any distinctive smell, however, I don't recall any. I think I have a somewhat deficient sense of smell. The Negro does, I notice, have a distinctive type of voice, and one I generally like. The Negro man's voice is often superlatively manly, and I increasingly find the Negro woman's voice to be sexy.
Interesting about it all....
And, if someday I feel wicked and want to get the politically correct people all tied up, I will start a campaign to reclaim the term 'American Indian' for those of us it actually applies to, as opposed to the people sometimes called 'Native Americans' because they got here sooner than some other people did.
In general, I think all these terms are either innocuous or racist. In other words, any of them is just as racist as any other - but that could mean not racist at all. You can put in as much malice into 'Asian' as you can into 'oriental' and it can range from none to a lot. Using politically correct terms does not prevent you from being a racist.
I do agree there are words that have been used as insults for so long and are so loaded with emotional history that using them to refer to someone cannot be anything but insulting. But the reason the politically correct terminology changes all the time is because none of the new words are really different from the old ones, they're just new. The reason Newspeak worked for Orwell's Big Brother was because they actually eliminated words, not just replaced them with better-sounding ones. So long as the concept in question is 'those people' there's always going to be the potential for prejudice no matter how pretty the word being used is.
In the US, by contrast, "Asian" means east and southeast Asian — Chinese, Japanese, Korean mostly, since those are our big Asian immigrant populations. If you described an Indian or Pakistani immigrant as an "Asian" you'd cause a lot of confusion, just as you would calling a Japanese immigrant "Asian" in Britain.
The really weird thing to my mind is that the bulk of Asia — Russia and the various "stans" — doesn't get called "Asian" by anyone. I have never heard any Russian immigrant to the US called an "Asian-American." (Indeed, I've heard "Asian" used in contradistinction to "Caucasian," by people who presumably don't know where the Caucasus is.)
A far more salient 3-fold typology for classifying the human race is that created by William Sheldon in the 1920s: "ectomorphs" (thin people), "mesomorphs" (muscular people), "endomorphs" (fat people). I very often use that typology.
"In general, I think all these terms are either innocuous or racist. In other words, any of them is just as racist as any other - but that could mean not racist at all. You can put in as much malice into 'Asian' as you can into 'oriental' and it can range from none to a lot. Using politically correct terms does not prevent you from being a racist."
Quite true. My favorite writer, G. K. Chesterton, quite often casually threw out the word "nigger" without any intention of malice or contempt at all. From my early 21st century perspective, that word (which, to me, is an expletive) always jumps out at me exactly as if he had casually used "fuck" or "shit" in an essay. De Sade peppered his prose with those latter words all the time, but he was a very different kind of writer from Chesterton.
One of the finest comments I ever saw was in Eric Scheie's Classical Values. It began with "Personally, I find fags disgusting....", and then he proceeded to defend the Constitutional rights and liberties of homosexual men and women. My kind of man. By contrast, one of the most despicable things I ever read was some judge in Alabama saying "Gays and Lesbians should be put in some kind of mental institution...."
By the way, yesterday, Eric Scheie quoted a satire by historian Edward Luttwak on shoelaces as a symbol of Western imperialism. The style of that!
Regarding the term "Mongol," one might think that the people from Mongolia would have something to say about that too.
An interesting thing to consider sometimes is that the terms "hispanic" and "latino" weren't common at all for a long time--if they had been in common usage or formally recognized 50 years sooner, we almost certainly would lump Italians into that group. Instead, they're now considered "white."
As for the "turning red gene", my Chinese wife doesn't have it and can seriously drink if she wants to, while her sister does have it and will turn beet-red immediately upon touching liquor.
"A lot of asians got upset with the term 'oriental', saying 'an oriental is furniture, not people', as if it were some huge insult."
Are you talking about Asians or Asian-Americans? I've never met a native of an Asian country who objected to being called an Asian, though I normally use the designations "East/Southeast/South Asian" as Laura described above.
I was a freshman the year my college changed its Department of "Oriental Studies" to the PC mouthful "Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies." The politically-active Asian-Americans cared very much about this; the Asians who were there as foreign students found it very bewildering.
"Regarding the term "Mongol," one might think that the people from Mongolia would have something to say about that too."
