Political correctness in the United States
In the United States, some feel the terms "Orient" and "Oriental" are archaic, offensive, and/or "politically incorrect" on the basis that it was defined from a European perspective to refer to a vague and undistinguished group of people, and is therefore no longer appropriate in a modern multicultural world. Additionally, it has been used in a derogatory fashion in the United States as an ethnic slur, and those associations have remained with the term for many Asian Americans (see parallels at "nigger"). Many English speakers worldwide find nothing offensive about the term. One difficulty that the term presents, however, is that it is not always clear what is included within the term and what is not--at one time it referred primarily to the nations and people of the Middle and Near East, and this sense of the term still exists in some forms in the language (e.g., "oriental carpets"). Consequently, the term does not see as much use as the equivalent terms Asian, East Asian, and (for the archaic sense of the term that included Persia and Arabia) Middle Eastern.

http://www.answers.com/topic/orient


Oriental Often Offensive. An Asian. [e.a.]

o'ri·en'tal·ly adv.
USAGE NOTE Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Oriental—meaning “eastern”—is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive. However, Oriental should not be thought of as an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. As with Asiatic, its use other than as an ethnonym, in phrases such as Oriental cuisine or Oriental medicine, is not usually considered objectionable.

http://www.answers.com/topic/oriental