From: hira@cme.nist.gov (Ron Hira)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Re: Caucasians don't understand
Date: 17 Aug 92 15:39:33 GMT
Reply-To: hira@cme.nist.gov
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology

In article <MDAY.92Aug17105442@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu>,
mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day) writes:
|>From: mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day)
|>Subject: Re: Caucasians don't understand
|>Date: 17 Aug 92 15:54:42 GMT
|>   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.  

I'm glad I could oblige and be such a pain in the neck for you. You're 
obviously insensitive. The fact that it doesn't bother people of "East
Asian" descent and whites, does not mean that it should not bother me.
After all this is S.C.Asian.American, is it not? Obviously if you want to
be an ignoramous and exclude peoples of South Asian descent, that's this
newsgroup's prerogative. I don't believe that is the intent of the majority.

Y'know you sound like one of those people who say that just because a minority
of people find a term offensive, it doesn't really matter. Boy that sounds 
like a constructive way to diversify society.

I'm also not the only one who has written that equating white with caucasian
is incorrect. Read some of the corroborating posts.

|>   |>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.  

That's why I joined this group, guy. To learn about and learn to be sensitive 
to other "Asian Americans". Obviously you don't have the same intent. I am a 
newcomer, which in your view means that I should be excluded from any input
on your sacred "vocabulary." Excuse me for being so ignorant and voicing my
ideas in YOUR FORUM. You are not capable of allowing yourself and your
vocabulary to grow.

|>   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. :-)

Well you must commend your wife for me, obviously her time is well spent.

You must also commend those at MIT who are so understanding and 
unpretentious. I'm sure that prestige had nothing to do with their choice
in school, and they treat people from UMASS with the utmost respect.

|>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. :-)

I don't plan on spending any time in Boston in the near future or ever.

|>
|>--Mark Day
                                                                         
Ron