Is
it a good idea to describe someone who looks like me as “Asian-American” in
your novels? The usual answer is yes,
and anyone who uses the term “Oriental” is ignorant. But let’s consider:
When
I was in one of those politically correct workshops that employees are forced
to attend about diversity (which is just a way an employer has of checking off
a box about sensitivity, so if any employee makes a bigoted statement, they’ve
covered themselves), one black woman laughed at the term “colored person.” She said, “When I hear the term ‘colored,’ I
feel like asking ‘What color’? I’m not a
‘colored person.’ I am a ‘person of
color.’”
I
felt like asking, “What color?” But I
didn’t want to get in trouble.
You
might tell from that comment that this particular workshop was several years
ago. Those color terms didn’t last
long. The main terms for black people
within recent memory have been “Negroe,” “black,” and “African-American.”
Before
we go on, here’s a picture of my favorite African-American actress:
Charlize
Theron
photo by John Harrison
For
my review of her movie Young Adult,
click here.
Here’s
my second favorite African-American actress:
Musetta
Vander
photo by MadMarlin
She’s
had guest roles in Star Trek and Xena, but I liked her small role in the movie
version of The Wild Wild West.
And
here’s my favorite African-American news anchor:
(Sorry, no non-copyright pictures, so click on the link for Google's pictures)
What’s
my game here? Well, Charlize Theron and
Musetta Vander are both from South Africa.
Jamie Colby has South African ancestry.
They are all African-Americans.
It’s
a long story, but some intellectuals and civil rights leaders decided that
young black people didn’t feel any significant ties to Africa, so they came up
with the term “African-American.” To
follow suit, almost all minorities were given some hyphenated –American name to
match. So people who look like me are
currently called “Asian-American.”
I
hate this term. Who else are “Asian-Americans”? People from the Indian subcontinent, for
one. The people I’ve known with Indian
ancestry do not resemble me racially; they are actually more closely related to
Europeans, but with different skin tones.
That area is sometimes called South Asia now. Also, a lot of Arab people could be called
the same. They are said to be from
Southwest Asia.
(The
exceptions were Hispanics. The term
Latin-American was already in use, and it meant someone living outside the
U.S.A. The old term was Chicano, and it
was going to be brought back. But then
Sotomayor became a Supreme Court justice, and the terms Latino and Latina have
been making a comeback, but the terminology for that ethnic group is in a state
of flux.)
So,
what is my point? Just as a novel that
uses terms like Negro, colored person, and person of color for a black person
looks dated today, so will all those hyphenated –American terms look silly
about ten years from now. Many
people today (like me) already think they’re silly, and poke holes in those terms. There’s
nothing wrong with describing what a person looks like, or what the person’s
exact ancestry is.
I
don’t mind it if a person who looks like me is described as having
almond-shaped eyes. Be creative. You might even write, “He preferred being
called Oriental, because he disliked the term Asian, since that includes a
number of races.” Is there a possibility
that someone with a screw too tight will get offended by one of your
descriptions? Yes. But that will happen no matter what. Go for an innocent description of the person’s
appearance or specific ancestry.
