"Asia-attic"

[Wilson Gray]

Back around 1940, we used to go see the chapter-play, "Drums of Fu Manchu
(1940), ... a 15-chapter Republic movie serial very loosely based on the
novel by Sax Rohmer."

Naturally, we recognized the white people as white people, we had no idea
who the other people, the bad men, were. When I asked my mother what kind
of people they were, she answered with what I heard as "_Asia-Attic_."
While watching a re-run of the '03 neo-neo-blaxploitation flick, "Malibu's
Most Wanted," black actor Anthony Anderson rhymes, while preparing to send
white actor Jamie Kennedy, a whigger, to rob a Korean-owned convenience
store,

An' if th' _Asia-Attic_
Try to gi' ya some static

For a while, I thought that this word was used only of Fu-Manchu and evil
minions, since WWII introduced me to the good Chinese with cute, up-slanted
eyes and to the bad Japs with ugly, side-slanted, slitted eyes. After I
learned to read, it became clear that the word _Asiatic_ was most likely
the source of my mother's "Asia-attic." However, in my entire life, I've
never had occasion to speak " Asia-attic" < "Asiatic" and this is the first
time that I've noticed anybody else speaking it.

Italians had ugly, down-slanted eyes, the mirror image of Chinese eyes.
But, the Germans had ordinary, African-European round eyes. But they wore
monocles and spoke and marched in a really bizarre manner.
--
-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
Ca, 1940, we used to go

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