My ‘Oriental’ Father: On The Words We Use To Describe Ourselves : NPR

Further to my earlier post on the US retiring obsolete ethnic group descriptions (Minorités: des mots offensants retirés des lois américaines | États-Unis), interesting reflections on the generational shift in language from Oriental to Asian American:

Chink as a racial moniker was always meant to cut, but there was a time — my dad’s — when “Oriental” was the status quo. To some degree, these things come down to the words available to us in the first place. Between the late ’60s, when my dad immigrated here from British colonial Hong Kong, and 1990, when I was born, there was an eruption in the way Americans talked and thought about all sorts of identities. While my dad’s English vocabulary was equipped with “Oriental”, scholars and activists alike turned away from words like it and “Negro” in favor of self-appointed terms like “Asian,” “Asian-American,” “black” and “African-American.” And recently, President Obama signed a bill striking the term “Oriental” — one of many other outdated terms — from federal laws.

I came of age in a generation that benefited from these wind shifts. My dad, like many people his age, didn’t really pay them much mind. When it came to describing himself, the words he had when he came to this country were all he ended up needing. I get that he uses it as a matter of fact. He gets that I have my reasons for not using it. And when it comes to us talking to each other, that’s fine.

Source: My ‘Oriental’ Father: On The Words We Use To Describe Ourselves : Code Switch : NPR