inappropriate PCness

[low_delta]

So you know that Asian people don't like to be called Oriental, right? "Asian" is the accepted term. Anyway, I heard a guy at work say, "... that Chinese girl - oops, I mean Asian. Gotta be PC." Wha?

I assume this is a guy who resents political correctness because he's constantly told he's being rude... because he's generally clueless and is therefore just constantly rude.

Then there's the whole holiday greetings thing, where you never know which holiday a person celebrates, so you try to be accomodating. I saw someone on Facebook wish "Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all my friends!" But Hanukkah had been over for almost a week.

Comments

[ravengirl.livejournal.com]

LOL! Oy.

"Oriental" refers to objects, not people, but if someone is Chinese, well, then...I think your co-worker was over-thinking it, got confused and wanted to cover his ass. ...Or he's dumb. *snort*

I say "happy holidays" and if you celebrate Xmas and say, "happy Xmas", I am a-okay with that. If I *know* that someone celebrates something in particular, then I can send tailor-made wishes.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I've heard Asians explaining why they don't want to be called that, and no arguments ever made sense to me. Your explanation makes sense. But I've never heard that. The other thing that makes sense to me is because they don't want to be called that. But nobody's every told me that either.

You're probably right about overthinking/confusion. See my repsonse to Shrijani.

I agree about the wishes, but this was like saying Merry Christmas on the 30th. Only worse, since it shows you're not paying attention to the group you're trying show you're paying attention to.

[banana.livejournal.com]

I'm occidental.

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

Maybe he was fake worried that he had called her Chinese because all he can really tell from her appearance and name is that she's east Asian, but he calls all east Asian people Chinese, which is also lame and racist/clueless/both.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I got the impression that all he knew was that the accepted term was "Asian," but you could be right that he suddenly realized he didn't know for sure that she was Chinese. And tried to cover up his possible error by blaming it on PCness. He still sounded like a doofus.

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

Doofus is the perfect word.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

to be fair it can be hard to keep track of jewish holidays ;)

[marswalker.livejournal.com]

Shalom!

[banana.livejournal.com]

In the UK, "asian" is used for people form India/Pakistan/Bangladesh. There is no word that covers Chinese/Japanese/etc. Neither usage makes sense. Asia icludes both those areas and loads of others.

But in general, it's just polite to call people what they'd like to be called.