More on Racism

[Henry C.K. Liu]

You are technically accurate.  Yet the term Charlie has followed the GIs
back to America and many Vietnam refugees in this country, in Texas for
example, were addessed with hostility as Charlie and they resent it
bitterly.
The term GI is certainly not racist.  It stands for Government Issue, and
most American soldiers are proud to be called a GI.   Yet during WWII,
when the Japanese referred to an American as GI, it carried racist
overtones, as much as the term Yankee.
Whenever a term for categorizing people falls into use as an expression of
hate, it comes racist.  Very few terms originate as racist terms.  They
generally evolve into racist term in some social context.  The term: WASP,
when employed with hate becomes a racist term, although many people are
factually WASPs.
Go to Vietnam today and call a stranger Charlie on the street and you will
put yourself in jeopardy.

Henry C.K. Liu

Henry

Margaret wrote:


> Henry wrote:
>
> >In the Vietnam War, "I am going get me a Charlie" is a racist remark.
>
> I disagree, Henry.   'Charlie' was a shortened form of
> 'Victor Charlie',  they being the military-phonetic
> codes for the letters V and C, which of course stood
> for Viet Cong.   So 'I'm going to get me a Charlie'
> meant 'I am going to hunt down and kill [someone I can
> believe to be or at least plausibly claim to be] a
> member of the Viet Cong'.
>
> Murderous, but not racist.