Posts by dyan campbell
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It's as if Ibsen wrote comedies about getting what you want and discovering it's impossible for you to be happy because you've been completely pickled in bile.
Emma, thats pretty much a description of A Doll's House, except Ibsen was never as funny as Chekhov.
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Banning for 5yrs any bar manager who gets done for 3 underages in 2yrs. They even use the "three strikes & you're out" term. Having worked in a few bars you could have that happen in one night. Not ideal but a reality. Sure if it is persistant do the bar, but this is too prescriptive.
I have to agree with Just Thinking on this - it is unrealistic to expect bar managers to police drinking age. It is just about impossible to judge ages - I have a friend whose daughter could have easily passed for 25 by the time she was 13, and the people in my family were usually asked for ID until we were well into our 30s.
I also agree that Dairy Owners and small merchants should not be singled out and prevented from making a living - if we want to go after any branch of the liquor industry responsible for the multi-billion dollar a year bill the NZ taxpayer has to pay, it should be the big companies, not the small merchants.
Perhaps the only effective piece of legislation would be to raise the drinking age back to 20, as the lowering of it has seen a horrifying increase in hospital admissions of children in a life threatening state of alcohol poisoning.
More effective than legislation would be a push to change the "normalisation" of binge drinking. Shortland Street and Go Girls have characters whose lives revolve around binge drinking, and few consequences are ever portrayed. Drinking to the point of vomiting is presented as normal, and declining alcohol is portrayed as being unfriendly or negative.
In Shortland Street, the character Alice made a comment that her grandmother told her "never trust a man who doesn't drink" which did indeed used to be a catch phrase in 19thC England, but actually referred to Hindus and Muslims, rather than any reluctance to par-taaay.
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Can someone explain to me how the use of Eskimo in this context is offensive?
The word itself is offensive, and deeply so. That people will accept a word that describes their race does not mean the word is not racist in its origin, if not its intent.
The self-designation of the Eskimos living in northeastern Siberia is yuhyt or yupikhyt, but yupik is not widely spread.
The terms Eskimo and Asiatic Eskimo date from the end of the 19th century, and were borrowed from US researchers who had adopted the Algonkin name eskimatsik or askimeg meaning "eating raw meat'". The name spread and came into common use in the early 20th century.
"Coloured" and "Nigra" were both words that were considered polite through the 19th and 20th centuries, but this does not mean people are happy to accept these terms now.
Until the 1980s the term "cancer victim" was also happily used - until the term "cancer survivor" or "cancer patient" was adopted as it was finally recognised the previous term has a negative effect on the patient's sense of identity.
My Dad tells me that "Jelly Babies" used to only be licorice or chocolate, and were called 'Nigger Babies" (ten for one cent!) and he used to buy these when he was a child in the 1920s in Canada. To his recollection the name was changed to "Jelly Babies" around 1935 or so, but as he'd stopped buying penny candy by then, he's not sure. He does remember his parents were very disapproving of the term "nigger" and even at 6 or 7 he was quite conscious the name of the candy was unpleasant.
My oldest sister (born in 1946) can remember the same feeling about "Little Black Sambo" pancake syrup, which was removed from sale sometime in the 1950s. In my own childhood in the 1960s I remember Fritos Cornchips used to sell their product with a cartoon character called "The Frito Bandito" who was supposed to be Mexican - and that this was taken off the air due to pressure from Hispanic groups who found it offensive.
Russell, I haven't seen "Eskimo Pies" sold in Canada, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, but to sell them would be to invite an ongoing battle. As I've said, racism is still alive and well in Canada, just read the linked article.The "Edmonton Eskimos" still play football, and they even trot out Inuit dancers before games, but they sure piss off a lot of people.
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I once worked with a Canadian who regularly wore a t-shirt with the slogan "Eat it Raw" emblazoned across the front. The meaning was kind of lost on me, but seemed to afford him endless pleasure.
That would be a redneck, and the slogan is meant as a slur against Inuit and refers to "eaters of raw flesh". It is also meant as a double entendre, referring to oral sex, which somehow compounds the racial slur. Canada has plenty of rednecks.
When I first moved to NZ it was a lot more openly racist than it is now - I used to write home complaining I'd moved to "the white kook capital of the world". My (half Chinese) cousin came to visit, and had a different take - that Canada was equally racist, it's just that it was kosher to be racist and out here. She kept getting asked by NZers "where are you really from?"
Canada is very racist, in its past and under the surface - which is why great pains are taken to talk about "Inuit' and "First Nations" people and why using a derogatory term will be met with icy glares. There have been KKK chapters, wartime internment of Canadian born Japanese, Holocoaust deniers, The RCMP still harass First Nations and Inuit if you live in the wrong neck of the woods.
My Dad was "rushed" by fraternities when he went to UBC - as a 22 year old veteran with a new wife - and there was a promise that "no Catholics, no Jews and no Chinese" would be allowed to join. They didn't mention "Indians", of course, as they were not exactly a presence at Universities.
My Mum was a French Metis war vet (RCAF wireless operator) but was spat on by her new neighbours when she and my Dad were first married, as she was mistaken for a Japanese war bride. She did look very Asian...
