Comments on: Bush and Harry Use the P-Word

By: Iain

Iain — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:25:06 +0000

I agree that the P word is offensive. But Colonel Molerat’s comment reminds me of a nice comment by George Silberbauer about the shift from referring to Bushmen to referring to San. He said, if I remember right, that this was just transferring a term of abuse from one language in which it was clear that it was offensive into another where it was less clear, but no less offensive.
Of course the whole naming thing invites this. How many names people have for their own group translate as “us” or “people”? Where the name for the others is “people not like us and we don’t really like them” or, of course, most famously “people who do not speak like us”. The greeks had a word for the last group “Barbarians”. This feature of naming may be a human universal.

By: Colonel Molerat

Colonel Molerat — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:44:46 +0000

Context: I was born in Liverpool (North-West England) in 1987.
As far as I can remember, I was always taught that ‘paki’ was racist, but would encounter people who still used it out of ignorance rather than racism, including people my own age – I get the impression that many (white British) people simply didn’t know that it had become insulting. People would always know what it meant when a racist term was used to describe a black person, but it just didn’t cross their mind that ‘paki’ may cause similar offence.
It was, of course, used deliberately by racist people as a denigratory term.
Currently, I see it as equally insulting as the ‘n-word’ (are there filters? I feel a bit silly skirting around a word when analysing it), but just not as ingrained in our culture. I think it’s at that stage that happened with the ‘n-word’, where all educated people know to avoid it, but well-meaning people (especially the old) may still use it without realising.
Similarly, isn’t calling people who live at the North Pole ‘Eskimos’ insulting, as ‘Eskimo’ refers to only one tribe? ‘Inuit’ refers to everybody in that area, or belonging to that culture, or something similar. Most people would still use ‘Eskimo’, even if they weren’t in the slightest bit racist. As others here have mentioned, it’s the baggage attached to the word that causes the offense, and awareness raised by the people it refers to (and, after a point, everybody else) that eventually ends its usage.

By: Pyre

Pyre — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:45:57 +0000

I see I’m not the only one getting suckered by SB’s “post failed” message.

By: JJ

JJ — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:42:36 +0000

Not to be too picky, but for Canadians isn’t it spelled “Canuck” not “Kanook”? Or are these different? And if that’s what you were getting at, I wouldn’t even call it “highly variable” as it’s not a negative term (or shouldn’t be to anyone, I think) as it is the name of Vancouver’s NHL hockey team (also, Calgary’s rugby team, I think).

By: JamieJ

JamieJ — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:12:56 +0000

By: JamieJ

JamieJ — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:01:14 +0000

By: jj

jj — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:58:59 +0000

By: jj

jj — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:56:30 +0000

By: bluefoot

bluefoot — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:49:17 +0000

SimonG: I don’t know where you are, but in the Boston area, “Packy store” in the 70s and 80s was colloquial for “package store” i.e. someplace you could buy beer/alcohol and a “packy run” was a trip to said store to buy beer.

The term “Paki” is indeed offensive, though possibly less so than the n-word. I may find it offensive, rather than descriptive as some folks here have stated, since I’ve mostly heard it used in the context of “Paki go home” “dirty Paki” and “those f-ing Pakis.”

By: SimonG

SimonG — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:32:03 +0000

I can recall back in the ’70s and even ’80s referring to the local corner shop as a “Paki store”, with no racism intended. It was just convenient verbal short-hand. This was in various places, but not those with particularly large asian populations.
Many of the shops were probably run by Indians; some possibly by Chinese or even folk with no connection with Asia.

I don’t recall ever using “Paki” to refer to people. I think not so much because I perceived it as a racist slur but because it implied ignorance: many of the people so referred to probably weren’t of Pakistani origin. There was perhaps a sense that the sort of people who DID use the term tended to be racist.

I didn’t have much social contact with asians of any sort until I went to university in the ’80s and subsequently got a job. As far as I recall I only knew one Indian (not Pakistani) girl at school and no other non-white. Obviously I just referred to her by name.

So I guess for me it seems it started off as a fairly neutral term but because of its association with racists like the NF I came to see it as a racist term, although not a serious one: more the sort of thing which nice people just don’t say.