Mark Carroll's Journal

I thought the problem with "oriental" was that it defined people as being from east-of-us, in a way which entrenches us being the normal referent culture and them being the marginalised outsiders. People don't self-identify as peripheral; cultures typically define their own landbase as central and surrounded by barbarians.

Although I notice we now define ourselves as Western, without a very good idea of what we're west of. Greenwich? [checks: nope, out by 0.1218 degrees...]