29 replies to this topic

[Defender II]

I don't often weigh in on these types of discussions, but I felt the responses on both sides might benefit from my interest in history.

Many people educated in the United States of America (not to be confused with the other United States in North America -> Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos) received less than satisfactory history lessons, due to many factors, but in this case it was specifically withheld for decades, because people were embarrassed by the government sanctioned actions against the Issei & Nisei who lived in the western states of the US.

By Presidential executive order, based on unfounded fears about spies and espionage, Issei & Nisei were ordered to leave their homes and businesses (most with under 24 hours notice) and moved to internment camps against their will. Please realize most of them were US citizens! How would you like for your government to force you and your entire family including babies from your home and into an internment camp, with no judicial process? They were forced to accept little or nothing for their property and belongings that were left behind. When they were finally released, they returned to find people and signs telling them they weren’t wanted and to leave, such as “NO JAPS ALLOWED”, using the term “Jap” or “Japs” (all caps or not)! It was and is an offensive derogatory term; even so, I don't believe Ax intended his original post which had "JAP" in it, to be anything other than his choice to shorten made in Japan to 3 characters, even though many people use JPN, and did not intent to offend anyone by it.

Please realize that many of the returning Issei & Nisei had served in the US military during the war. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed of Nisei and through heroic actions during combat in World War II became the most decorated regiment in US military history!

Yankee was, and to some is, an offensive and derogatory term, but the colonial Americans took the term and made a joke of it. I don’t think the term “JAP” will be made into a joke anytime by those who suffered the humiliation of the internment camps, or returning heroes prevented from living in the homes they left.

Edited by Defender II, Today, 3:28 AM.

[Crazy Climber]

atari181, on Thu May 24, 2012 4:12 PM, said:

well, Ill just throw my two cents in as I know Newtype5 probably better than anyone here. I know based upon the last few weeks that my opinion is apparently not held in high regard, but.

Jap is definately a racist term in the Japenese culture. Newtype5 has first hand experience on this.
The comments are based upon previous comments from awhile ago.(Jap is used many times around here) wether Ax was one of the people who said It before, I cannot say. According to him it was.
It is True that the US has become a place of everyone being oversensitive all the time. Not sure this is the case here. I'm sure most of you have very "Passionate" feelings on this as I know he does. It is a no win situation for everyone to continue this thread(might as well be talking politics) as people can become very mad about things like this.
Maybe a PM between the two would go a long way?

I am sure that he is done with this thread and wont comment any further, calling him a chicken wont help(His real name isn't Marty McFly)

I think this is a Lose Lose situation

No, newtype5 is the loser here. Ax did not use the abv JAP anywhere in this topic and newtype5 felt it was his civic duty to remind everyone that 2 YEARS AGO he used the abv JAP to sell a video game of Japan orgin (which is currently being done by over 2700 Ebay sellers by the way) and even though since then ax has gone out of his way NOT to use it, thats just not good enough for newtype5. The ONLY reason newtype5 posted that was so no Japanese members would help Ax, he had zero intention of helping him and just wanted to accuse Ax of being racist again, even though he did absolutely nothing wrong in this post. He really just lost a ton of respect with me.

[SEgamer]

Ax, I think you just start a new thread called "Any honkies know how to translate ***anese?"

[Random Terrain]

Can somebody post a list of racist terms that may not be commonly known so we can avoid them?

[Emehr]

Random Terrain, on Fri May 25, 2012 6:12 AM, said:

Can somebody post a list of racist terms that may not be commonly known so we can avoid them?

Better yet, how about we teach people how to differentiate between actual racism and just using words? Getting offended by a word with no mean-spirited or racist context says more about the person offended than the one who actually said the word. The stupid thing is, as this thread proves, people can get offended when "the word" isn't even used! Why should we train people to avoid using "forbidden words" when we should instead be teaching people how to interpret speech and intent? That would go a lot further than creating an ever-expanding list as people discover new words to get offended by.