26 March 2007
What’d you just say?
So, something got me thinking, today, about all the random things I did/said as a kid. Well, not all of them (as that would be a lot of things…), but some of the more strange ones. Take, for instance, Army dodge ball, a game that even my ex-Army friends don’t know about (which makes sense – I imagine soldiers don’t sit around playing dodge ball all day.). I grew up in Fayetteville, NC – a military town right outside of Fort Bragg, NC, so Army dodge ball was the only kind of dodge ball I ever played as a kid. It seems so strange to me that so many people have no idea it even exists.
But, I also thought of a couple phrases I used to say that were not only random, but also very wrong. For instance, I remember being told, as a child, to sit “Indian-style”.
Now, as a student teacher, I know that phrase is no longer used, and instead teachers say “criss cross applesauce” or just “cross-legged”. (I hate cutesy phrases, so I’ll be using the latter when the time comes.) It’s not a particularly hurtful phrase, but it’s not very descriptive and relies on stereotypes of cultures for its meaning.
I also used to use the phrase “Indian giver”,
which I didn’t understand at the time I used it. I’m still not entirely sure why it’s such a widely used term… weren’t we the ones who kept taking away things (land) from the Native American tribes after we had so graciously given them? (Because, you know, the Native American totally had no land before we came along, and we were so awesome to give them ours, even if we did take most of it back. We disgust me.)
There’s one more, though, that I tried to research, today, for which I couldn’t find a source. The phrase is “Chinese skipping”, which apparently references a jump rope game. When I was little, though, it had nothing to do with jumping rope – to “Chinese skip” somebody, was to skip them in line, in a rather clever and sneaky way. Say you’re standing in the lunch line. Mary is in front you. Joe comes up and tries to skip you in line. “NO! Joe, you can’t skip me,” you say, “go back to the end of the line.” So, he whispers to Mary for a second, and they snicker. Then Mary lets Joe skip her in line. Then, Joe lets Mary skip him, putting him in front of you. Thus, you have been “Chinese skipped”. It sounds like just another made up phrase, still racist even though it has nothing to do with any stereotypes of the Chinese culture (that I know of).
In my searching for that phrase, I did run across a whole bunch of “Chinese ____” phrases, such as “Chinese fire drill”.
According to the article, “Chinese here comes from British military tradition of using the word to mean clumsy, inept, or inferior. It is likely that this was not intended as a slur on the Chinese people, but rather a play on the phrase “one wing low” which referred to a clumsy pilot and was thought to sound Chinese.” Regardless, it is yet another insensitive, and stupid term.
Luckily (or not), I had no idea I was saying anything racist at the time. Hell, even now I’m not entirely sure why anyone even created those phrases. If you aren’t racist, it makes no sense. I don’t hold the belief that the Chinese are confused or chaotic… I don’t think all native people sit cross-legged… and I don’t think Chinese men pee in Coke bottles. I never did. Yet, I remember hearing and using these phrases, because that’s just what you did. I didn’t know why it was called “Chinese skipping”, it just was. I didn’t know why we sat “Indian-style” on the magic carpet for storytime, we just did.
I’m not a very P.C. person – I hate having the sidestep issues by using euphamisms and cutesy phrases to keep from offending people (what about apples, huh? Maybe they don’t like “criss cross applesauce” so much…), but I also don’t understand why we use such mindless phrases.
So, what’s going around the playground, these days? Are we making fun of Muslims and Iraqis, now? I don’t want to be surprised when one of my fourth graders blurts out some off-the-wall, seemingly random yet racist phrase.