I gotcha. But, I'm still confused because in your example, it is offensive to call a black person a nigger and it is offensive to call rap music nigger music. But, in the Asian case, calling a bowl of noodles Oriental is offensive, but calling a rug Oriental is not.

i think some asians were bored a few years back and decided to confuse white folk.

i think i was just saying something offensive to get a rise, no real point behind it. thanks for calling me out though, I really am better than that.

white folk are easily confused

asian porn sounds better than oriental porn.

jus' sayin'.

only movie i've seen 3 times in theatres.

i guess that's what happened. my memory is hazy.

I have a small man crush on Kobayashi.

I just call him 'dude'

<---- Occidental.

I thought I had come to terms with this and now my Raman Noodles are Oriental flavored. Does this mean food cannot be Oriental, but flavors can be?

http://asiangang.ytmnd.com/

i'll stick with math-niggers

3 pages & i still prefer "oriental"

asias a pretty big continent. i dont see calling anyone oriental as a way to distinguish them from a pakistani or iranian or sri lankan as being derogatory.

Except it doesn't distinguish (e.g., oriental rugs are from Persia) and they find it offensive.

What I never got was how they come to find it offensive...? "The Orient" refers to the fact that we used to turn maps with East up, instead of North. So the direction of Asia was at the top of the map, and thus one oriented oneself accordingly. How does that become some sort of slur?

Umm, I thought it was more from Occidental vs. Oriental. Occidental meaning Westerner and Oriental meaning Easterner.

It's an extremely broad term and to use it as a disguishing term for SE Asia, China, Mongolia, and Japan is a bit of a problem considering it shoudln't be that hard for people to learn the differences between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, et al. Even if it presents itself to be difficult, I would think that referring to people as Asians is a bit safer than Oriental, IMO, because at least Asia is a continent and is closer to the truth than just saying that they're an "Easterner".

it's no less broad than "white" or even "european"

Well I'd say European is on par with Asian and I would also argue that Oriental is way more broad than the term European. The equivalent to Oriental would be Occidental as was mentioned by someone way earlier in the thread. Now, what line separates the Occident from the Orient I do not know. I guess it would be the Prime Meridian or whatever.

White is pretty ambiguous, I agree, but white folk have never really been oppressed based on race and I think that may affect the apathy toward whether we are called white, european, european american, irish american, italian american, blah blah blah. Of course, I am speaking from people's reactions in the US. I am sure if you went to a Georgian (the country) and called them a Russian that they'd be none-too pleased. But, they probably wouldn't be too bothered by being termed a European.

lots of white people have been opressed (jews, irish, italians, NASCAR fans)

yeah, don't forget pretty much all of eastern europe.

those aren't people

To me there's a difference between white people oppressing white people and white people oppressing other races.

Also, are Jews really "white"? Didn't they originate from the same places as the Persians and the Arabs? Furthermore, are Arabs and Persians technically white or something else? I have no freakin' clue. I am not trying to prove a point here, I am genuinely asking.

there are middle eastern jews and there are european jews (Sephardic and Ashkinaze). I'm about as lilly white as you can get and i'm jewish on every branch of my family tree for at least 6 generations.

This is always how I figured it based on definitions.