a couple of weeks ago j.a. and i were out doing groceries, and as usual, when she's gets in line to check out, i sit on a bench next to the door of the store.
while i was sitting there i realized that one of the 25¢ (that's a cent sign, in case your computer can't display it...) toy machines was selling various colors of slime.
and what do you think the sign said, in great big green lettering?
goo? goop? nope.
GOOK!
i shit you not.
i just sat there staring at it, wondering how anyone would have the balls, or be stupid enough, to manufacture a product and name it something so obviously racially insensitive.
i was pretty fucking speechless.
That is so wrong! Damned...
(Edited by JuggleFoe at 6:16 am on June 29, 2001)
i know, dude! like i said, i can't believe that even happened.
the only positive way i can look at it is that maybe the people who were responsible for it had never even heard the term.
that would be a good thing. although, i'm sure some of the other people who undoubtely noticed it.
Yeah but didn't anybody complain? I mean, come on...
you'd certainly hope so, right?
when i was getting ready to move out here i was all "i'm gonna live in a big city where people just can't get away with being blatantly racist!".
how fucking stupid was i to think that?
people out here are just as racist, and there are even more races to hate! whee! this here planet is just a great big ball of ignorance!
Wow. Part of me wants to think that nobody complained because it never even occured to anyone that the name "might" mean anything other than an onomatopoetic description of the product in question. I mean, I'd like to belive that...
People in Vancouver are probably just as racist as they were in Maple Ridge (the old shit-shack of a town I used to live in), but the "minority" population is so much higher out here that you'd have to have a death wish if you were as public with your racism in Vancouver as some people were in Maple Ridge.
The west coast is a complete hodge-podge of all sorts of people. I usually get weirded out if I see a large group of people all of the same "race". That being said, we definitely do have a racist past, and there's plenty of fringe activity still going on.
I don't have issues about racism unless the thing gets way out of hand. You know, if a black comedian makes a joke about white people, it's funny. If a white comedian makes a joke about black people, it's racism. I wonder who have better self esteem...
for some reason that reminded me of the little rant from "traffic" by the kid who also plays "eric foreman" on "that 70's show"...
"That 70's show" rawks. Too bad it's on Summer brake in here at the moment...