The Slants

[Ronald Butters]

We have the band, and they are China-Town dance rock. I have the tee-shirt.

http://www.myspace.com/theslants

They are all boys (I can call them boys because I am 50years older than they are and worked for them).

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slants

I will bring the ED poem to Simon Young's attention the next time I write to him. Maybve he can set it to Chinese dance rock music.

The poem sounds like practical advice that might originate in the thought processes of many an expert witness. I'm just saying.

I note that Wilson protests that "SLANT-EYED" is "old as dirt." That may be, but it doesn't appear to be all that old as a putative racial/ethnic slur. In any case, why would he think that the relative scarcity of "anti-slant-eyed" worth reporting, except to demonstrate that "slant" itself is an ethnic slur? I find only 5 Google hits for "anti- yellow skinned"--so what?

JL's comment that he found only second-hand attestations to actual usage during the Viet Nam era is interesting. If there wasn't much actual usage, that would further strengthen my argument that SLANT is of negligible importance as a slur--and hasn't even been used that way since the 1940s. Of course, one wonders why the sources that do indicate a Viet Nam War usage were saying that it was. Surely someone somewhere had heard it used disparagingly. Because there were so few of them, it would not be surprising if there were very few quotes from Viet Namese Americans in the 1970s saying that they found the term offensive.

On Mar 8, 2012, at 2:05 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> On Mar 8, 2012, at 1:36 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:
> 
>> 
>> [Although I personally think it is unnecessary to make a disclaimer about this in a list-serv comment, I hereby add that I recently wrote a pro bono report for TTAB consideration in support of a group of Asian musicians who were trying to register the name of their band, THE SLANTS. The TTAB turned them down on the grounds that their name, if used by a group of slant-eyed people as a term of self-reference, was "derogatory"; presumably, if they had been a group of Scandianvian descent who wanted to show their love for Emily Dickinson's poem, "There is a certain slant of light …" it would have been OK.
>> 
>> 
>> 
> Actually, I think the putative band, especially if it's an all-female group, would have been better advised to explain that their name was derived from this poem of Dickinson's--
> 
> Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
> 
> Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
> Success in Cirrcuit lies
> Too bright for our infirm Delight
> The Truth's superb surprise
> As Lightening to the Children eased
> With explanation kind
> The Truth must dazzle gradually
> Or every man be blind---
> 
> 
> --especially given that the notion of "telling it slant" has been revived in recent decades to describe the nature of the transmission of distaff wisdom within a patriarchal society. We're all set now, we just need the band. 
> 
> LH 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org