Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 10:44:58 -0500 From: tom reingold <tlr244nopsamnline.net> Subject: Re: Saab or GM?
On 1/1/2003 9:43 AM:Paul Halliday wrote > First things first. May I make my most sincere apologies for using a term > that has been seen as offensive. I innocently used it as an abbreviation and > it was not meant to cause offence. Now that I am aware of the international > use of this term, I will not be using it again. Tom, I stand corrected and I > do now carry the responsibility that you mention. > > Here in the UK, we are not as exposed to oriental peoples as much as, say, > the US or Australia and we do have a number of far more offensive terms for > these people, hence I did not think the term I used was offensive. It is not > generally a term of abuse here in the UK, but a generic term for any people > of oriental racial stock. Fair enough! > I was seeking a clarification as to whether we were talking about Japanese > cars specifically, or more broadly, oriental cars. You may also notice that > I have not used the term Asian. We use that term to refer to Indian > sub-continent people here in the UK and we're probably as careful about how > we refer to these people as the US is of oriental people. > > A few years ago, I was visiting some friends who had a friend from Chicago > staying with them. He was very confused, after declaring a love for Asian > cuisine, when we took him for an Indian meal :) Misunderstandings can happen > very easily when certain terms have different meanings internationally. In as much as it makes sense to lump entire sections of cars by country of origin -- and I think it's a limited viewpoint -- no, at least in the US, people do not toss Japanese and Korean cars in the same heap. Not even close. People here buy Korean cars to save money and for few other reasons. They are not seen as prestigious, and they have no reputation for other good attributes other than low price. On the other hand, Japanese cars are very well regarded here, and their sales have been stealing market share from other companies since the 70's if I recall correctly. As for general terms about people, we didn't use the word "Asian" as a broad term until about ten years ago. We used Oriental for people who "look like" Chinese, i.e. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. We used Indian for Indian. Nowadays, it seems politically correct to say Asian, but if I were Asian, I wouldn't be happy about that new class that lumps a huge diversity into one. My understanding is that many Asian Americans don't find it a clever or useful term, but neither is there a ton of people who are downright offended by it. Tom -- Tom Reingold Noo Joizy
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