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Food slurs is an essay in dialogue-form, based on an cross cultural
e-mail conversation between Eric Wrisley, the editor of CautionaryTale
Magazine who lives in Ohio, and Dorothee Lang, editor of the
BluePrintReview, who lives in Germany. The mail dialogue starts
with a note about depictions of racism, and moves on to ethnical
food, blacks and whites of thought and skin colour, to shades
of political correctness and situational incorrectness.
from: eric
Did you see this link on McSweeney’s?
http://mcsweeneys.net/2006/2/6lloyd.html
Conversations
I've Had During A Normal Day In Los Angeles, Modified To Include
The Shocking Depiction Of Racism Found
In Paul Haggis's
2004 Film Crash,
by Brendon Lloyd.
from: doro
“CO-WORKER:
I can't freakin' stand those Indians”
“ME: I'm part Cherokee.”
“CO-WORKER: Then why don't you go smoke a peace pipe and get the
hell out of my country?”
That’s rough. Do people really talk like this?
Okay. Ignore the question. It just sounds so weird to me because
of the racial references that are uncommon here. I mean, there
aren’t that many Cherokees living in Germany. But you might
hear Turkish men being addressed with the line: “Was willst
du, Knoblauchfresser?”—“What
do you want, garlic-eater?”
from:
eric
Wait wait wait wait WAIT.... You actually hear people call Turks "garlic-eater?" And
is that offensive to the turkish man in this scene?
from: doro
Yes, you sometimes hear people call Turks "garlic-eaters".
And you sometimes hear people call Italians "Spaghetti-Fresser"—"spaghetti-devourer".
But I would suggest to not try this while visiting Germany.
Or, if you try, then RUN—as
yes, you bet that this is understood as offensive.
from:
eric
Spaghetti-devourer. I would be amazed when I hear it. Because
i would be like, "you can't be serious, but you are." But
then, sometimes Americans call Mexicans “beaners”.
Not as much here, because there aren't many Mexicans around.
But in places where more Mexicans live, there are those who
talk like that.
Seen like that, it is a little amusing that racial/ethnic
slurs are sometimes based on the food people eat - garlic-eater,
beaner,
kraut, limey (british). Actually, the more I think of it, the
funnier it is, because it is so stupid that that's all the
better we can do—to
make fun of the food.
I don't know why they call the irish "micks." I think
something more descriptive, such as "bog trotter" is
funnier. potato-eater would be the best food one.
Now this is making me hungry. (For colcannon.)
from: doro
Krauts for Germans. I heard that before, but it’s still
odd, as it’s really not very popular any more to eat Kraut.
Only in autumn, then there are some small town who have a “Krautfest” with
lots of food stalls.
More food-related slurs this made me think of: rice-eater (Chinese).
Smoerebroed-muncher (Swedens).
Vodka-drinker (Russians)
And it's true, it's really the cheapest way to mock someone from
another culture, to make fun of the eating habits. But then,
eating habits are a basic of daily culture. So this hits right
in the daily habits of people.
from:
eric
About
rice: I used to work with a guy who—this
is lame—when
we had to wait to hear back from a client, he would
sometimes
say, "we'll just let them stew in their juice for a while." Meaning
wait and let them make a decision. But we had a vietnamese
client named Bau, and everyone liked him, so I don't think
my boss meant anything bad when he said, "We'll just
let old Bau stew in his rice for a while."
I'm going to make up my own random food-related slurs. "Ice
cream eater!" "Get away from me, you milk-drinker." Or
non-food related. "Belt-buckler."
from: doro
Milk-drinker actually a teasing name here: “Milchbubi”—“little
milk-boy.”
It’s tossed from the big muscle guys to those who are slim
and don’t have muscles.
“Was willst du, Milchbubi?”—“Got
a problem, milkiboy?”
And
some 2 or 3 years ago, there was a hype of teasing names that
went along your ideas, to
be tossed
randomly at random people,
without any further reflection of fact and sense:
„
Bleistiftspitzer“—„pencil-sharpener“
and
things like Hotline-caller. or Fuss-föner.
from:
eric
I
can't believe someone beat me to milk-drinker. Wouldn't be
all that offensive, I guess.
But Fuss-föner. What does it mean? It sounds fun. "Listen
here, Fussföner, I ordered a SOY latte!!"
from: doro
Smile. That would make you a soy-latte-drinker.
"Hey, soy-latte-drinker, you think you are somewhat cooler
than a fussföner? Well let me tell you the tough truth:
you aren't."
Fuss-föner: someone who dries his feet with the hair dryer,
to make sure they get all dry. Same category like the Duschgel-Anwärmer:
one who warms up the showergel before applying it on the
skin.
I think it all started with an overload of political correctness
that erupted into situational incorrectness on all levels. You
didn't have that in Ohio?
from:
eric
Well,
we certainly have political correctness that goes too far.
But not so far as to have non-namecalling names. My
kids do
sometimes. "You eraser head." Things like that—it
means nothing but sounds like something.
Oddly, it used to be that a man who draws engineering drawings
and blueprints was a draftsman. Now it is drafter. That is
fine. A policeman is a police officer—a
patrolman is a trooper. Waiters
and waitresses are servers. Stewardess is flight attendant.
Those are all fine.
But to go so far as to make up the names. And then there
are others like "mentally challenged," and differently-abled.
And then some people call short people "vertically challenged." On
the Ohio drivers license, on the back, there are special categories,
and one is "shortness of stature," for short people.
Some people are "beauty-challenged."
For the record, I wouldn't order a soy latte, for fear of
being accused of being man-challenged. A girly man. And while
I don't
usually use the hair dryer for my hair, let alone my feet,
I am not ashamed to say: I have been known to warm the shower
gel.