Interestingly I worked with someone here who, on learning that my Mum was half Cree said "oh, I suppose she was scarcely literate and quite the drinker then?" which, if you saw what was left of "Indians" in Canada might be a safe, if rather offensive assumption. It could hardly have been further from my Mum, though, who was incredibly well read and thought alcohol the most evil thing on the planet.
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Dyan, I'm intrigued. How did the Inuit get to do that for the Yupik, who are Eskimo but not Inuit and don't want to be called Inuit? Were the Yupik there?
I don't know how many attended, but they would certainly have had representation.
The Central Alaskan Yup'ik are by far the most numerous group of Yupik. The Central Alaskan Yup'ik who live on Nunivak Island call themselves Cup'ig (plural Cup'it). Those who live in the village of Chevak call themselves Cup'ik (plural Cup'it).
Those apostrophes represent that pretty cracked consonant sound that is so common in North American languages. It's a nice sounding language.
Part of the problem with the word "Eskimo" or "Esquimaux" or however it is spelled, is that it is French in origin and is extremely offensive to the people that it is used to describe. Or so my Inuit friends tell me, anyway.
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I know words like Eskimo, Jap, Kike, Chink, Nigger don't pack the same punch here as they do in Canada, you would have a serious fight on your hands if you tried to use any of these terms in Canada.
The term "Coconut" is meaningless to most people in Canada, but I think if you sold a candy called "Coconut" in the shape of a Samoan, you would offend many Samoans.
Actually my husband (part Maori NZer) grew up taking crap from classmates who made jokes about his ancestry - a "nigger in the woodpile" and a "touch of the tar-brush".
While he was raised to eat this and pretend not to mind, that he was told he was "as good as anybody else" I was raised to argue about such things. I was also told no matter how much racists annoyed me, I had to be "gracious to my inferiors".
While the majority of academic linguists hold the non-pejorative view of Eskimo, the majority of Inuit people believe the word to be racist, and are similarly supported by Algonkian speakers who see the natural similarity in pronounciation to "he eats raw". While the term's proper etymology continues to be held to be neutral by linguists, Native and Métis groups both inside the Inuit and Cree/Ojibwa peoples insist that the term evolving as presented by linguists does not make sense. All Native North American peoples used snowshoes, and as such would not likely choose to use their word for snowshoe to describe any other native people. Whatever the truth, the resulting political responce to the perception of Eskimo being pejoritive has been significant, with The Inuit Circumpolar Conference meeting in Barrow, Alaska, officially adopting Inuit as a designation for all Eskimos, regardless of their local usages, in 1977.
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Because I am a Very Good Mother and wish to avoid the internet ducking stool
Your descriptions of your family are wonderful, and emphatically do not qualify you for that ducking stool reserved for Very Bad Mothers.
Your descriptions are beautifully written, funny, affectionate and I'm left with a strong sense of the characters you're describing - an impression that you are indeed raising real live humans that have the capacity to surprise you with their own take on the world.
You sound like you don't put your children on a pedestal, from which anyone up there eventually falls. Far better than that: your writing tells me you respect them as human beings.
That other mother, whose name escapes me - published stuff about her son Jake - she writes like she once had a cute pet that no longer behaves as she wishes. She gives the impression that that disappointment gives her license to write what amounts to a character assassination of her own son.
I believe the young man's Dad has a place on the ducking stool too, as he blamed Jake for the attitudes and behaviour of the younger siblings.
Jolisia, this is not even related to what you do - you are providing a glimpse into a charmed and charming world for those of us out here without children (er, rather in my case grandchildren at this point) of our own. No ducking stool for you.
Though I'm pissed off you got your pony by post. I'm holding out for a damned unicorn. Are you listening RB?
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Well I certainly wish I could have attended... it sounds like fun, what with the conversation, hot buttered dwarfs (nod to Flying Nun band), Jackie's acts of vandalism on the toilet doors and...
And to think I never even got that pony Russell promised everyone. Jeez.
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The nature of nature is spooky at its most fundamental level.
Without at all meaning to be glib, the word earthquake has preoccupied me a bit in the last few days.
The news from Italy has been pretty horrifying, and I gather it could have all been much worse. Your homeland has a pretty quick and efficient search and rescue operation, I must say.
The footage I saw of the service for those who died was very moving, and whenever I see footage of the effects of an earthquake like that, I remember most of my family lives right on the San Andreas faultline. Earthquakes are terrifying.
I was impressed and cheered up by the elderly woman they Italian rescue service pulled from the rubble after 2 days, who had been filling her time with knitting though.
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Ah, yes. We had a family cat like that.
He was actually quite smart.They're all smart, Rob. I have many friends who used to insist they hate cats, only to have cats move in, uninvited. One fellow down in Dunedin is still in denial, after 7 years, a mountain of cat toys ("girlfriends of mine bought those!") an installed cat door ("I don't care if he freezes, I just don't want to hear him whining at my window in the middle of the night!"). Seven long years, and officially this cat is still destined for the SPCA.