implicit racial/ethnic classification

[Jeffrey William McKeough]

Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
>it was the "and asian americans" (with a pause first) that caught
>my ear.  there's an implicit category here, whites-and-[certain]-
>asians (versus another implicit category, crudely characterizable
>as blacks-and-browns).

This reminds me of William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols's famous first
interracial TV kiss.  What is seldom mentioned is that it was followed
up about a month later with another interracial kiss, this time
between Shatner and France Nuyen (who is Asian).

I suppose it could be argued that Nuyen's character was an alien while
Nichols's was human.  I do get the sense, though, that if only the
Shatner/Nuyen kiss had taken place, Star Trek wouldn't be widely known
for having had the first interracial kiss.

--
Jeffrey William McKeough
jwm at spdcc.com (or spdcc.net)