Naming someone an Oriental was also an act of derogation

Evidence

Without what he called spirit and style, the mind could “get lost in archaeology”: he was referring to a sort of regimented antiquarianism by which the exotic and the strange would get formulated into lexicons, codes, and finally clichés of the kind he was to ridicule in the Dictionnaire des idées reçues. Under the influence of such an attitude the world would be “regulated like a college. Teachers will be the law. Everyone will be in uniform.” — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 487 (#expands, via linked claim)

Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Oriental woman functions as a mute occasion for the Western male imagination.; The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 513; An ethnic name became a moral category encoded in language (+2 more)

Related

• Calling someone an Oriental functioned as a designation of racial inferiority, not neutral description (similarity 0.88)
• The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism functioned like bureaucracy, treating humans as occasions for files (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism disciplined the exotic into lexicons, codes, and clichés (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism operates as radical realism, enumerative rhetoric, and paranoia. (similarity 0.83)
• Oriental tales circulated widely in English literature across two centuries (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalist typing subsumed individual traits under a presumed Oriental essence. (similarity 0.82)
• Indo-European philology grounded European languages in a harmless Oriental source. (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.81)
• Nineteenth-century Orientalism created a professional terminology that dominated all discourse on the Orient (similarity 0.81)
• The Oriental as category was a European enthusiasm transposed eastward. (similarity 0.80)
• Naming and enumerating the Orient actively constitutes it as reality (similarity 0.80)
• Academic Orientalist expertise legitimizes rather than corrects crude stereotypes (similarity 0.80)
• The term Oriental carried a canonical, taken-for-granted authority in European discourse. (similarity 0.80)
• Occidentalism defines itself against an Orient it has already made inferior (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• An ethnic name became a moral category encoded in language #expands (0.85)
• Orientalism disciplined the exotic into lexicons, codes, and clichés #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 487
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object #expands (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91