h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Accuracy is not always welcome.

Fatso; four-eyes; slant-eyes; spic

Need I go on?

is all I can say ...

I have to say I have more difficulty with the generic term "asian" than I do with the word "black" ... "black" to me signifies of either African or afro-carribean origin, whereas asian seems to include anyone who is neither caucasian (an odd term in itself) or black ... from the indians through to the chinese ... that's to say over 2/5 of the worlds population all under one huge label ... knowing how crotchety a scotsman gets if he gets called english it strikes me as odd as how readily some people will lump entire, totally different nations together as one.

I've always thought of 'Asian' as a geographical, rather than physical description- like calling someone European.

I agree ... but "They" tend to refer to "the asian community" ...

My Indian friend absolutely HATES being called Asian. She gets so narky about it...

But its true...

See, me being called paki, now thats odd...

That suggests blindness as well as stupidity on the part of the individual addressing you...

Yeh, but she rightly points out that she is Indian...not Asian...like I'm English, not European.

I don't know how anyone could think you were from Pakistan. Obviously said by someone from a particularly inbred gene pool.

Just subscribing to this. I'll look through the backlog later.

It might p**s me off if someone was writing or singing something that I found offensive. But maybe not - for example William Burroughs seems a little anti-Semitic, but he's still a brilliant writer. If their prejudices didn't affect their work I can't object too much.

One of the dinner plates at a meal I had the other day was strewn with swastikas (I checked the bottom to see if there was any insignia ). It's bizarre to think that they don't have the same significance over here.



"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is attributed to Voltaire. It's true that freedom of speech becomes paradoxical when pushed far enough, in that the freedom to incite hatred and violence might be undesirable, but that's another argument.



Saturnine - the 'born a Nazi' argument: what if a kid born into a KKK family was adopted?

I don't think an adopted child would be sent out from or brought into a KKK family. Wouldn't be seen as pure. I know what you lot were getting at anyway.

How was William Burroughs anti-semetic? He was part of the Beat generation (a form of free writing I subscribe to)...maybe you have taken something out of context?

Oh, well, you know, the offending passage was from Naked Lunch, and could be taken any number of ways. Almost certainly it wasn't serious, thinking about it.

Aaaagh! That reminds me! I now have to read Cities of the Red Night, since it's all about mad redheads in buried cities in Central Asia

Er, anyway...

Fortunately, the BaaBaa Black Sheep thing wasn't true.

I can find no RL evidence for black board, either. If it was true (which I doubt) I reckon it's been overthrown.

re. Asian: a Scotsman isn't English though. He *would* be British. It depends on how specific you want to be, if I don't know someone's actual country I would say 'Asian' or 'European' instead of a poorly-informed guess, or use religion i.e Muslim, if I were sure.

The younger staff at my school insisted on 'chalkboard', I know that.

Strange thing is, that in California, 'asian' means 'oriental' (and I think that word is considered a bit offensive for reasons I haven't worked out yet), as in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, that lot. But you can also use 'asian' for the subcontinent-area asian people if you qualify it with 'indian-type asian', or 'south asian'. It all gets very confusing around here becuase there's a huge amount of all of these people.

You can see how using asian could be offensive though, grouping such a massive number of people under one lazy umbrella. I mean, to clump nearly half of the worlds population under one grouping is a little silly.

Ste

Well Asia is a large continent. I think it is important to bear in mind that people do not always intend to be offensive when using a particular label. Context, tone of voice etc need to be taken into consideration.
I know that doesn't necessarily excuse it, what's important is the perception of the recipient, but it might temper their reaction if they understand that offense was not intended.

It's true that when a canadian freind of mine was in the army she was highly amused to find that while there were all sorts of boxes distinguishing between various shades of white on the forms they use to keep track of you, there was only one for people who weren't white or oriental-looking. This meant that there she was (she's of indian heritidge) lumped to gether with a woman who had the bvlackest skin she'd ever seen, while the importsnt diffference between sallow and swarthy was minutely recorded.

See, for every anti PC story there's another one which illustrates that sort of careless relegation of everyone who isn't white into one unimportant disregarded lump...

I realised I was thinking of 'should it matter' with respect to my feelings (I am clearly the centre of the universe). You can indeed appreciate the art of people whose weiwpoints you profoundly disapprove of. But I actually prefer it when people's little biases are out in the open. It's partly cos if I don't spot them I feel a sense of personal disappointment in someone I admire, and partly because if I don't spot them I worry that I should have... With the German woman I don't think it matters what her actual veiwpoint/political persiasion was/is as the work she did for the Nazi's was clearly in gloryfying them. In fact it's probably easier to appreciate it as an example of fantastic filmaking, cos you feel immediately comfortable disapproving the message...

I assume by the way that there was also only one box for oriental-looking...

If you look at the art in the context that it was created in, and keep that in mind, then there shouldn't be any problem whatsoever. You could even see any art created by racists/anti-semites/misc. bigots as a lesson. It's always good to be exposed to other world views and opinions, no matter how vile they may seem to you personally.



When I was recently completing an application form it had a huge section for 'ethnicity' (dammit, I hate that word). It gave the most incredible detail for people of different asian origins, native American, and black origins, which took up about 40 boxes. But they had one box for 'white'. Seemed strange, so I ticked 'decline to answer'.

Ste

Um. Tha *Baa Baa Black sheep* thing (ie : being banned in nurseries/schools) IS true. My mother works in day care. It's an OFSTED thing. Completely stupid organisation too may I add...

Which paragraph of Naked Lunch? I own it, but it is completely unreadable in my eyes