RACIAL SLURS EXPLORED

LET ME START 70 YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS 15.


   I remember standing outside a Chinese laundry with friends and running our fore finger against our upper teeth while looking at them ironing clothes through the window.  Wow! that got them upset and until today I really don't know why.  During my Navy tour in WW II a good friend, Ah Ho Lum, was the Chinese cook aboard ship.  (Does that qualifies me to say that one of my best friends was Chinese - another dangerous statement).  I should have asked him about that childhood demonstration but never thought of it until now.  Maybe I am lucky not to have been a politician in which case someone might have found that out about me.


   Fast forward to today and the current furor about Senator Lott and Senator Reid.  I decided to look at Wikipedia for a listing of racial slurs.  Boy, there are a lot of them.  Here are the ones you  may remember over the years, some of which I have used in the past.  Let me preface the list with my feeling about the use of slurs.


   If the person you are slurring or who is slurring you are very good friends you can always get away with it.  I could call my Chinese friend, when he beat me at cribbage, "you lucky Chink".  I could call my Italian wife a "Ginny" when I was teasing her to come to bed. The point is you better know how good a friend you have before trying it.  That aside we have to be careful.        


   Sometimes, I guess,  we may not really mean anything by it, particularly if it is taken out of context. Maybe Senator Reid was talking about Barack Obama's chances based on his under- standing of the voting public as a whole, knowing that there still is a lot of prejudice out there.


   Maybe he was expressing the voters hidden desire to make amends for it by electing him.  No?


   You can look them up - there are a lot of them.  Here are some that were in vogue as I grew up Coolie -Chinese; Coon - Negro; Cracker - Poor Southerner; Frog - French; Dago - Italian; Limey - English; Nigger - Black; Wop - Italian; Kike - Jew; Shiksa - Non Jewish woman; Gringo - Spanish or Latin American; Bog - Low class Irish; Jew down - Derogatory remark about Jewish business methods.


   One last thought.  In this country we say a black person is an African American.  What do say in other countries?  In Africa, for instance, I would guess you say a black person is an African. Isn't a white person also called an African?  I did not research that but it seems to get "kinda-what ever". 


   That's enough.  I sure you get the point.  You have to look into your own soul and psyche to determine what you mean if you use a description thought to be derogatory, or make an otherwise politically inappropriate remark.
THINK ABOUT IT!