There's no shame in that. Is there?
from: doro
I have been known to warm the shower gel, too. No shame, as long
as no one gets to know about it.
“Vertically challenged.” This one I heard somewhere. It
really leaves you clueless what is meant at first. And another
word I came across today, in the book I am reading right
now—it's
the yearly diary of Christa Wolf, a German writer who
lived in East Germany until the reunion of Germany. It's
a fascinating book, starting 1960 and ending 2000. Every year,
Wolf described
her current life by describing one day, the 27th September.
But back to the word: in the diary entry of 1966, she mentions
the
race riots that happened in San Francisco at that time, and
refers to them as: Negeraufstand. "Negroe-uprise".
She didn't mean this offensive or negative, it was just the
word used for
the black people back then: Neger. And even in the seventies,
there was this creamy candy with chocolate cover called "Negerkuss” here
in Germany—"negroe-kiss" .Later
they renamed it "Schokokuss"—"chocolate-kiss" to
avoid any racial association.
How are those called in the US?
from:
eric
I
don't know what we call those kind of candies. Marshmallow
cremes, or chocolate cremes. Maybe cordials, but that usually
has fruit, like a cherry in the center. and chocolate kisses
are like hershey kisses—you
have those?
They look like a
drop, with a little curl on top.
There are a kind of nuts—filbert
might be the official name, but some times they are called
brazil nuts. They
are bigger than
the other nuts in a dish of mixed nuts. When my mom was little,
they called them "nigger toes." But that was many
years ago, now she would never say that.
Which makes me think of the time when I used to deliver furniture
with this kid who was semi retarded, I mean mentally challenged.
slow. and we drove through a part of the city where there
were a lot of black people standing around, working at a
car wash—pretty
stereotypical. and he said, "what do
we call those people?" And I said “what people
do you mean?”,
he said, "you know, the darkies." And of course
I about died, and told him, "african american? or black?
but not darkies." And all of a sudden he remembered,
and beamed, and ROLLED DOWN THE WINDOW and waved, yelling,
(cheerfully), "Hey,
negrettes!"
We didn't wait around to find out if that was acceptable
terminology.
That's interesting, the concept of Negeraufstand—race
riots seem like such a far away thing, for people our age.
But
even in the early 90s there were the LA riots that were racial,
over
the rodney king verdict. Do you remember that? Or was it
a big deal there?
Right around then, I was painting a house where a crack dealer
lived—mad
maxx—and
he was sitting on the steps telling me that he could beat
me up and no one would care, since
it would
look ok that the black guy beat up a white guy instead of
the other way around for a change. A couple days later, he
told
my brother and me that "jimi hendrix was the baddest
motherfucker to ever cut a record," and then went upstairs
and threw a chair out the window at me. Actually it came
through the window,
glass flying everywhere. Then he came downstairs and took
Ian's hammer and ran down the street, hitting street signs
with it.
Ian chased him and was all, "give me my hammer!" and
maxx gave it back. The next day he got kicked out of the
apartment because they didn't want crack dealers throwing
chairs at the
white boys, I guess. black rage, they called it back then.
from: doro
That
story about the negrettes is great—and
the other one about the crack dealer is scary. I think
what was so
good about LA
Crash that the film addressed the racial theme through
different views, and there was none all-bad
or all-good character. No
black and white of thought, just different shades.
Which makes me remember something a Canadian said to me
once, when we talked about travelling, and about options
in life.
He was still hurt from a relationship that didn’t
work out, not because they didn’t love each other,
but because they were from completely different backgrounds—she
was European and worked in a huge company, he loved to
be in the wilderness—and
so they didn’t find a place and a way to make
it work. That’s why he went to Asia, to get away from
it, and also because he had this dream of doing canoe trips
there,
in the mangrove forest of Ao Nang. This is what he said about
success in life after I told him that I have no job at the
moment, and am not sure in which field to work when I get
back home: "you
are young, you are intelligent, you are white. how could
you not be successful."
This line, it staid with me. I think I never have heard anyone
putting it as bluntly as that.
from:
eric
What
an interesting equation: young, intelligent, white = success.
I think looks and height play a part as well. If
you have all
those, then it is hard to fail. but the intelligence is important,
to know how to capitalize on the other factors
But at the same time it’s true about race attitudes
being grey. In Crash, you first see the Matt Dillon character
as being
a total jerk, but then come to see him in a different way,
and you think, how can someone have both of those natures
within
themselves, but we all do in some ways. We're all a little
grey.
from:
doro
We’re all a little grey. That’s true.
So.. where does this leave us now?
from:
eric
—in
the greyettes?
-------------------------------
References:
Brendon Lloyd, “Conversations I've Had During A Normal
Day In Los Angeles, Modified To Include The Shocking Depiction
Of Racism Found In Paul Haggis's 2004 Film Crash”, published
in McSweeney’s, 2006
Christa Wolf, “Ein Tag im Jahr 1960-2000”, published
by Luchterhand, 2003
Bios: Dorothee
Lang is a German writer and net artist. She is
author of Masala
Moments, a travel novel about India, and editor
of
the BluePrintReview, an online journal of unintended prose
and poetry. To see some of her work, visit her virtual gallery
at
blueprint21.de.
Eric
Wrisley lives on the West Hill of Akron, Ohio—the
Jewel of the Midwest. His work has appeared in McSweeney's,
Juked,
Really Small Talk, Smokelong Quarterly, 3AM Magazine, and other
places. He's a contributing writer at Blueswax and edits the
e-magazine CautionaryTale.com. |