Japs know when you need heavy lifting done you can count on a Spade!

[Derleth]

Here’s an interesting PDF on the subject of racism in language:

The following sentences employ racist language and values.

[snip]

Faculty who supported the 1968 strike at San Francisco State were blacklisted from teaching at other state universities in California.

[snip]

If the FBI investigates the BART police murder of Jerrold Hall, they’ll do a whitewash.

[snip]

Slaves were brought to the colonies to work in rice, tobacco, and sugar plantations.

The women’s movement has made ‘feminism’ a familiar term.

Saving the forests and endangered species are major goals of the environmental movement.

Surprisingly, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a strong opponent of the U.S. war against Vietnam.

The media feared another riot when four LAPD officers were acquitted.

Striking workers in the 19th century called attention to the brutal exploitation they were suffering by calling themselves, “wage slaves.”

[snip]

Her car has a bumpersticker that says, “Keep Abortion Safe and Legal.”

Truly, racism in spades in those above quotes!

[Mangetout]

@WordMan

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.

Interesting. The term is still very much in common, innocuous use here in the UK and although I’ve heard it used quite purposely in provocative humorous context, the first thing that springs to anyone’s mind when they hear the word ‘spade’ is the earth-digging implement.

Thus, the naming of the Toyota Spade seems to me (and I suspect, most of my peers) absurd, but inoffensive; like if they’d called it the Toyota Spoon or the Toyota Sponge.

[Jackmannii]

@listedmia

I’ve only ever heard “spade” in old movies and books.

Like The Maltese Falcon? :dubious:

[TokyoBayer]

@Derleth

Any term can be used by people with hate in their eyes. One of the wonders of language.

But oddly enough, there are certain terms which are pretty well established as racial slurs.

The term Japs is one. This does not mean that everyone find them offensive, but there are those who do.

Then there are some terms, such as spades, which have meanings other than as a slur. I grew up hearing the expression “calling a spade, a spade” and had never known that spades had ever been used as a slur.

There are less people now who publicly use slurs than when I was a child, or perhaps it just hang around with different folks so it may seem as a surprise to some that there were those who used these terms with hate.

It’s disingenuous to claim that because any word can be used with hate that racial slurs are no less offensive to those who find them such.

ETA: What Wellanuff said.