by barry 26 Replies latest jw friends
Here is Australia the Race Commissioner has claimed Senator O'Sullivan is in violation of Racially Derogatory language. Senator Sullivan has said the biggest threat to biosecurity is ' Some bloody old Chinaman that brings in his favourite sausage down the front of his undies' Chin Tan said using the word Chinaman is offensive.
Makes you wonder is Englishman or Australian man or Scotsman is also just as offensive
I have known more than a few Chinese people, and for some reason they all take exception to the term "Chinaman".
At least the Senator didn't say as Arthur Calwel did 'Two Wongs don't make a White'
I guess it is in the ear of the hearer: do Australian people have terms applied to them by non-Australians that offend some?
Sometimes the person who uses the term will make it clear that they view it as derogatory.
When in doubt, leave it out.
'Chinaman' is an old-fashioned term but should be ok. It is generally not even used as an insult or in a derogatory way.
There are some racially derogatory names that refer to Chinese people (on the flip side, there are some Chinese terms that refer to Europeans in a racially derogatory way) ... but 'Chinaman' isn't one of them.
I guess it is in the ear of the hearer - this is the problem, how do you legislate for intentions or for people's feelings? It's ridiculous.
Also, acceptable racial terms go in and out of fashion like clothes.
E.g. in the US, negro was replaced by colored person. The NAACP stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Then colored was considered offensive and so it was replaced by black or mixed race (depending on background). Recently, people of color has become a la mode, but I'm not sure why. All it tells you is that the person it's referring to is non-white - they could be black, mixed race, Indian, Aborigine, etc., and it's very closed to colored people, which is still considered offensive.
Confused? Well, I think it's the intention of the race industry people to keep people off balance and confused. That way, there are more opportunities for ordinary people to fall foul of this crap and be called racist.
BTW, every black person I've encountered has used the term black when referring to themselves and others.
If you can make sense of all this, I'm a goddamn Chinaman.
I think any reference to sausages in the race context would be offensive. Think of calling an Austrian a "wiener" as if that appendage is the main attribute.
Chinese woman! some very attractive! woow! coming and going.
Free speech is soon to be a thing of the past. Everyone must be "politically correct". Problem is, whose politics?
It's true though - when you watch the border security TV show, Chinese people always seem to have suitcases full of weird food and uncooked chicken in their coat pockets.
The following is non poltical and it demonstrates the reason why certain ethnic slurs don't belong in polite or official conversation.
"The following is a list of ethnic slurs (ethnophaulisms) that are, or have been, used as insinuations or allegations about members of a given ethnicity, or to refer to them in a derogatory (that is, critical or disrespectful), pejorative (disapproving or contemptuous), or otherwise insulting manner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
For the purposes of this list, an ethnic slur is a term designed to insult others on the basis of race, ethnicity, or nationality. Each term is listed followed by its country or region of usage, a definition, and a reference to that term."
I did not realize the term was still offensive, but I remember that it was, at least in the U.S.
--As in white children chanting, "Ching Ching Chinaman sitting on a fence; trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents" while jumping rope.
