They lost me when “oriental” became “asian” in the US. Why “oriental” is no longer PC escapes me, but formerly, in the good old days, a Japanese was an “oriental”, and an Arab was a “middle easterner”. Now they’re all “asians”, even though they have nothing in common that I know of.
“They lost me when “oriental” became “asian” in the US. Why “oriental” is no longer PC escapes me, but formerly, in the good old days, a Japanese was an “oriental”, and an Arab was a “middle easterner”.”
Maybe that is why American posters see the term used (albeit with a different connotation) in UK media and assume it to be a similar situation.
Whereas I have never heard anyone in the UK view ‘oriental’ as a taboo word, and Indians and Pakistanis were described as ‘asian’, long before we had ever heard of political correctness.