The Slants

Fri Mar 9 21:42:49 UTC 2012

All I was talking about was "slant," n.

Not "slant-eye(d)," which certainly predates WWII.

JL

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: The Slants
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>
> Golden Peril -- wasn't the last dynasty of China the Golden Dynasty?
>
> Also:
>  1894 May 7 Rocky Mountian News -- A Chinese Trick Slant-Eyed
> Individuals Have a Way of Beating the New Law, and Allowing Their
> Friends to Come in with Papers.  [Article datelined Washington about
> registration of Chinese under the exclusion act.  Some legal
> immigrants are registering more than once, "and as a photograph of
> one Chinaman might readily pass for another", the duplicate
> certificates can be sold to those not entitled to register.  Surely
> derogatory at least.]
>
> Is this the first expression of the notion that all Chinese look alike?
>
>
> DanG
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: The Slants
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I've lost track of this.  Are you-all saying that "slant-eyed" as a
> > slur is recent, at- or post-Vietnam?  Are you-all saying it is rare,
> > or that it was rare at the time of the Vietnam war, or that it was
> > rare before then?  Do you-all make a distinction between a "(racial)
> > slur" and "just" a derogatory usage?
> >
> > I have faint traces of "slant-eyed" as a slur from either World War
> > II or the Korean War (which were not too far apart).  Is that "old as
> > dirt"?  But I assume those who are researching this must have checked
> > those periods.  Perhaps one has to look in comic books rather than
> > newspapers.  (Or the New Yorker, where two Chinese boys are reading
> > about sinister, round-eyed Johnny.)
> >
> > So I've looked a little bit.
> >
> > I would like to see more context for the OED's earliest quotation --
> >      1865    Daily Telegr. 17 Nov. 5/2   A slant-eyed, saffron-coloured
> > race.
> > Might it be derogatory?  On the other hand, I suppose
> >      1870    J. G. Whittier Miriam 126   The slant-eyed sages of Cathay.
> > is complimentary.
> >
> > But 19th Century U.S. Newspapers has:
> >     1880 March 20 St. Louis Globe-Democrat -- THE San Francisco
> > Merchant tells a remarkable story about a Chinese inroad into Montana
> > and Idaho, in which the slant-eyed Mongols sent out pickets to find
> > out what goods were in demand, and what prices were paid.  [The SF
> > Merchant story is that Chinese merchants are sending wagons with
> > merchandise into Idaho and Montana, to support Chinese peddlers
> > selling tea at a lower price than "white merchants".  The
> > Globe-Democrat comments "If the worst offense of the Chinese is
> > furnishing the miners with tea at cheaper rates than they have
> > hitherto paid for it, we hardly expect the miners to join in the cry,
> > 'The Chinese must go.'"]
> >      1893 April 24 St. Paul Daily News -- [An article about a troupe
> > of "thirty-four celestial sons of the flowery kingdom", Mongolians
> > members of a "Chinese theatrical troupe which is to give the
> > slant-eyed drama in sections of ten hours each" at the Chicago
> > world's fair.  Somewhere between a condescending attitude from a
> > superior race, and a racial slur.]
> >      1894 May 7 Rocky Mountian News -- A Chinese Trick Slant-Eyed
> > Individuals Have a Way of Beating the New Law, and Allowing Their
> > Friends to Come in with Papers.  [Article datelined Washington about
> > registration of Chinese under the exclusion act.  Some legal
> > immigrants are registering more than once, "and as a photograph of
> > one Chinaman might readily pass for another", the duplicate
> > certificates can be sold to those not entitled to register.  Surely
> > derogatory at least.]
> >
> > And Google Books between 1940 and 1956 has (allegedly), just in the
> > first 20 of about 2,060 --
> >      1941 Sept. Boy's Life -- "A slant-eyed youth in a dirty smock
> > appeared from below."  [Within a story titled "Golden Peril"  Without
> > attempting to read tiny print, from the illustrations I assume the
> > peril comes from evil Chinese, perhaps pirates.  "Golden" seems to
> > refer to the metal, but perhaps also in a double sense to the
> > Chinese.  Before Pearl harbor, but during the period of Japanese
> > expansionism.]
> >      1943 Jan. Boy's Life [date at top of page]  "DIMLY outlined in
> > the murky darkness of the passageway was a leering slant-eyed
> > Oriental. He was creeping stealthily forward with a service .45 in
> > his hand, obviously with the intention of catching the pilot
> > unaware."  [After Pearl harbor.]
> >      1943  Library of Congress, Musical compositions, part 3 [date
> > at top of previous page] -- "You slant -eyed yellow bums.
> > 3383"  [Index of song titles?]
> >      1951 Robert William O'Brien, Readings in general sociology --
> > "For example, if all drug addicts were slant-eyed, and if non-
> > addicts were not slant-eyed, then all we would have to do to
> > determine that a person is or is not a drug addict would be to look
> > at his eyes."  [An interesting, to say the least, choice for a
> > logical argument.  GBooks also reveals a similar syllogism using
> > "slant-eyed" in a book on psychology.]
> >      1952 Aug. 11 Life [magazine] "Vigorous, brunet faces, strong
> > black eyebrows and dark eyes, and candid expressions mark the tribe.
> > They do not look Oriental in any slant-eyed or "sinister" sense but
> > most of them are very distinctive people."  [So others, although not
> > Life, must have associated "slant-eyed" with "sinister"in 1952.]
> >     1956  Selected works of Ly Hsun [pseud]  "We need not mention
> > illustrations in novels; even textbook illustrations often have
> > children with caps askew, slant eyes, fleshy jowls and the look of
> > hooligans. Among our new hooligan artists is Yeh Ling-feng^_Mr- Yeh
> > has plagiarized ..."  [Snippet]
> >
> > There is much more in this period.  Some is "slant-eyed" as sinister
> > without *direct* reference to Asians, but I think that is the unstated
> > origin.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > At 3/9/2012 06:53 AM, Ronald Butters wrote:
> > >...
> > >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.
> >
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