What's in a name?
Names and labels are all-important to the PC powers-that-be.
In my lifetime (and probably in most of yours, even if you are of the younger generations) names for various ethnic groups have changed, in some instances, more than once in living memory.
When I was a young child, the name 'colored' was the desirable label for black people; it was the name they apparently preferred to be called. I was taught that it was the polite label. Politeness was all we had back then; political correctness as we know it today did not exist to 'guide' us and shape our language and thoughts.
Later on, the term 'Negro' was preferred, and those who have seen speeches by MLK himself will notice that he used that term, though it is now considered taboo. Later on, the term 'Afro-American' enjoyed a brief vogue, but was later supplanted by the more prestigious-sounding, multisyllabic 'African-American', which at the moment bears the PC seal of approval.
For some bizarre reason, the noun 'Jew' is considered rather rude, although the adjective 'Jewish' is appropriate. 'Jewish person' or 'Jewish people' are terms that are deemed preferable to the simple plural 'Jews.' Why? I don't know.
But the term that causes the most confusion for Americans, for some reason, is the British usage of ''Asian'' as a descriptor for South Asians, that is, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, or perhaps Hindus. Just read any discussion of ethnic issues in the UK from the British media, and you will see American commenters getting very irate because the UK media refer to generic 'Asians' rather than saying Pakistani Moslems or whatever more specific label.
Americans seem to have a fixed notion that the term 'Asians' is strictly limited to Chinese, Japanese, and perhaps Koreans, that is, Northeast Asians. Somehow it angers them that the term is applied differently on the other side of the Atlantic. Why?
Many Americans insist that the term 'Asian' is a way of hiding the Moslem religion of said 'Asians', and indeed, in some cases the people in question are Moslems. (Incidentally, the name 'Moslem' is now obsolete, since the Black Muslims declared it to be incorrect. That itself was one of the earlier coups of political correctness, but is now forgotten, or never realized, by most Americans.)
But surely not all those named 'Asians' in the British media are Moslems; is the term not applied to Hindus, Sikhs, or other Asians?
Those of you who are a little older, or who perhaps read old literature or history books will know that the word 'Oriental' was once widely used in our country and in other English-speaking countries to describe mostly East Asians, but it was in fact applied to just about any Asian, including West Asians, now known as 'Middle Easterners.' However, the term 'Oriental' suffered the same fate as the word 'Moslem' or 'Mohammedan', being declared 'bigoted' or 'a slur', and being replaced by a new term chosen by the group so labeled.
What was 'bigoted' about the term 'Oriental'? A Japanese-American professor of mine in college informed all of us round-eyed students that the word was forbidden in his class, and neither were we to repeat the term 'Jap', as it was a 'racial slur', nor were we to abbreviate Japanese or Japan in our class notes as 'Jap', because that was racist.
I've always wondered: why is it racist or hateful to abbreviate a name? Isn't the term 'Brit' analogous? It's simply a one-syllable abbreviation of the word 'Briton' or British. Actually when I was young I remember that the word was frowned upon by some British people, since it seemed disparaging, and indeed, it is often employed by those who dislike British or English people as a disrespectful term, as in the slogan ''Brits Out'', which one saw on walls and button badges when I was in Ireland.
Many of our cousins in the Anglosphere refer to us Americans as 'Yanks', which is not acceptable to Southrons. 'Yanks' or Yankees are historically the enemy. But we can't always assume that others know this.
But why is the term 'Oriental' (as opposed to 'Occidental') now taboo? It can, I think, still be used in a directional sense but even then it is seldom heard. There used to be an airline called 'Northwest Orient Airlines'; I don't think it exists anymore. Or has it been renamed to something more PC?
There used to be a phrase used in the bad old days, ''the inscrutable Oriental', referring to the enigmatic nature of Asians, at least from the perspective of Westerners. That phrase and the sentiment behind it are now not acceptable.
But when many Americans become irate at calling South Asians 'Asian', they seem to feel that the term 'Asian' belongs exclusively to East Asians, a group who are regarded more highly among most Americans of today (though it was not always so). The HBD crowd are especially partial to East Asians.
I am not sure who coined the term 'NAM', which is in usage among HBD types, and personally I don't care for it. It reminds me of coinages like 'non-Hispanic Whites'. Think about that one. We are to be defined only in contrast to Hispanics (and Hispanic Whites, who are pretty thin on the ground in our country).
As for the NAM thing, I can only think every time I see it of Viet Nam. I don't quite see the need for the NAM label. Does it not mostly refer, in our country, to blacks and Hispanics along with a very few others? Why not just say 'blacks and Hispanics'? Oh , I forgot; the term 'Hispanic' is hotly contested by some people who claim that it is not a race (all right, it isn't). The fact is, in our country, despite the presence of small numbers of apparently White Hispanics, most Hispanics are mestizos or mulattos, depending on where you are, East Coast or West.
The fact that there are blondes on the telenovelas does not alter the fact that most Hispanic immigrants are not White. And I wonder what term is proposed to replace 'Hispanic'? Will we have to call each nationality by its own label? That can get very complicated back East, where there are people from many Latin American countries, some of them mutually antagonistic.
As for the term Asian, it is not factually incorrect to call a Pakistani Moslem 'Asian'. I wonder if it is because of the counter-jihadist element in our country that there is a wish on the part of Americans to emphasize the Moslem part of the identity of the Pakistani Moslems. Granted, it's not irrelevant, but to me, the relevant factor is that they are not part of the English people ethnically.
And I suppose I become irked by many of my fellow Americans, who, let's admit it, are very insular, and who just don't grasp that people in the rest of the Anglosphere do not use the same idioms or have the same word preferences that we in America have. We have our own terminology which probably seems just as odd to our cousins across the oceans as theirs seem to the more insular of us here in the States. I'm always surprised that, even after decades of greater exposure to British TV programming and movies and media, Americans can often be generally clueless about British idioms and word usage. It can work the other way as well, but we Americans often expect others to fall in line with us rather than vice-versa. Why not just accept the differences?
If anything, the differences in the way we express ourselves make for a more interesting interaction. I only lament that there has been so much merging of our various dialects. Let's respect the differences and preserve them. I feel the same about the various American dialects as well.
