From: "Fabian" Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet Subject: [fj.life.in-japan] Re: Oriental (Was: Do Japanese Speak Japanese?) Date: 12 Jun 1999 23:43:53 -0000 Subject: Re: Oriental (Was: Do Japanese Speak Japanese?) From: Tom Jordaan Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan, soc.culture.japan, sci.lang.japan Jeff Schrepfer wrote: > Gerald B Mathias wrote: >> >> Jeff Schrepfer (jeff@schrepfer.com) wrote: >> : This reminds me of something interesting I saw recently on television. >> : Jay Leno (a late night talk show host in the U.S.) had his wife on his >> : show briefly to try and raise awareness of the plight of women in >> : Afghanistan. During the conversation she made a comparison with what >> : used to go on in South Africa during the apartheid years and she >> : referred to South African blacks as "African Americans." This example >> : makes it quite clear that in her mind she has merely substituted the >> : word 'black' with 'African American.' >> >> Wonderful! Did anyone on the show react to this? > Unfortunately no. After all it was Jay Leno's own wife. He wasn't going > to say anything and the audience wasn't a collection of subhuman > primates like you might find on the Jerry Springer show so no one yelled > out anything derogatory. Here's another one for someone's collection, from Gavin Esler's book 'The United States of Anger' (Penguin paperback, ISBN 0-14-026927-4 if anyone's interested; p75): 'During the 1993 seige of David Koresh's compound in Texas, I travelled to Waco airport to meet the family of a British member of Koresh's Branch Davidian cult. I knew that the father was flying to Texas in the hope of rescuing his son from the compound. I was told thjat the man was middle-aged, black, and from the English Midlands, but I had no othed description. While I stood at the airport with other British journalists waiting for the flight to arrive, a white American television reporter, who had also been tipped off about the incoming relative, sidled up to me. "How will you recognise him?" she asked. "Well, he is British and black," I replied. "Oh," she said, "he is African-American." It is now regarded as politically correct to refer to black Americans as "African-Americans". But this was a *British* man who happened to be black. "No," I protested, amused at the mistake. "The man is *not* African-American. He is British." "But," the reported persisted, "you *said* he was African-American." "No, I said he was British and black." There was an embarrassed silence as, slowly, the last glimmers of common sense tried to reassert themselves. The journalist was adrift in the new rules, desperate not to offend anyone, yet managing precisely the opposite. "Well," she wondered, "could I say he is African-British?" Before I could answer, behind me a British voice called sarcastically, "Maybe you should try African-West Indian-British. Just to be on the safe side."'