From: mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day)
Subject: Re: Caucasians don't understand
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
	<MDAY.92Aug14171333@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu> <4892@dove.nist.gov>
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 15:54:42 GMT

   > hira@cme.nist.gov (Ron Hira) writes:
   mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day) writes:

   |>OK.  So you admit that it is just "pretty common" to lump Desis in
   |>with white people as "caucasoids".  And I observe that it's "pretty
   |>common" to use "caucasian" as a synonym for "white".  But basically,
   |>you have no grounds for claiming that your usage is any more "correct"
   |>than all the people who you are yelling at in your rude and repetitive
   |>way.

   Look Mr. Day when someone means white, they should say so. If they want to 
   include Desis in the category, they should say caucasian. If this so bloody
   difficult then maybe this newsgroup is not worth reading for desis. Maybe
   that's why so few have joined in the discussion. 

   My grounds for "correct" usage are simple. Using the word "caucasian" as 
   a synonym for white is AMBIGUOUS. Why use an ambiguous term?
   Maybe you like ambiguous terms? Maybe you like to cloud simple issues?

Y'know, you're the only person who's written (repeatedly) arguing that
"caucasian is not the same as white".  Has it occurred to you that
maybe, just maybe, it doesn't bother most people?  Perhaps it's time
to drop your private crusade to get everyone on this group to use
words "right" (i.e. the way you think they should be used)?  Jeez, you
are really being a pain in the neck.  

   |>
   |>And I thought you'd been reading scaa long enough to know that
   |>"oriental" is not considered acceptable by many people here.  I think
   |>you may be trying to say that not all Asian Americans have East Asian
   |>ancestry.

   No, I haven't been reading scaa very long. I'm just finding out that people
   don't like to be called orientals, which I will stop doing from now on. 
   Yes, I am saying that all Asian Americans have Asian Ancestry.

I love it.  Here's a guy who reads scaa for a little while (not even
long enough to figure out that Americans of East Asian Ancestry don't
like being called "orientals") and he decides that he's going to
correct our vocabulary, because we're such a bunch of ignorant yobs.
Way to go, guy.  

   |>   Note that I'm a product of the much maligned U.S. public school system in 
   |>   white middle class suburbia, and I learned all of this there.
   |>
   |>Sheesh.  My condolences.  But this hardly strengthens your case.

   Well, maybe not all of us elitist snobs like you. Don't let the mit
   education get to your head.

Sigh.  I despise smileys, and I always wish that people had an easier
time with irony on the net.  I thought that since you were talking
about the "much-maligned" public school system, you could take a
little joking about it.  Apparently I was wrong, and my affiliation
with the Masochist's Institute of Torture has triggered all sorts of
status anxieties in your psyche.  If it makes you feel any better, my
wife teaches in the Boston public school system, where there's almost
certainly less learning per capita or per dollar than wherever you
went to school.  I somehow manage to deal with her in spite of my
lofty station. :-)

If you ever come here, I think you'll find most of us rather
non-elitist and unpretentious.  You must have us confused with that
other school up the river. :-)

--Mark Day

mday@lcs.mit.edu