Wow. I don’t think I want to even bring up “rice queen” in this thread…
I see the pile-on has started. Can I call 'em or what? 
I see the pile-on has started. Can I call 'em or what?
Kimera, I think it’s one thing for Asians to make fun of themselves, but it’s another thing for non-Asians to make fun of Asians. Mel Brooks can make fun of Jews all he wants and it’s funny. Non-Jews need to tread a little more lightly. Black rappers can say “nigger” all they want and I think that’s fine. For white people, it’s not cool. Get my drift?
I hear this all the time, which is why I don’t use self-deprecating humor in reference to my own minority status (as gay, Asian, whatever) as much, because people often interpret it the same way you do. It doesn’t matter if “the Asians” started using a term or if they reclaimed it from a different source (I have one friend who claims that “rice rocket” or “ricemobile” comes from African-American teens who used it to disparage Asian cars- not that I believe him, but just saying), the point is that if members of a particular group want to use a stereotype of that group humorously, it’s usually okay. Unfortunately, if you’re not in that group, you can easily end up looking prejudiced, or at least somewhat insensitive.
The same goes for other words and phrases too. I knew a lot of recently immigrated Asian kids who would refer to themselves as fobs; 2nd generation Asians or Caucasians who used that term generally looked pretty mean. Same thing with “gay” or “fag”. Anyway, it seems a lot of people have responded similarly to your post, but that was my two cents.
But then, shouldn’t those things be funny only for the races involved? I mean, isn’t it a bit hoity-toity for a White man to go, “Oh, those Asians and Jews are so droll!”? I don’t know how you draw the kinds of lines you’re drawing without making a mess. Why can’t people just express themselves, and if you think it’s funny, laugh — and if not, don’t?
Well, the difference is that the “beanermobiles” and “watermelon-mobiles” were likely manufactured in the US. The “rice” term is not a reference to the driver, it’s a reference to a popular type of food in the manufacturer’s homeland.
A white guy driving a Honda Prelude with Lamborghini doors and ground effects and a million blinking lights and stickers is a “ricer” because of the car, not because of any racial issues.
But I’m not making fun of Asians, and neither is anyone who uses these terms.
I am just learning about this whole thing in more detail, so I’ll try to explain it the best I can to another person even though I am not an expert in this by any means.
I know this guy that I call Mr Black. Mr Black is the first person I’ve meet out here who is really into cars. I knew nothing about cars before I came here and I am now learning the difference between everything. Out here, cars matter a lot. People will live in simple apartments but drive really, really nice cars. After movies like 2Fast and 2Furious, or whatever it is called, it has become really popular to ‘soup’ up your car. There are entire shops devoted to the subject, the local mall has one and the in the little shopping center across the street which sells all sorts of goodies, has various things for you to decorate your car with. Cars are both made to go faster than they legally are allowed to go and are made to look ‘pretty.’ They buy all sorts of lights and add all these things onto their cars to make them look ‘cool’.
Mr Black, who is half white - half Asian, has a car that he has illegally fixed up. He put a turbo engine in it which means he can go over 160 mph and can accelerate insanely fast (not sure the exact measurements.) Like most people who fix up their cars, he puts a lot of time, effort and money into making it look nice and go faster. There are places where these people go to hang out - some legal and some not. They show off their cars and check out what everyone else is doing.
The people who do this are mostly Asian and most of the cars that they fix up are Asian. I don’t know cars, I can’t look at one and say what brand it is, but most of the brands that are pointed out to me by Mr Black are Asian. I’ve also noticed that most of the drivers are Asians.
After the movie 2F2F, all sorts of people started fixing up their cars, but most of them had no idea what they were doing a lot of them them did it to look badass and get girls rather than to actually make their cars faster. Again, since most of the people involved in fixing up their cars were Asian and fixing up Asian cars, most of the newcomes tended to be Asian too. Now, however, there is a lot more diversity. I don’t know the exact numbers, but from what little I know, the majority still seem to be Asian.
Some of these new comers are idiots and they are dangerous in their stupidity. They want to race on the streets. When I go driving in Mr Black, other cars will see him and they can tell his car has been fixed up so they challenge him to a race in the middle of the freeway. This has gotten to be a pretty big problem here, although the police are really cracking down on it.
Some of these people who have seen these movies and gotten to know a little bit about the community become people known as ‘Ricers’ who drive ‘Rice Rockets’ most Ricers are Asian and do a whole ‘AZN pride’ thing where they only fix up and drive Asian cars. Unfortunately, they have no idea what they are doing, so they sometimes end up damaging their cars. They take cars that just aren’t naturally fast and ‘fix’ them up. Most of the time this fixing is just adding things that make the car look like it can go fast without actually making it go faster. For example, they will make it look like from the outside of the car that they have a turbo engine but when you actually look at the engine, there is no turbo there. Mr Black has told me various stories about some of the stupid things these people have done, including one boy who took cardboard and painted it to look like flames and stuck it on the side of the car. They brag about how awesome and fast it is, when anyone who knows anything about cars would laugh at seeing it.
Ricers is a derogitory term, but it is not directed towards Asians, it is directed towards these idiots who 1) drive asian cars that they have ridiculously ‘fixed’ up and 2) tend to be full of AZN pride. The term ‘Ricer’ stuck because it is making fun of that AZN pride. It would be similar to if a bunch of white boys started buying and fixing up American cars and would refuse to consider non-American as worthy and everyone started calling them ‘Crackers’ to make fun off how concerned with race they were. Now that more and more non-Asians are making and driving rice-rockets, the term has expanded to anyone who drives a car that has been done over in a really stupid and obnoxious way.
