<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8452457#post8452457 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by aSixyReef
i agree. when i read people using 'jap' it really makes me wonder if they've gotten an education outside american popular culture. just because its easy to type doesnt mean it OK to use. curse words can be easier to use than learning new words but that doesnt make it OK to use.
use jap if you want, it is a reflection on you.
It's not really used anymore (a godd thing), and I think many people actually forget it's considered a derogatory term. Only asian people, older folks, and historians tend to remember it's a derogatory term nowadays.
When a young person sees old WWII news clippings using the word jap, they don't realize that it is derogatory because of our current relations with the country of Japan. It's hard for many western youths to understand that Japan and it's people were hated and scorned. Many people don't know what Manzanar is or where it's located.
Jap was used widely during WWII. It was used to describe anyone of Japanese descent. It did not matter if they were Japanese-Americans or the citizens of Imperial Japan, they were all labeled as Japs.
This was extremely painful for Japanese-Americans who were loyal American citizens because they were descriminated against by their former neighbors. The Japanese-American citizens had their property confiscated and were placed into overcrowded internment camps. After the war, many Japanese-Americans were still descriminated against and they had to rebuild their lives from nothing.
The term Jap is a reference to these dark times in American history when blind descrimination was the order of the day. As such, many find it painful.
When I first saw jap being used, it caught my eye, but I did not find it offensive. It was not being used in a negative way, but the word itself does carry negative connotations and is a reference to the bitter past.
The English language is constantly changing. Perhaps we should embrace this new usage as a way to forget the pain and the hate. At one point in time, I was an ethnicity, now I'm a food choice at Denny's.
