dwayne wrote:
> "Michael S. Lorrey" wrote:
>
> > Damien, you seem to repeatedly posess rather knee-jerk responses to mere words.
> > I recall that you took offense once to my use of the term 'abo'. As someone who
> > is not only Scottish and Swedish, but Italian along with some Jewish ethnicity
> > in the family, I for one cannot afford to be a bigot, and take personal offense
> > to anyone who would insinuate that I am in any way bigoted.
>
> Right, thank you for parading your spotlessly white ancestry.
> I dare you, I double-dare you, to stand in the middle of a group of
> aborigines in Queensland or the Northern Territory and call them "abos"
>
> But of COURSE you are not racist, and OF COURSE you mean the word as a
> term of endearment and OF COURSE they won't be offended.
>
> Damn that Damien for being a nancy-boy kneejerker with no clue, eh?
Now who is knee jerking? The context that I used the word, with no knowledge of the particular political correctness of the word in a region on the opposite side of the planet from me, was merely as a means of abbreviating. Its also quite convenient for you to ignore my italian ancestry. Even today in many parts of the US, when people find out you are italian and from the east coast, they automatically think you are in the mafia. When my grandfather married an italian girl in the 1930's, his family would not talk to him for years, prejudice was so widespread back then. To most WASPs, being white means being of NORTHERN european descent, and specifically of English descent. Anyone who is not ignorant of history knows what the English did to the Scots after Culloden. Apparently you are.
I was talking with some freinds the other day about this, and we were mocking the demands of a few years ago for apologies to the african americans. At the same time their ancestors were getting enslaved by the British, my Scottish ancestors were getting exterminated by the British. Why the hell should I, or my representatives, have to apologize to them? None of my ancestors even came to the US until after the civil war. One of my buddies noted that his danish ancestors were held under martial law by the Swedes way back when, so I summarily apologized to him for the actions of my Swedish ancestors on his Danish ancestors.
Mike Lorrey