Are you serious about that? Really?

Wow, a country where the word "Jap" is not only insulting to a whole country's inhabitants but also to a big group of nice, young, Nuyorikan ladies is doing a mighty good job. Plus, some indian freinds of mine lived in the southwest of the US - they got some stories to tell you.

serious about which part?

i went to high school in canada, college and now grad school in the states. i get to meet a lot of international students, and their stories tell me that asians are heavily discriminated against in england. that is absolutely not teolerated in canada. (although in some schools, asians are the majority, so maybe "reverse" discrimination is in place )

in the states, seems like a somewhat bigger issue. places like cali and NY are fine (where i'm schooled), but i've heard horror stories about the midwest and the south.

from what i read about european soccer fans i can't imagine they deal actively enough with racism. and yeah, the french riot, of course. i read that france is beginning to deal with the issue.

germany i don't know much about at all. some of my german friends seem very nice and know perfectly well these things. but then they are phd's, so they had better know. i know there's huge turkish population in germany, and from the precious little i've read about them they're not getting treated very well.

i don't know much about spain, italy, etc.

but australia and new zealand i'd be interested in knowing more. they're more like canada than US i hope?

yah, exactly. just look at all the lovely beach scenes of arabs being chased down beaches by an australian mob. lovely. reminds me of the fun we had in Miami. Lol.

BTW, I was referring to the US, not to Canada. Love it there, lived in Toronto for some time.

I don't think the term is especially offensive personally, but I don't understand why anyone is bothering to defend it here. Why do you so tenaciously cling to your right to say the word? This isn't a democracy, and it's not a big deal. At least I think it isn't. Is there... is there some reason I should care about my sudden loss of rights in using this word?

It's like if someone told me that I could no longer say "Schnarglefarpers" in an internet forum. I'd be a little confused, but I wouldn't begin an uprising, as I have only used that word once in my entire life, in the sentence direcly preceding this one. Get back to me when "the" or "it" or "Ni" is banned, and then we'll talk about critical issues in speech limitations.

 Chink is a shortening of Chinese and is derived most likely fron Qing or China.

 Some germans used an eastern symbol of luck and life etc. last century and went on a murderous killing spree now people don't like seeing that symbol around, works the same way

some americans took the name of a perfectly normal plant, attached it to their president and now no one wants to even talk to the poor plant anymore.

A_T, you are right, some things get tainted by history and should be left there. but then if you take the symbol we talk about and attach it to a gorgeous south Korean temple, it gets a different meaning. its all about the context. I am very sure most people could say "japanese" in an insulting way. you can even say "kiddie" or "money" in an insulting way.

But it's not an obvious abbreviation of the word.

There needs to be a distinction between bad words and words that are put to bad ends.

Various words (nigger, chink, cracker) are bad in and of themselves. The words don't bear any resemblance to the name or a characteristic of the group they describe and have no real use other than to insult. There exist other perfectly uncontroversial names for these groups.

Others retain legitimate uses as shorthand. 'Black' remains a generally acceptable way to refer to people of African descent. Likewise 'white' for Caucasians. These words are not meant in a derogatory fashion and are used merely to save space. While someone could certainly use the word 'black' in a derogatory fashion, the word itself is fine for use in polite society.

I think one also needs to consider that two words that are spelled the same don't necessarily have the same meaning. 'Jap' as a slur and 'Jap' as an abbreviation of 'Japanese' are two entirely separate words with separate definitions.

To my mind, anger at people who use the word 'Jap' in an entirely innocent fashion is almost as bad as the vitriol generated whenever someone uses the word 'niggardly'.

 Oh boy, where to start. Nigger, nigra, etc. All decend from romance language names for black. Nigra - french, niger- latin, etc. Chink has alternately been described as Asian eyes being slitty like the small slits in armors, and as I said before, is probably a shortening of Chinese, or Qing. Cracker being a reference to the whiteness of skin. They have plenty of resemblence to people, they are just use in a deragatory way.

Like I said before though - just because you don't find it offense to say in private company does not mean that it is acceptable in a place that anyone can read your remarks. The fact that you know something is offensive yet still find it fine to use is a tad perturbing.

Niggardly isn't even of the same language origin as "nigger" -its of norse origin. Yes, I know. But, not even in the same ballpark.

What does "niggardly" mean?