pastel
I would've initially assumed it to be an abbreviation much as "Mex" is for Mexican and "Brit" is for British.

Heh. My abbreviation would be Ice.

That's cool.

The world would be a better place if we all learned to just relax and let it go. I say, more racist terms. As a white guy, I want a good racist term for white people. Cracker isn't offensive, it's a food... and Honkey is just silly.

In the original post it was mentioned that Mr.G was teaching for 30 years. If we assume he started teaching when he was out of college at age 23, he would be 53 years old.

His parents were young adults or adults or possibly even fought in World War II. Then the Japanese were Japs or Nips and evil buck-toothed, slant-eyed devils. In the back of his mind, somewhere, somehow those memories may still be there.

More Americans died on 7 Dec 1941 than on 9-11-01. It was a big wake-up call and stirred up deep feelings. Go to the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and see if you can keep from crying and wonder what all those Japanese tourists are saying...(More Japanese visit the memorial than mainland Americans. I also wonder if those Japanese visited the Punchbowl Cemetary)

Put these things in context and the racism disappears as it is based on predjudice, feelings and ignorance. Mr. G was being defensive because of what happened.

I used to put Am. for American, Br. for British etc. Imperial Japan (WWII Japan) I would put up IJ. or just J. (For Pearl Harbor I actually wrote IJN for Imperial Japanese Navy as that is who attacked)

Trust me as a teacher who writes tons of stuff on the board whatever you can shorten you do. The hand gets tired very fast when writing vertically. Don't criticize unless you've done the milage in their shoes. ;)

It takes two to tango as they say.

Clearly the student was being oversensitive and saw an ethnic slur where only an abbreviation existed.

But the teacher, having become aware of the misunderstanding, and being the supposed adult in the room, might have taken a less adversarial tone and explained it was an abbreviation and nothing more, and even offered to erase it to avoid any offense. Maybe he might have even use the opportunity to teach his students a lesson about mistaken impressions and fostering understanding.

Sounds like we got two knucleheads instead intent on acting badly.

Racist terms are like swear words, if you don't take offense to them- they have no meaning and they won't be used over time. If you do take offense to them, they will be used. Saying "Don't say that word! It's bad!" is the worst thing you can do and will only make it worst and it will give the word more shock vale thus the word will have greater meaning if chosen to be used against a person.

Older people tend to be more racist because some people lost there loved ones in a war, you can't wave a magic wand and make them feel better, I'm sure that Japanese old folk hate us yanks too. And he wasn't being racist to be fair, I think he was more pissed that the guy thought he was.

The teacher should know better. How are is it to write Japanese?

At the same time, it probably wasn't a racist motivation, and some tact can generally get stuff like that fixed.

Generally, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble just by writing out Japanese and leaving it at that. But most people, when confronted, rarely make the smart choice, they make the defensive one.

There's this weird idea that people occasionally throw out that only white people can be racist. Grandparents of a friend of mine are Korean and they are the most racist people I've heard. But I think they just hate everyone for not being like them. A Chinese writer for a local paper got fired for writing an article called "why I hate black people"

I think he was trying to make a point. Perhaps he was bitter about being counted by a student, and it mysteriously stuck with him, for whatever reason. He's not racist, it's just a human mistake. It was insensitive, sure, but it shouldn't be a red flag duct taped to him for the rest of his life- after teaching for 30 years, most teachers stop giving a damn, frankly. Imo, it's not justifiable, but perfectly logical.

I think that we have managed to produce at least two generations of extremely thin-skinned people that have this notion that they have some inerent right to never be offended. My grandfather's generation would have never thrown an 'all-stop' over a word written on a blackboard. They were too busy doing things like defeating Hitler, rebuilding Europe and helping America emerge as a super power to ever worry that someone might have 'called them a name'.
We are so over-sensitized and so PC panicky that we can't even teach history accurately and use terms that were common at the time. And I suspect the generation coming up now will be even more so. The bar on what is 'offensive' or 'racist' keeps getting higher and higher. It's a doubleplusungood world.

Yeah, next thing you'll know, blacks and white will want to marry. Sheesh!

mapaghimagsik
Yeah, next thing you'll know, blacks and white will want to marry. Sheesh!

... dogs and cats living together, a disaster of Biblical proportions.

Considering that Halle Barry and Mariah Carey are both the results of mixed race marriages, I say we need more of them.

You're right about the two generations of very thin-skinned people, though it can be said that during our grandparents day (or my parents) name calling was common because people really were racist. (Every Irishman was a Mick,Italians were always WOPS or Eye-tyes etc)

Now society isn't as inherently racist and we can't get over a few words. How about the word "niggardly" ?

When I taught African geography to my class (mine was the only white face) the children kept pronouncing Niger and Nigeria; Nigger and Niggeria. That led to a discussion of the term and where it came from and what it means and thereby disarming it. Confront racism with knowledge and you can make the words meaningless.

bravo1102
Now society isn't as inherently racist and we can't get over a few words. How about the word "niggardly" ?

A word that has no racial connotatins at all, and if we taught the origin of words perhaps a bit more efficiently, that adminsitrator a few years back wouldn't have gotten into so much trouble.