"Declan Murphy" <declan_murphy@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:40BD5830.1020409@hotmail.com...
> > 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?
>
> Of course it has relevance to the discussion. The people in the thread
> taking objection to the term so far are a) not a half themselves b) from
> countries that have troubled histories with regards to racial issues and
> c) applying the context from their country of origin to Japan without
> relativity. No native Japanese speaker is going to jump through hoops
> over the half-czech half-slovak example.

Well, in my case, these factors play no role whatsoever. Everything I'm
saying is from many years of living in Japan and having these things pointed
out by close friends who actually are "half," who grew up in Japan and who
explained to me the mixed feelings they had regarding the word. Also, as I
said, it isn't so much the word itself as it is its use as a label rather
than as a descriptive term. People generally don't like labels. I'm
partially playing devil's advocate here because I don't feel that
particularly strong about the use of this word. I'm simply pointing out that
some people *are* sensitive to it and that there is nothing wrong with being
a little sensitive to that fact. So far as I can tell the vast majority of
Japanese don't intend any offense with the word gaijin either, but that
doesn't mean it isn't offensive to some.

Jeff