Episode 24 — Japs?

[admin 330]

Join host Andrew Ti and very special guest Kulap Vilaysack, of Who Charted fame, as they decide whether or not the term "Jap" is racist.  If you want to know if something is racist, call in at (323) 389-RACE today!

[showandprove 1]

In the UK we (sometimes) refer to people from that part of Asia as Oriental and have the term Asian for people from the Indian sub-continent and it's rarely used as a slur. "Asian" for both seemed a little odd as it's such a giant land mass and encompassing the Chinese & co, Indians & co and quite a bit of Russia. But - as always - if people want to be called x, y or z it's not my business to complain and when I'm in the US I make a conscious effort to switch (and here I make the effort to be more specific - Chinese, Korean, Laotian etc). (In the same way "fag" means a cigarette here and is used all the time but I would never use it to refer to homosexual gentleman). It's complicated ... but then again it's not *that* complicated and I've managed to not offend people most of the times I speak.

[pongo 190]

So I guess the podcast is really going back to the daily version, although it really doesn't matter and I will listen either way, you gave me a taste of the good life and then just ripped it away.

[action52 554]

In this caller's defense, to me it sounds like a situation where he knows it's racist, but maybe for some reason has people trying to tell him it's not.

 

Also, I've found a certain amount of people who use the term "Jap" as an abbreviation for "Japanese" with no knowledge of the racist connotations. Apparently they just happened to use it in writing, unaware of the racist connotations. Which is fine, but a lot of time they'll get all defensive and be like "Why should I stop using it?" when you tell them how racist the term is. I mean, if you used the word not knowing it's racist, that's no big deal. As long as you stop using it as soon as you find out. But I definitely don't get when people use a racist/homophobic/whatever term not knowing what it means, then refuse to stop using it when they find out.

[theonepickle 12]

In high school I was taking a history class and we were studying World War II. There was a homework question about the Japanese Internment camps. One of the kids in my class sent the homework to some other kids in the class and in the question he used the word "Japs".