I think I get why most of them are no-nos, but why is “Jap” bad? AFAICT, it’s just a shortening of “Japanese”. Is “Brit” a slur as well?
And while we’re on the subject, am I, as a US citizen, supposed to be offended by “Yank”?
It was used in the US during WWII when speaking deragatorily of the enemy. It was not always insulting, but after being used as as an insult in the US at least, remains one. It was used in newspaper headlines and wartime propaganda specifically to insult.
More info here: Jap - Wikipedia
The GQ answer is that that term was already used as a racial slur prior to WWII and that there existed a great deal of discrimination against Japanese prior to the war.
This is a type of question which would do much better in GD.
Whether a term is offensive to an ethnic group is a function of its history and use, not its etymology. “Jap” was used as a derogatory epithet during WWII. “Brit” was not. It doesn’t matter how the term was derived; the offensiveness is due to its use.
To quote an old Traveller joke, it’s like the difference between “Zhodani” and “Dirty Rotten Stinking Zho!” In wartime, it was less likely to be “The [ethnic term] attacked yesterday” and “The stinking, murderous, sub-human, baby-raping [ethnic term] took to the rampaging slaughter yesterday.”
When every time you hear the term it is accompanied by emphatic adjectives, in due course the association becomes understood, so that, later, the term alone seems to echo with the words, even unspoken.
I was told, once, many years ago, that “Ami” was hugely offensive, and I should never, ever accept being called one by any non-American. But, so far, I’ve never heard this opinion seconded. In practice, one very rarely hears “Ami.” And, as the OP notes, “Yank” isn’t taken as offensive either, no matter how it may be intended.
My grandpa always said rice eater
I am not sure why that was considered a slur and it is rather ironic when you consider now, the U.S. being in the top 20 of rice producers and consumers in the world.
I suspect that if you were constantly subjected to the term “yank” being used in a negative fashion, you’d come to be offended by it.
It really isn’t. Well, not to any significant degree.
But people like to pretend to be offended, that way they can look and feel superior.
Mind you, yes, some might find it rankles a tiny bit. But some use “Brit” as a slur, American Southerners use “Yank” as a slur, and I had a friend, a young black girl, who when called “Black” would declaim loudly “I am NOT black, I am a lovely shade of mocha.”
There’s a zillion page thread on this in ATMB, where some claim that they are offended by the term “Paki” and that anyone using it might as well be wearing a white hood or a swastika armband- but oddly the one poster from Pakistan sates he doesnt find it in the least offensive. But others, who clearly knew better than him:rolleyes: (how parochial! how ironic!) were ready to be offended for him, since clearly he didn’t know better.:rolleyes:
Mind you of course in context “Paki” and even “Jap” *can *be used as a slur, no doubt.
I once had someone tell me, in all seriousness, that “sci fi” was exactly as offensive as… Well, y’know, the worst of the commonplace American racial slurs. “Sci Fi?” Come awn!
Let’s move this over to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Don’t we have this discussion once a month?
Hell, “nigger” is obviously just a shortened version of “negro” which used to be fine and dandy… oh yeah, it’s that wacky thing where people aren’t specifically logical and words have context! Oh, that!
“there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”
There’s no logic that makes it different from ‘Brit.’ It is offensive because some people have decided to be offended by it, and some people deliberately intend to be offensive using it.
A Scotsman once told me that “Jock” was as offensive as “Nigger.” That, too, strikes me as being too sensitive. Does anyone ever use it in that way? Maybe they do, in which case I’m wrong, but I’ve never heard it as anything other than a good-natured nickname, like “Tommy” for a Brit or “Ivan” for a Russian.
However, even in this day and age, I have heard “Mick” used in a hateful fashion. So, who knows.
“Jock” is definitely not a friendly word, I’ve only heard it used insultingly towards Scots (but usually in the “Hey, I’m only joking, lighten up!” sense if you dare to complain) but it’s in no way comparable to “n****r”.
It was news to me that “Paki” wasn’t offensive outside the UK (and some other commonwealth countries, I think?) and some people did react to that realisation a bit oddly. But it seems exactly parallel to “Nigger” if not quite as bad – if someone from America discovered that (hypothetically) “Nigger” wasn’t a common slur in some countries of Africa, do you think their best reaction would be “Oh, ok then, everyone in America should stop being offended by it and if they don’t they’re stupid” or “Uh, well, ok, I’m kind of shocked, but if you don’t care, you don’t have to care, I guess?”
(Example link from the uk: 'I'm a paki and proud' | Race | The Guardian)
As to “Jap”, it’s just history. Some slurs have a specific derogatory meaning, but lots are just a word that has acquired negative connotations from use.
Doesn’t make any sense to me either.
Ex-girlfriend never liked to be called VC or Charlie, even though by definition she was. Descriptive; tells the story. And factual. If the people to whom it refers get offended, then they are free to call the word offensive to them. That doesn’t change the definition of the word for me though just because in year ‘x’ some hippies decided it’s not nice.
She was Viet Cong?
Her parents were, yes. She also claims to have been involved in an aircraft crash while a child being “rescued”. She turned out to be a pathological liar and she may have just been saying that because she knew I was a pilot and it would interest me. There was of course that crash in (what, 74-76’? hell if I know) but I didn’t know there were VC babies on that flight. Never looked it up because it ticks me off just to think of her.
:pYou stole my question!