I was thinking in terms of that the Chinese considered them barbarians. I don't know whether or not the Chinese considered the Japanese barbarians before they attacked Manchuria. Speaking of barbarians attacking China, perhaps the Kaiser owed the Huns an apology when he compared the (Prussianized) Germans to them.
Dean wrote:
"An interesting thing to consider sometimes is that the terms "hispanic" and "latino" weren't common at all for a long time--if they had been in common usage or formally recognized 50 years sooner, we almost certainly would lump Italians into that group. Instead, they're now considered "white.""
Back when I was a boy, we just called Mexicans "Mexicans". There were a lot of them in the town (Independence, Oregon) neighboring ours. Then, for a while in the late 1960s, "Chicano" became the fashionable term among liberals, whose hero at that time was Cesar Chavez, who was organizing poor agricultural workers. You may or may not remember the boycott of table grapes that year.
You are quite right about Italians. They were not really considered "white". Italians, Spanish, French, were all considered "Latins", quite alien to "Anglo-Saxon" Protestants. Irish were not considered quite "white" either. They were "Celts", as opposed to the supposedly superior "Teutons". After 1914, the "Teutonic (or Germanic) race" fell somewhat out of fashion among Englishmen, for obvious reasons, and it became the "Nordic race".
There was also the "Aryan race", popularized by Houston Stewart Chamberlain and then by Hitler, as opposed to the "Semitic race", i.e., the Jews. We still often hear "Aryan" talked about as synonymous with blonde, blue-eyed Northern Europeans. Which is absolute nonsense, as "Aryan" referred originally to the tribes, the Aryas ("noble ones"), who conquered Persia and India around 1500 B.C., and then later came to refer to all speakers of Indo-European languages. The name "Iran" means "Aryan", as also does "Erin" (Ireland). I know a lady from Iran (Persia), she is very dark-haired and dark-eyed, and is every bit as "Aryan" as any Scandinavian.
I find all these groupings useful at different times and in different contexts. Genetically-related populations do have certain common characteristics - that's biology, not racism. Racism is when you think that certain people fall outside of this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."
Very good. I remember when Dean posted something about "the Levant".
Racism is a very modern, "scientific", "progressive", phenomenon. Before the 19th century, no European would have dreamed of calling himself an "Aryan" or an "Indo-European". He was simply a European or a Christian ("Christendom", another old-fashioned word for the West). He had nothing in common with Hindus save that they, too, even exotic as they were, also had souls needing to be saved. An Englishman was an Englishman and not an "Anglo-Saxon", and an Irishman was an Irishman and not a "Celt". The French were French, and the Germans were Germans and not Prussians, therefore not "pan-Germans". Lorraine was French, and Jeanne d'Arc was French and not German, nor were Shakespeare, nor Michelangelo, nor Jesus Christ yet Germans. The Germans had Goethe and had no use for Goebbels. The Pole was a Pole, and the Russian was a Russian and not a "pan-Slav", much less a Bolshevik.
Thsnk God there can never be an "American race"! God bless America and keep our nation free.
"Racism is when you think that certain people fall outside of this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...""
Very true. It is another progressivist fallacy popular among liberals (and "liberals") that Jefferson started this out including only white men but then, with "progress", it broadened out to include women and black men. Falso. Jefferson and the rest of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, and had men in their position for millennia, but they were uneasy about it precisely because it conflicted with their doctrine of the inalienable rights of all men (a doctrine which had its roots in the Catholic theology of "natural law"). George Washington freed all his slaves upon his death. Hamilton also freed his slaves. In England, conservative Edmund Burke opposed slavery, as did the reactionary old Tory Samuel Johnson. The anti-slavery movement in England was spearheaded by Christians like William Wilberforce. The anti-slavery movement in America in the 19th century was also deeply Christian.
It was with modern, "scientific", "progressive", racialist thinking in the 19th century that Southerners like Calhoun began to justify slavery as "a positive good" on the theory that the black man was by nature unfit for freedom and predestined to be a slave. They explicitly repudiated the Declaration of Independence as "un-scientific". Lincoln, by contrast, was a reactionary who held fast to the Declaration of Independence.