Am I the only one here offended by the OP’s choice of wording for the title? I find it appalling and totally unfunny. OK, I get the “spade” part since that is the point of the referenced article. But calling Japanese “Japs” died with WW2 - or so I hoped.
I have a friend that now refers to her hometown as Masturbate, WI after Buick came out with the LaCrosse.
Not only that, but passive voice is used all the time in headlines. Just from today’s L.A. Times:
Witness: Danny Chen was forced to crawl on day he shot himself
Freeway construction [is] set to begin Monday
Escaped prisoner from Donovan state prison [is] captured
Two [are] killed in Koreatown hit-and-run
Doctor of Colorado suspect had been disciplined by medical board
And that makes perfect sense, because the agent often isn’t the focus of the article.
Another part of English headline convention is the use of historical present, which often isn’t so obvious because be is usually ellided, as Nava points out.
See my post above.
Yes, it’s offensive.
If Toyota had done the (apocryphal) Henry Ford thing regarding choice of available colours, it might just have been a racial slur. Otherwise, it’s just a word.
Stop being so uptight and have some fried chicken!
hunh. I thought I’d heard all the anti-black lingo. I lived in the South most of my life and I’ve never heard “spade” used.
I think it’s well past the statute of limitations.
I’ve only ever heard “spade” in old movies and books. I think my dad has mentioned other people using it as a racial slur in the 60s and 70s.
But wouldn’t Michigan get jealous?
All the times I’ve heard “spade” used in the raciallly tinged way, it was not as an epithet. It was the cool hippie countercultural down-with-it way of referencing that someone was black and it was used respectfully and with admiration for the panthers and the pride movement.
Growing up, I always assumed “a spade’s a spade” referred to card suits, as it “it is clearly not a club, heart or diamond.” Ah, naive youth.
The only time I can recall “spade” being used in an inappropriate racial way was an episode of All in the Family: Archie was up for a spot in the bowling team he always wanted to be in. He thinks he has the upper hand vs. the other guy who is vying for the slot because, as Archie says “he’s a spade.” Of course, the joke’s on Archie, because the team takes the other guy to show diversity; this being the 1970’s at all. (I can’t believe I remember all that - haven’t seen the episode since, but I recall that both Archie and the other guy, who is never shown, both bowled a 173 at the tryouts…)
I remember being a kid and kinda understanding that Archie used “spade” to be a black person, but still had to ask my parents to confirm…ah, naive youth.
ETA: and yeah, I found the Thread Title offensive in a non-eye-winky ironic way, too. I avoided the thread because of it, but since the thread is still going after a few days, finally checked it out…
I’m presuming that you are young enough to not have heard that term used by people with hate in their eyes.
This is why capitalization is important, and why the title of the thread gets a pass.
“Japs know when you need heavy lifting done you can count on a Spade!” is not a racist statement.
“Japs know when you need heavy lifting done you can count on a spade!” could possible be a racist statement depending on how sensitive and/or thin-skinned the reader is.
Hmm, I just realized that at least one person in the thread is referring to the word “Jap” as being the primary offense here. That totally went over my head. I’m in my mid forties and the few times I heard somebody talk about “the Japs” was maybe 30 years ago and it was always in a positive way (it was something like “man the Japs can fix anything, can’t they?”).
Then some years later I heard Archie Bunker say it, and I thought to myself “Hmm, he’s using that same word but he’s really being a jerk about it”.
I think that was when I learned that you need to take the meaning and the speaker’s intent from the entire sentence along with the surrounding context, and not just from one word.
I’ve never heard the usage “a spade’s a spade”, but it sounds similar and maybe related) to “He calls a spade a spade” - which isn’t a racist term at all - it’s referring to any plain-speaking workmanlike person who just doesn’t use unnecessarily flowery language.
Maybe I’m just too young, but I’ve never heard Spade used in any way to refer to race. My first thought is related to card games and second to the much less common use for a type of shovel. Even if I heard someone called a Spade I don’t think I’d guess it was a racial reference. If I were to hazard a guess maybe the use of Spade as a racial slur is related to the fact that the suit is black? Even still, doesn’t seem that offensive to me, especially considering that, as I understand, the suit of Spades is original derived from Swords.
Either way, we’re talking a very rarely used slur that I don’t think is anywhere near the top of anyone’s thoughts, we’re talking a Japanese market where neither the manufacturer nor the customers are really exposed to racism against blacks, and they even have the image of the common suit symbol next to the name. I just can’t see how anyone could reasonably interpret anything racist out of it. The most racist thing in this thread is the OP’s usage of Japs in the thread title.
Any term can be used by people with hate in their eyes. One of the wonders of language.
Wow, did your name change just happen while I was reading this thread, left it, and then came back just now? Cause I could swear this post was by “TokyoPlayer” when I looked at it 15 minutes ago.
For a while there, I thought that I must have found a new “evenseven” situation, and one that had existed since 2003 at that!
And yes, it is offensive. (The slur, not the name change.)
Per wikipedia, it entered the language referring to the shovel, but since the introduction of the racial slur, it is typically avoided (in the U.S.) because of possible racial connotations and/or confusion.
No, it has little to do with being thin-skinned or with context. Generally, it seems to me that words that are deemed or recognized as offensive by a significant portion of a given society are linked with a history of racism, oppression, devaluation, discrimination and/or exploitation. A person who casually tosses off such terms in their conversation may have no ill intent, but they are still invoking the negative connotations associated with those words, even if they are ignorant of those associations.
Even if the term is used in a neutral or complimentary context, the negative feeling incurred by the recipient is hardly lessened. For example, “That tard is really working hard bussing those tables.” While a charitable listener will think of the speaker “Wow, I’m amazed that person thinks that terminology is somehow acceptable,” others will be offended or have a hostile reaction despite the admiration being expressed.
Now, if someone uses an offensive term in complete innocence, hopefully they would be receptive to eventually understanding that such terminology is offensive and decide to discontinue using the term out of a desire to not upset others unnecessarily. If someone knows the term is offensive but simply doesn’t care and regards anyone that takes offense as being overly sensitive or whatever, they are free to continue using the terminology and of course will accept the consequences in terms of how they are perceived or the type of reaction that their words elicit.
Of course those consequences are frequently deemed insignificant or irrelevant by the speaker, if they give the matter any thought at all. In a free society, there is not much that can be done in that case to stop the person from using such terms.