Devoted to technical writing and technical writers

Our guest writer talks about how we need to be very sensitive about  "cultural slurs." Sourced by JMJF

Many, many decades ago, as a young kid fresh from college, I was rewarded with a trip to the . It was my first trip outside of Asia, and the experience was a heady one fraught with lessons that remain with me till this day. I had expected everything to be ship-shape and much like what one encounters in Riverdale of Archie fame. A comic-book cameo of American life, but, unfortunately, nothing but a cartoon in the end.

In the cities of the , where many cultures come together, sometimes clashing in one seething mass, one treads carefully. In one instance, a gang of bullies – mostly white – who had decided to pick on my group of innocent tourists -- were chased away by a bigger group of blacks who then called us brothers! Grateful tourists that we were, we were not about to put this filial display to the test.  But it was sometimes jarring to hear derogatory terms like Chinks, Honkies, Dagos, Spics, Polacks, and Flips used so casually. In the more circumspect region that is Asia, such terms are kept close to one’s chest, unless one is secretly harboring a death-wish.