"Declan Murphy" <declan_murphy@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:40BD40FA.80002@hotmail.com...

> In Japan the half-something is by definition half-foreign. And in the
> Japanese context it doesn't matter if someone is half-czech or
> half-slovak, since there are basically two ethnicities in the world,
> nihonjin and gaigin.
>
> I understand what you are trying to say, but you are applying the
> American context. Of course in that context the "half-something" has the
> emphasis on the "something". You are talking about the context of a
> country (sepponia) that specifically asks for race on official
> documents. I have US citizens writing "Japanese-American" or "white,
> non-hispanic" into the nationality section of their applications to
> Yamasa because some of them are so damn confused about the clear
> difference between ethnicity and nationality.

I agree that people in the U.S. are pretty screwed up but this doesn't
really have anything to do with our discussion does it? When discussing the
word "haafu" we are, by definition, discussing race aren't we?

> I agree pretty much with Rodney - you are perceiving the use of haafu in
> Japanese to be negative, when in almost all daily usage a native speaker
> of Japanese is using it as a positive or in the majority of cases simply
> as a neutral statement. I've been a "half" all my life, my
> half-kashmiri, half-french nephews and nieces will be what? Half-irish
> or half-french when in Australia? half-australian or half-irish or
> half-french when in India? Both? Whats next? Half-muslim? Who cares? -
> they, like me, won't. And when they come to Japan for a visit they will
> all be gaigin, and their cousins in Japan haafu-gaigin.

Ever heard a junior high student in Japan call another kid "haafu?" I think
you are thinking only of the situations in which you have heard the word
used and not all the situations in which the kids themselves hear it used.

Look, I'm not "haafu" myself and I certainly use the word when discussing
half-Japanese kids in Japanese with my wife, for example. But I know more
than a handful of people who are "haafu" and who have mixed feelings about
the word. I would certainly refrain from using it when speaking to someone
is "half" unless I knew they were comfortable with it. And it's not as if
I'm going to get upset at everyone who uses the word "haafu" with respect to
our kids once we have them. But, while I certainly don't plan on encouraging
overly sensitive feelings about such things with our own kids, I suspect it
will be an issue that will have to be dealt with at some point.

Jeff