>And so, whilst Asians such as Indians, Iranians or Kazakhs might not consider the term Oriental a slur of any sort, it is reasonable to expect that some annoyance will be generated by this generic clubbing of races and its use might even be misconstrued as a demonstration of disinterest in other cultures.


Surely the same could be said for "Asian" also. A person born and bred in Vladivostok is Asian, so is a Laotian, my Anglo-Indian father, and a sabra Israeli. In what way is "Asian" a less meaningless, potentially insulting "generic clubbing" than Oriental? I read somewhere that when Japan developed its concept of the "Great East Asian Co-operation Sphere", or whatever it called its 1930s imperial dream, it borrowed the word "Asian" from English, as the concept did not exist in Japanese.