white

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 8:45 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â white
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The most recent post on by Eugene Volokh discusses "Asian as White". He
> starts by quoting a comment from another thread:
>
> http://goo.gl/9RbWM
>
>> [A]llow a white Southerner to point out something about casual use of the
>> word =93white=94: sometimes it just means =93not black=94. Meaning, belie=
> ve it or
>> not, that in common usage, a school (or gathering, or club, or church, or
>> whatever) in the South that includes no black people is =93all-white=94. =
> This is
>> true even when there are, for instance, people of Korean or Indian ancest=
> ry
>> in said group. Whether this is anthropologically correct, or PC, or even
>> nice is beside the point. It=92s just one of the common, casual usages.
>
>
> More at the link.
>
> VS-)
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

All of this kind of bullshit depends upon whose ox is being gored. In
1968, the white manager of a unit of the Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power, after introducing me to the staff thereof, made up
only of whites and "Orientals,: as they were then known, explained
that he wouldn't be hiring me - I was attempting to rise above the
position that I already held in the DW&P - because I, unfortunately,
didn't "fit in" - his words - with his staff as constituted, since
"there are no colored in it and I don't feel that you could be
comfortable attempting to succeed in such an environment, though you
are otherwise fully qualified. By the way, do you know Dr.
Coloredfellow - the neurosurgeon at the UCLA Medical School? - or the
Bishop Rev. Negro of the Greater Big Bethel Free-Will Missionary
Baptist Church of the Holy Ghost? Our families are quite close. We're
having dinner out together this weekend, as a matter of fact."

Clearly, he did, in some sense, consider _white_ to mean "un-black"
and also, very likely, un-"Mexican." OTOH, he may very well have
merely figured that the Orientals didn't want to work alongside
colored any more than the Occidentals did. (Given that some of his
best friends were colored, it's not likely that the manager himself
harbored any racism. He was simply looking out for *my* emotional
welfare, which was real white of him. I appreciated his
thoughtfulness.)

My once-and-current Sansei buddy, Hideo Fujikawa, once told me that a
Chinese-American friend of his was astounded that mazed that Hichan
possessed the 'nads actually to get down with the colored people, even
unto the point of going to their house-parties. Even in Amsterdam, I
was told that the local Chinese didn't care for the _kleurd_, not even
American ones. (My personal experience was that we black Americans
were regarded in Holland as a race apart from black people of
Dutch-West-Indian origin. We were sometimes denied entrance, until our
Dutch friends announced, "But they're *Americans*!) Anyway, WRT
Orientals,

Youneverknow.

Perhaps Jim Landau will be able to get a clue as to why it is that the
colored ofttimes reject out of hand friendly overtures from
well-meaning white folk. I'll bet that Victor sees not a hint of
standard American racism in the article that he thinks is worthy of
the list's consideration. It's a blatant example of race-baiting,
Victor. Its sole purpose is to show that the imaginary "reverse
racism" supposedly practiced by blacks under the direction and with
the support of their Jew, uh, *liberal* masters extends even to other
non-whites, such as Asians.

"It's a black thing. You wouldn't understand."

That's not mere "spade logic, " as a white friend has termed it. And,
of course, he sees nothing at all racist in dismissing this thought as
simple assholery typical of the colored polloi. Like Colbert, he
doesn't see race. (Yes, I understand that Colbert is being facetious.
But my friend isn't.)

A propos of something, perhaps, is the medical conundrum that black
Americans have the highest blood pressure in earth, whereas black
Africans have the world's lowest.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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