[Ads-l] banana

[Ben Zimmer]

This sense of "banana" was added to the OED in a Sept. 2013 draft addition,
with cites back to 1970.

----
  North American (chiefly Canadian) slang (depreciative). A person of Asian
birth or descent who subscribes to typically western values and attitudes;
an oriental person regarded, esp. by other orientals, as adopting or
identifying with white culture. Cf. Oreo n.1 2.
1970   Seattle Times Mag. 5 July 9/3   These Filipinos may not be 'oreos'
or 'bananas', as blacks and other Asians depict their colleagues having
dark skins outside and a white mentality inside.
[etc.]
----

(The OED's use of "oriental" in the definition is... unfortunate.)

HDAS starts with the same 1970 cite. See also GDoS, with cites back to 1972.

https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/ag4nw3a

--bgz

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 2:54 PM James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>
wrote:

> A variation on the metaphor "Oreo cookie" = "black on the outside, white
> on the inside"
>
> Kevin Kwan _China Rich Girlfriend_  (Kwan's inferior seqeul to _Craxy Rich
> Asians_) New York: Doubleday, 2015, ISBN 978-0-385-53908-1 (hardcover) page
> 169
>
> referring to "Rachel", born in China but raised in the US:  "Rachel is
> cool, there's no bullshit with her.  And she's a total banana [footnote],
> isn't she?  Just look at how she dresses [page 170] in those  no-name
> brands, her painful lack of jewelry---she's not like any Chinese girl I've
> ever met."
>
> footnote reads "Yellow on the outside, white on the inside"
>
> - Jim Landau
>
>

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