Re: [cybalist] Digest Number 32

 

From: Tommy Tyrberg

I would like to point out that contrary to common belief "lapp" is *not* pejorative. It is the traditional East Nordic/Finnish name for the Sami, it has been used at least since the twelfth century and the origin and meaning of the word is quite uncertain. It is however not considered politically correct in Sweden nowadays, probably on the general assumption that *any* traditional name for an ethnic group is automatically racist.

Tommy Tyrberg

The modern disease of political correctness is often run on ignorance, with the result that some historically and ethnically interesting and entirely unexceptionable ethnic words are being driven out. The idea "that any traditional name for an ethnic group is automatically racist" is as much an American notion as Tommy says it is a Swedish one.

 

Lots and lots of Americans think 'Canuck' is perjorative, to the point you sometimes come across a tempest-in-a-teapot with the self-righteously ignorant objector being put into their place by Johnny Canuck. You might as well say Uncle Sam and John Bull are instrinsically derogatory cartoon figures, insulting Americans and Britons, respectively.

 

I've also seen Americans object to 'Brit' as racist. Huh? A macho Brit soldier calls a macho American soldier a Yank, and the Yank calls the macho Brit a Brit. The Canadian is a Canuck, the New Zealander a Kiwi, and the Australian an Aussie. These are the familiar ethnic/national designations used by us English-speaking nations.

 

A really perverse situation is where the Polish word for "Pole" is considered racist. The situation has reached the point where the correct, grammatical ethnonym of one language is automatically deemed to be a racist term by another language.

 

With 'Lapp', I am unaware of any perjorative meaning from my own experience, but only from reading about the preferences of the Lapps themselves. The few Sami web pages I've come across tend to be loaded with political content. The ethno-geographic region at the top of Fennoscandia, covering three countries, is still Lapland so far as I've heard.

 

'Bohunk', a rather vague term covering Middle Europeans, but Bohemian-Moravians particularly, seems perjorative, or at least was in times past, but in the place I learned the word, in Willa Cather's _My Antonia_, it was used descriptively, with no seeming derogatory value indicated. My grandmother used 'Chinaman, in the same sense one uses 'Frenchman, Scotsman, Englishman' etc, yet the term is considered racist.

 

Harrumph.

 

Mark.