I can see why you would see it would be racist, but know that you know more about the history behind the terms, I hope you can see why I use it freely and don’t think it is racist at all. I went on my buddy list and asked some of my Asian friends here in SoCal if they thought the term was racist, and none of them said that it was and they all have used it on occasion. Mr Black uses it all the time and he is half asian himself. I wasn’t able to talk to him before I wrote this, but I can ask him the next time I see him for more details and if he thinks it is racist too.
Geeze, we should just repost the whole of our other discussion into “rice” as a derogatory or non-derogatory term, when used by whites, or blacks, or asians, when referring not to people at all, but a style of origin of manufacture, etc. etc.
I for one refuse to get involved other than to mention that.
Sam
Because, Liberal, a white person, for example, might be amused by calling black people “nigger”, but black people find it very degrading. Or maybe a black person thinks it’s funny to call Chinese people “chinks”. Or maybe an Arab thinks it’s funny to call a Jew a “kike”. I don’t think you can just brush that kind of thing off by saying, “don’t laugh if you don’t think it’s funny”. I just don’t happen to think it’s a very nice thing to do, to “express yourself” at the expense of others if it causes them pain. If you’re hurting someone, that’s where I draw the line. YMMV.
If that’s really a crucial difference to you, what if we just substitute a Volkswagen made in Mexico, then. In your mind, would it be o.k. to call that a “beanermobile”? Still doesn’t sound right in my mind.
If nobody objected to it, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t believe that’s the case. I don’t know that a couple of your “buddies” is really a large enough sample to really get the jist of how people feel about it. I mean, if nobody objected to it, then this thread wouldn’t even exist, would it? The guy who does the Rice-Boy website gets an awful lot of hate-mail (and he’s even Asian himself), so obviously somebody’s offended by it.
Yeah, but that’s not what I was talking about. You said, for example, that “Mel Brooks can make fun of Jews all he wants and it’s funny”. Funny to whom? To Mel Brooks? To you? To his audience? But what if his audience has all kinds of people in it. Should only the Jews laugh? If it’s okay to laugh at a Jew who’s making fun of himself for being a Jew, then I don’t understand why that’s any better than just making fun of him yourself.
No, it’s still different.
I regularly use self-deprecating humor. It’s how I cope with my own self-consciousness and shyness.
Last weekend, I was at a get-together at my aunt’s house. We started doing the cha-cha slide (a stupid dance that belongs in the same category as the electric slide, only it has more steps).
We’re dancing and having a good time, and I start joking about my piss-poor dancing ability. Everyone in the room laughs.
Then, a friend of my aunt starts teasing me by telling me I dance like a white girl*. “I can’t believe she dances like a white girl!” she kept saying to everyone, over and over and over. At first, we all laughed in a good-natured way, but after awhile, it really started to bug my sister (I’m used to the joke, so it didn’t bother me much). My sister, who didn’t know this woman at all, told her to shut up and leave me alone. And that was the end of the “white girl” joke.
My point is that it DOES matter who’s telling the joke, even if it’s the EXACT same joke. It’s like the difference between you and a complete strange joking about how crazy your wife is. I’ll laugh in the former situation because I know love’s there, but I would probably see meanness in the latter.
Another example is Chris Rock. Jerry Seinfield or Adam Sandler could NOT do the “black people versus niggers” joke. This isn’t my favorite Chris Rock routine, but I give him a pass because I know he doesn’t hate black people, and I know he speaks from experience. But I can’t give a white comedian the same benefit of the doubt. The joke would not be the same.
*telling a black person that they dance like a white person is considered an insult because of the white-people-can’t-dance stereotype. But I don’t believe this stereotype at all. Maybe in the 1950s it was true, but not now with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake serving as role models 
Would you give Chris Rock a pass for telling jokes about drunken Indians taking back gifts? Or jokes about Jewish loan sharks stiffing old widows? Or jokes about white rednecks who live in trailer parks?
Also, you can feel free to take a shot at my question to Blowero. When Chris Rock tells a joke about blacks, is it okay for the white, red, and/or yellow people in the audience to laugh? Or may only black people laugh?
No. And I don’t know why you would even ask that.
Well, obviously it’s “okay” for everyone to laugh or Chris Rock wouldn’t be the famous comedian that he has become.
I’m not understand your confusion (assuming it’s genuine).
If you ask two people whether a certain term is racist, you’ll probably get three different answers. Instead of worrying about whether what you said is “racist,” why not just consider whether your friend found it genuinely offensive, and what you want to do about it if she does? I guess your options include apologizing and not saying it anymore, trying to make a case to your friend that you meant no harm and hoping she understands, or continuing to say it at the risk of giving continued offense. A less palatable, and certainly impracticable, option is to allow other people to unilaterally define what you are permitted to say and to go through life trying to conform to their preferences.
I’m not saying that people don’t object to it and aren’t offended by it. What I am saying is that anyone actually involved in the situations and who knows what they are talking about isn’t offended by it nor objects to it. The term ‘niggardly’ is considered objectional and offensive to some. Yet, when a person studies and learned the history behind the meaning of the word, they realize it is not racist at all.
If you want to be all offended by it, go ahead, I don’t care. I’m going to use the term how everyone else uses it here. I just think that people getting upset over these issues take away from what real racism is. This word and its use is not racist unless a person makes it so. I would rather spend my time worrying about friends of mine who have encountered real racism and how to correct that then care what a bunch of people over the internet think about a term that was invented over here.