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Is "Gaijin" a Racist Slur?

Is the word "Gaijin" a racist slur?

  • Yes, it is a racist slur and should never be used.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Yes, in practice, it is a racist slur.

    Votes: 8 7.8%

  • No, but it have Racist connotations.

    Votes: 24 23.5%

  • No, it is not a racist slur.

    Votes: 21 20.6%

  • No, it is perfectly fine to refer to those who don't have Japanese Citizenship.

    Votes: 10 9.8%

  • No, it is perfectly fine to refer to those who are not of Ethnic Japanese Descent.

    Votes: 19 18.6%

  • I don't have an opinion.

    Votes: 20 19.6%
  • Total voters
    102
For me I don't care most of the time, unless the word is used in a rude way, which it can easily be. I do appreciate though when people have the courtesy to say gaijin-san, or best yet gaikokujin. To me there is a difference between being called a foreigner (gaikokujin) and an outsider (gaijin). I have more respect for people who are polite and courteous enough to think hard about the words they use, and the things they ask people.

oh and the reason I don't care is because I know that all countries of the world have their fill of ignorant boobs that probably don't mean any real harm.
 
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Here is a couple of Wiki pages about "Gaijin".
Gaijin - Wikipedia (in English)
外人 - Wikipedia (in Japanese)
The Japanese page goes deeper into the gap between the native Japanese and the non-natives' understandings of the term.
I don't think it is a racist slur but would not use it as I am aware that many people are offended by it.
 
Seems like the wayﾂ Western foreigners were referred in the middle ages was far more insulting. ﾂ（窶愿ｬ窶敕伉人ﾂ）ﾂ Though the connotations of this probably go back to, or maybe in fact reinforce the old Japanese mistaken idea of all foreigners being hunter-gatherer-barbarians.
 
No, I've never really considered the word foreigner racist.
I would only consider the word racist if it were used to refer to people like Olivia Lufkin. As she is not a foreigner.
 
Hi!

First time poster here.

I am Japanese, and I have noticed that my mom and my aunt (both in their 70's) call caucasian
"looking" people gaijin-san, and asian nationals (non-Japanese of course) Asia-jin, or Indo-jin looking or whatever. I wouldn't define "gaijin" a racial slur, but the fact they add "-san" to the word "gainjin" makes me think that maybe it is...

tmm
 
南蛮人 sounds cool, wouldn't mind being called that. Im a barbarian lol. Gyarrrrr!
 

Probably the main problem with the word. It's out of date. It's use reinforces the idea that only Japanese ethnic people are Japanese and that is simply not true. In that sense it is a racial issue.
 
This has been an interesting discussion.
This is nothing to do with the "gaijin" discussion, but...
I remember when I was a kid, compact cameras with automatic focus came out, and those cameras were often referred to as "bakachon camera". Later on, I found out that the word "chon" meant Korean people. I still don't know the validity of it, but I was horrified!! At the same time though, I wondered how many people knew what bakachon meant.
I used to live in Denver, and people used the word "oriental" a lot when they were talking about people from the Asian countries. I moved to California (Bay Area) from Denver, and they said the term orientals are derogatory and they should be called Asians. Hmm... It never occured to me calling the Asians Orientals was deragatory. I still hear the Asians being referred to as the Orientals outside of California.
Now, I go to Safeway (grocery store) and the section that used to be called "Oriental Foods" is now called "Asian Foods", and get this, in some Safeway stores, the section that has "Mexican Foods" has a sign "Hipanic Foods".... (Come on! The store is treating like calling the Mexicans Mexicans is derogatory.)
tmm
 

The term BAKACHON CAMERA used to be quite commonly used but not anymore. It is an abbreviated form of "Baka demo Chon demo tsukaeru Camera ( A Camera that can be operated even by a fool or a Korean )". The people of my parents' generation were using the term fully aware of its meaning while we were oblivious as to what it really meant. Like tmm, I found out later when I was in grade school the true meaning of the word, and like tmm, was horrified.

Regarding the MEXICAN section at a Safeway changing its name to HISPANIC section, here is what I believe to be the reason.
In many supermarkets in the US, they used to stuff ALL food items from the hispanic world ( all the countries in the central/south america as well as Spain & Portugal ) into the MEXICAN section as the Mexican cuisine happened to be the most well-known among the people of the US. So, changing its name to HISPANIC does not imply anything negative toward Mexicans, rather it is a step taken by the markets toward political correctness.

Sorry for taking the thread further into the land of OffTopicania. Please continue on with the topic of Gaijin as a racial slur. :smoke:
 
I couldn't find any credible source, but it looks like the meaning of this word has changed over time. Originally, Chon just meant stupid, it had nothing to do with Koreans at all. ☝

差別用語？
 
Gypsies call non-gypsies gajo, or gaje, or gadja, or gorjer. It means the same as gaijin and is very pejorative. It means "outsider", someone who is not a member of the Gypsy community.

It's amazing how ithe meaning and pronuciation are similar to the Japanese "gaijin". I wonder if there is a link between the two ?
 
If Japanese is part of the Eurasiatic language family, then it would have connection to Indo-European language, and therefor possibly Romany as well.

I know that in the area of tone in language, Japanese is very similar to French.

Anyway, why would gaijin-san be worse than gaijin?
It's a formality, and a respectful one.
 
