pEshaq-na uk Jar-Jar Binks?!

[David Robertson]

LaXayEm:

My friends, I have been interested to read articles in the newspapers and
magazines reporting that some people are criticizing the character Jar-Jar
Binks, in the new "Star Wars" movie, as a racist caricature.  Among other
reasons, it is said, is that he 'speaks pidgin English'.  The
character is a great big amphibian, retorts Ahmed Best, the actor who
plays him, not an African or African-American.

The 'pidgin' issue keeps coming up in this connection.  From my point of
view it seems that mainstream culture in the USA, and elsewhere, equates
use of a pidgin language with inferior status -- and goes farther, to
equate that with being nonwhite.

Fascinating:  Chinook Jargon is one example that disproves those
equations.  It was/is a pidgin used among groups of people whose 'status'
rankings did not differ significantly.  Also it is/was a pidgin identified
with a terrifically multiethnic population, not with whites or nonwhites.

I'm not the lawyer in the family, but I like the game of 'advocatus
diaboli', so let me submit that Jar-Jar is actually an encoded tribute to
the Northwest's own distinct intercultural language.

On a more sober note I'd say that this Jar-Jar uproar reveals quite a bit
about how mainstream America looks at and from its privileged position.

Kakwa nayka tEmtEm.
Dave




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