"Ruby Bernal wasn't self-conscious about her American Indian heritage until her adolescence, when a band of teenage boys called her "squaw" during a drive-by heckling.
"It's like saying the 'N-word' to a black person," says Bernal, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock, one of five tribes with reservations in Idaho.
"To me, it's a slap in the face. It belittles me and it belittles all Indian women." ....
Now one of the Northwest's most influential American Indian tribes is campaigning to wipe the word off the names of 11 creeks, bluffs and canyons in Idaho.
Source
An earlier (2001!) episode in this "controversy" is recorded here (scroll down). I suspect that the term is only derogatory if you think it is.
There is a derogatory term for an ignorant and uncultured Australian: "ocker". Most Australians accused of being an ocker, however, would do little more than laugh. "Too right, mate" (a form of good-humored agreement) would be the most likely reply. (I guess the word is much like "redneck" in the USA). Rather sad that so much of the world lacks the maturity to respond that way.
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I am a white American. I am married to a first-generation Filipina immigrant. She looks like a Native American. You know, what we here in America used to call an "Indian."
ReplyDeleteShe and I both think it is funny for me to introduce her to people by saying, "Never mind her, she's just an Injun."
My wife's family calls me the "Howlie." That basically means I am a "honky" or a "gringo".
Gee, I get so upset about that.
Fuck all of the people who can't take a joke. Let us, for God's sake, get past all this racialist crap.
the left wants to perpetuate racialism.
ReplyDeletethe left does not want people to be taken as individuals.
the left feels that you are who you are by virtue of belong to certain groups/classes: your gender, sexual id, age, race, religion all m,ean ore to them than they should. they LIKE to base hiring, admissions, set asides, quotas on them.
in the name of egalitarianism they perpetuate RACISM.
but when it comes to SECURITY, they oppose sensible racial profiling.
they are 180' WRONG.
ion everything.