[Ads-l] banana

[Wilson Gray]

> I don't think "banana" is "chiefly Canadian".

Neither do I.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jook-sing

The Listener - Volume 122 - Page 14
https://books.google.com › books
1989 - ‎Snippet view
FOUND INSIDE - PAGE 14
GABRIELLE MACPHEPRAN describes their predicament. _Yellow on the outside
and white on the inside — I'm a banana_,' so says Simon Dyu, a 17-year-old
Chinese student from the Wirral, across the Mersey from Liverpool's
Chinatown.

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 3:52 PM Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I don't think "banana" is "chiefly Canadian".  I've encountered it in
> California since the 1990s.  Like a lot of these terms, it's going to be
> seen as deprecation in many cases when used by others, a slur when used by
> white people in particular, but not generally a negative when used as
> self-description.  E.g., my Chinese-Scottish-American girlfriend in the
> late 1990s used the term to describe her entire immediate family, with
> humor.  I'm wondering where OED got "Canadian" from, since their cite is
to
> a US Pacific Northwest newspaper.  Speaking of which, said girlfriend
> actually went to college in Washington state, and may have picked up the
> term there, though I heard it a few other times when I lived in San
> Francisco (1995–2004).  I'm in Oakland now (2012–) and don't specifically
> recall hearing it on this side of the SF Bay. I have heard "Oreo", but
> "acting white" or "talking white" are more common expressions over here.
> More to the point, when I lived in Toronto (eastern Canada), I did not
> encounter "banana", nor when I lived in New Mexico, the UK, or the
> DC/Maryland area.  Very anecdotal, of course, but I would suspect the PNW
> is where it originated.
>
> --
> Stanton McCandlish
> McCandlish Consulting
> 5400 Foothill Blvd Suite B
> Oakland CA 94601-5516
>
> +1 415 234 3992
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/SMcCandlish
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 12:14 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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
> > >
> > >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



--
-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

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