(Post 5) I could fill a book with what I don’t know

In recent class discussion we talked about socially acceptable terms for different races. This is an uncomfortable subject for me, mostly because I’m an ignorant small town white girl, but also because in my opinion discussing race terminology is further acknowledging racial separation.

I don’t understand why it’s culturally accepted to call an East Indian person “brown” or a Caucasian person “white”, but it’s faux paux to call an African American person “black”. You have to refer to them as “person of colour” or “African American”, even though we are all technically a colour, we are all technically persons and we don’t refer to Caucasian people as “Caucasian American”. On the opposite side of the same coin it’s offensive to call a person of colour “coloured” because it touches too closely on a time of segregation. Why is it offensive to call a person from Pakistan “Paki” but not to call a person from Australia “Aussie”? Another term I don’t understand being offensive is “mulatto”, which to me sounds like a delicious drink I’d order at Starbucks rather than being something hateful.

“I’ll have a Grande caramel mulatto, extra whip, please”

I brought the topic up to my roommate who refers to herself as south Asian. She told me a story about how in her first few months of living in Canada she was trying to cross the road on a cross-walk where a car had stopped at the designated stop sign waiting for her. In her country cars have the right-of-way on the road so she automatically stopped to wait for the car to pass when a strangers told questioned her and said “why are you stopped? Pedestrians have the right of way”. She was immediately flustered and angry thinking that this stranger had called a derogatory term.

I’m sure if we stopped telling people certain words are bad, they would lose their meaning and become non-existent or even take on a completely different meaning like in the case of the following word that is common place:

Gyp

informal

verb

1      cheat or swindle (someone).

 "Man, five dollars for a candy bar? What a gyp!"

This term is originated from the word Gypsy, but nobody in this day would make that conclusion because the word has lost meaning. This is why I think the action of simply talking about race is reinforcing the separation of different racial group. 

http://www.cracked.com/article_16967_8-racist-words-you-use-every-day.html#ixzz3IuhAY6py