I think it is difficult to say that the term "gaijin" is racist because it does not apply to a specific non-Japanese race. I agree that "gaijin" is at least not very polite. Rather than racist, I would say that it can very easily become an ethnocentric term.

I'm going a little off-topic now, but still generally on the subject of possible racial epithets.

When I was stationed in Hawaii (on the island of Oahu), I quickly became aware of the term "haole", which was directed at "white" people. It was easy to see that it was basically a derogatory term. People who lived on Oahu (I don't know about the other islands) tried to say things like, "Oh, it is not derogatory, it just means 'white'". Even "white" people who lived on Hawaii would make this excuse. However, I heard it used often enough to be quite sure that it was definitely not a neutral term when used by Hawaiians to refer to a "white" person. Now I am well aware that the native people of Hawaii have legitimate grievances against non-Hawaiians (for one thing, their land was basically stolen from them by the USA), but I think it is extremely hypocritical to use the term "haole" as an insult and insist that it is not an insult. It was especially ridulous to hear "white" residents use the term "haole" about themselves and each other with no sense of irony whatsoever. Imagine a Japanese person cheerfully using the insulting term "Jap" about himself or herself!
 

Yes, this is 100% true, I hear many times every day here and it is definitely a derogatory term, regardless of what people here say. Haole in Hawaiian actually means foreigner, not "white person" as many people think. So I guess, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Hispanics, etc. can be considered "haoles" as well.
 
Anohito said:
Imagine a Japanese person cheerfully using the insulting term "Jap" about himself or herself!
Click to expand...

I don't need to imagine this. I've witnessed it.

It's like the term Nigger though for black people (Oh God, how I hate that word). It is a particularly disgusting word that white people would NEVER use unless they were extremely racist, and to hear it from the mouth of a while person is to assume that the person in question is a complete idiot, but yet black people use it for themselves all the time. How many times have you heard black people, either in real life or on TV, saying, "What's up, Nigger?" to greet another black person? It's not just TV that shows this, before anybody says it. My sisters closest friend is black and her family do it all the time.

Surely "Gaijin" is just the same as, "Foreigner." It can be used as a racist slur, but this isn't the way in which it is always intended.

I have a book called "Gaijin." I haven't read it, but the blurb makes it seem like it is about a non-japanese member of the Yakuza. If the term was a racist slur, the author would not have been able to get away with it. I mean, can you imagine a book called, "Nigger," about a black Mafia member?
 
It is if you believe it to be but it's not if you don't believe it to be. LIke art it's in the mind of the beholder.
AFAIK, there is no equivalent terms in Japanese that can match "slope," "chink," "nigger," "honkey," "wog," etc.
 

Black people calling each other the N-word.... It is like they have taken this word that used to be used by the whites to demean them and claimed the ownership of it. It is like they are saying, "This is OURS now. You cannot use it any more.". It's a way of empowering yourself as unlikely as it sounds.

That is what I have read somewhere (Sorry, I cannot remember where) and I tend to agree.

I have heard some young Japanese hippity hoppity "musicians" try to emulate this sentiment by calling themselves the J-word. It could very well be that these Japanese kids have led lives constantly being descriminated because of their nationality but somehow I doubt that. It's probably more like they are wearing the attitude like another piece of clothing. Come to think of it, a lot of young blacks might be doing the exact same thing as well.

Now, the word Gaijin. I think it is being used among some foreigners in Japan in the same context as the one I mentioned above if with a little bit more of a "tongue in cheek" overtone.

I have posted a while ago saying that I did not believe it was a racial slur, and I still do not. Having said that, after a bit of thinking about the issue and reading other posts here, now I am of the opinion that it doesn't really matter how the word originally came to be or what the intentions are of the people using it. If this many people (according to this poll, over 30% of us who have vioted) find it objectionable/distasteful/insulting/discriminatory, then it IS.

"Oh no, I didn't mean it like THAT!" doesn't really cure feelings already hurt.
 


Exactly ...


Me too,don't think it's a racial slur
 
This is more in line with Japanese racial slur for " gaijins "

日本人は白人のことを侮蔑して「ピンクのヒヒ」と呼んだりするわけです。
 
I've been called gaijin alot, but mostly by people who were talking about me to others in order to distinct me from the Japanese people around. For example, in the fabric shop in Shibuya, one of the shop assistants told their colleague to get something ready for "gaijin-san", but hell, how else was that colleague supposed to know they had to cut some fabric for ME and not for one of the Japanese customers? "Gaijin" was the easiest way to describe and pinpoint me. I don't mean any bad by it when I say "That black dude" either, I mean, it's the best way to make sure the person you're talking to immediately knows who you're talking about. In a herd of black people, point a white person out as a white dude, in a herd of Japanese, point a foreigner out by saying gaijin, it's accurate and easy and up until now, I've never felt offended by it.

And "exclusion"... in the end, everyone excludes others to a certain degree. Metallers exclude gangstas, rastamen exclude goths, children exclude adults, heterosexual women exclude lesbian advances, rich people don't want bums in their homes, humans work that way. Most humans discriminate or exclude or differentiate in one way or another without meaning any bad by it. If they wouldn't, mankind would be one big fat flock of sheep all walking in the same direction...
 
Misunderstanding. I still don't. I'm a gaijin, it's a fact which is neither positive nor negative.
 
I don't think it's racist in and of itself, but the fact that someone says it instead of "that man/woman/person" is somewhat racist. It has a little racial connotation seeing that you're saying it instead of something more neutral.
 
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