View Full Version : Words with racist/sexist etc origins
pikachupacabra
03-14-2005, 09:59 PM
Someone just wrote it somewhere and I was just having a talk with someone over this also.
the word "Jip" or "Jipped" supposedly has its roots from the word "Gypsy", with the stereotype being that gypsies would rip you off or steal from you. This one isn't so obviously bad since the term has been modified, whereas "indian giver" is blunt and not very hidden.
Does anyone know any other ones?
nonamerasian
03-14-2005, 11:35 PM
Someone just wrote it somewhere and I was just having a talk with someone over this also.
the word "Jip" or "Jipped" supposedly has its roots from the word "Gypsy", with the stereotype being that gypsies would rip you off or steal from you. This one isn't so obviously bad since the term has been modified, whereas "indian giver" is blunt and not very hidden.
Does anyone know any other ones?
It's gyp.
I heard "scotch" is one, too. To be cheap.
Someone cursed me out for saying "Irish potato" instead of "white potato," saying that the first started as an epithet. But that's about the only time I heard that.
After that asschewing, she started talking about there being a "Chinese fire drill" on the street. :rolleyes:
YuheiCarreau
03-14-2005, 11:43 PM
Someone just wrote it somewhere and I was just having a talk with someone over this also.
the word "Jip" or "Jipped" supposedly has its roots from the word "Gypsy", with the stereotype being that gypsies would rip you off or steal from you. This one isn't so obviously bad since the term has been modified, whereas "indian giver" is blunt and not very hidden.
Does anyone know any other ones?
Its origins may have been obscured from Americans, but I know that the British still refer to Gypsies as "Gyppers".
Banana
03-15-2005, 09:30 AM
What the hell is a Chinese fire drill? Did you say anything in return to her?
deez nuts
03-15-2005, 09:34 AM
What the hell is a Chinese fire drill? Did you say anything in return to her?
confused, disorganized and ineffective process.
i use it from time to time at work to describe hospital bureaucracy and red tape.
kimpossible
03-15-2005, 09:53 AM
Someone cursed me out for saying "Irish potato" instead of "white potato," saying that the first started as an epithet.
What the hell?
Banana
03-15-2005, 10:21 AM
I find it more funny that she chews someone out for not knowing about a racial epithet but proceeds to use another one about Asians. If that was me, I would continue to use Irish potato.
YuheiCarreau
03-15-2005, 11:11 AM
I don't understand; in what situation would you say "Irish potato"? Are you just talking about calling a regular potato an Irish potato, or is it a nickname you'd give someone?
Right, calling someone an Irish potato could be considered a slur, but calling the tuber by its name is legit. While not its proper name, perhaps in reference to the Irish potato famine, could be considered in bad taste? What about the Irish cobbler potato?
kimpossible
03-15-2005, 11:37 AM
It would be the lamest slur on the planet. That's like trying to kill someone with a Nerf bat.
YuheiCarreau
03-15-2005, 11:53 AM
It would be the lamest slur on the planet. That's like trying to kill someone with a Nerf bat.
I could kill someone with a nerf bat... By making them choke on it.
nonamerasian
03-15-2005, 12:01 PM
I don't understand; in what situation would you say "Irish potato"? Are you just talking about calling a regular potato an Irish potato, or is it a nickname you'd give someone?
Irish potato is what I've called white potatoes, not people.
The person insulted was saying how I should have just said potato like she claimed everyone else does, but my family eats so many varieties of potatoes, which is why I specified Irish potato during the convo. And that how I hear people refer to it, too.
I always thought that was the name of it. *shrug*
I noticed the asvenus used it in a thread here, so maybe it's an okay Brit/English-speaking Carib term, but has gone out of favor in the U.S.?
She said that the term dates back to the Irish potato famine and is derogatory. She said that basically every term with an ethnicity tied to it is derogatory and used "gyp" as an example. . .But then she said that thing about the "Chinese fire drill" a few minutes later.
What the hell is a Chinese fire drill? Did you say anything in return to her?
I never heard the term before that. She could have told me it was a Chinese festival or something and I would have believed her, lol.
So at first I didn't say anything but when I looked out of the window and saw non-Chinese teens assing around I said something like Irish potato? Or, Irish potato is bad, huh?
Something like that.
She got really quiet.
I can't remember if I got on her case or my friend did afterwards.
yoMAMA
03-15-2005, 12:07 PM
the name "gook", infamously used in the vietnam war by GIs, has its origins in the korean war:
I think Koreans called their country which sounds like "Han Gook", and then somehow it became "gook" when U.S soliders heard it and use it to call all asians.
Banana
03-15-2005, 12:09 PM
Sounds like you need to develop a "viper tongue." :)
This reminds me of that funny ass scene in "Don't be a menace to south central while drinking your juice in the hood."
Two of the Waynes brothers were constantly calling each other "nigga" when another young friend dressed up as a pro-black preacher came up to them and said:
"Brothers have got to stop using the word "nigga." It's a word that's a tool to place more burdon on our black brothers while they struggle in this world put on us by the man."
"..."
"Oh, yea. It's almost three o'clock and I have to go pick up my dry cleaning at the chink place."
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