Good Old America

Last week Friday I was at a mates house having a few shots and smoking a bit of hubbly when we decided to put a movie on. Flipping through the movie selection we came across the random looking “BALLS OF FURY” which is a random ass show about a washed up ping pong player that takes an assignment for the feds to infiltrate the Triads. And how does this idiot do it? Through ping pong.

Once again, DRUGGIE DIRECTORS WHO HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH THEIR TIME AND MONEY THEN MAKE SHIT!

If you were wondering if there was a point to this post, well there is. In the movie. The washed up ping pong player gets trained by some blind ass Chinese dude and his fit granddaughter. During his training one of the themes was the inherent mistrust for westerners by Chinese people who refer to him as Gwaaido. Which could be or could not be a racial slur.

Growing up in south Africa you are exposed to racial slur’s whither you like it or not, or whither it is intentional or unintentional. And its funny how not many people are aware of them.

The most famous racial slurs surprisingly come form America. The good old US of A who had a lot of shit to say about South Africa and its apartheid policies but are behind the scenes the biggest bunch of racists in the world.

The Americans coined the term ‘Wagon Burner’ which is a racial slur to describe the Red Indians who were the first inhabitants of America. The name came about during the expansion of the Wild West when the Indians would ride in and burn the settlers wagons.

America also introduced the name to the rest of the world. So much so that ‘Wagon Burner’ is a term used to describe all people of Indian decent, whither they are from India or the USA. I was sitting at dinner in Zambia and the conversation turned to curry and the gentleman opposite me said: The best curries in the world come form South Africa, my friend, who is a real Wagon Burner says so.

Now to me there are two problems with that statement. 1) the person is nothing but a racist, and 2) If he insists on using racial slurs to describe people, don’t use wagon burners to describe Indian people from India as the Indian People from India had no wagons to burn.

Another racial slur popularised by the Yanks is Gook. Which is a racial slur describing Korean people. Legend has it that during the Korean War, an American officer was asking directions from a Korean man who couldn’t understand English. The Korean looked at the American and said: Mi Gook which is Korean for American. The Yank mistook it for a description of himself, hence the name Gook describing all people from Korea.

But who can blame the Yanks though. They themselves were the subject of racial slurs at one point in time.

During the Mexican-American war, which ended with General Custer’s last stand at the Alamo. The American Army colonising Mexico at the time used to wear green uniforms. As a voice of defiance, the Mexicans would scream at the top of their voices: Green Go Home. They would then take out their six shooters, shoot the shit out of anything American, take Tequila out of their saddle bags, get horribly drunk and do their Sombrero dance.

But the shout of Green Go Home was what gave birth to the Gringo racial slur.

So for all of South Africa’s shaded past, America are actually responsible for the most popular racial slurs in History!