It seems to me I heard somewhere that Kevin Wayne Williams wrote in
article <10k4gkj5uc5rv6b@news.supernews.com>:

I didn't get the original of N&J's post, apparently.

>necoandjeff wrote:

>> The reason why certain words come to conjure up
>> certain images is sometimes difficult to trace. But the negative image that
>> is conjured up in the minds of many out here (and I don't think this is
>> confined to California by any means) when someone uses the word "Oriental"
>> is unmistakable. What I want to know is what someone gains from continuing
>> to use a word that some people may consider offensive?

>Freedom of choice? There does come a point where you start to say 
>"enough changing my language every day to suit the hysteria of choice." 
>I don't say Oriental, but not because I think is is offensive: I just 
>have lived my adult life in the southwest, where "Asian" is the term of 
>choice. If someone decides tomorrow that "Asian" has a bad history 
>because it merges multiple cultures together and encourages us to think 
>of Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and China as one homogenous group, proposing 
>some new alternative word in its place, my answer will be "screw that. I 
>have called them Asian my entire life, never meant any harm by it, and I 
>will continue to do so."

>Some words have a pretty strong history. There may be people that used 
>chink, jap, gook, slant, and the like in an purely innocent fashion, but 
>the number was insignificantly small (with the apparent exception of the 
>UK, where "jap" seems to be considered a harmless abbreviation). I think 
>the argument against them is strong. The argument against "Oriental" 
>seems to be more a case of fashion, like the on-again/off-again 
>correctness of "black" vs. "African-American." I can't even picture 
>someone using "Oriental" as a hateful slur: there are too many 
>one-syllable choices for the hateful to use.
 
I always react automatically to the "Oriental" discussions, since the
late Edward Said, in proposing that it was a bad thing, was writing
about the Near East ("Oriental scholars" were those 19th/20th  century
dudes who were digging up Egypt and Troy), and IMO a handful of folks
tried to appropriate it to the Far East as well.  Within my lifetime I
continue to hear a fair number of ethnic Asians calling themselves, each
other, and their enterprises "Oriental" without either regret or
recrimination, right here in little old California.

As with other hinky words, I won't force "Oriental" on someone I know
resents/resists it, but in and of itself I don't have qualms or
delusions about it.
-- 
Don
Old age is when you start saying "I wish I knew now what I knew then."