As a Californian, whose white, English-speaking ancestors came to the state generations ago in the 19th century, before there were a lot of white English-speakers, I’m not just upset when I see these kinds of displays of racism here, but also totally baffled. I mean, for fuck’s sake - it’s California.
One of my grandfathers was born and grew up in Southern California (a stone’s throw from Torrance, actually), and though his family had only a couple generations previously come from Northern Europe, you better believe he spoke Spanish - and felt more culturally connected to Mexico than anywhere in Europe. He was a farmer, so many of his neighbors were also Japanese. I look at these Karens and think, bitch, please, if your racist ass didn’t immigrate here from Asshole, Ohio, your parents’ almost certainly did. Why the fuck do you think you have the right to swan in here, to California, which was multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic before it even became a state, and make these insane demands about people who have deeper roots here than you do? How does that even make sense to you? It’s absurd enough anywhere in America, obviously, given that English speaking white people are an immigrant population, but it feels especially absurd in California, where they’re late arrivals even among immigrants.
I keep thinking of an incident I read about a while ago in the UK - some Englander starts abusing two “foreign” Muslim women speaking a language he can’t understand, demanding that since they’re in the UK, they should speak English. A bystander informs him that he’s in Wales and the women are speaking Welsh…
And just to suggest, let’s make it karen, not Karen. There are real people who have to go through life with that name. The meme is catching on and it’s sure not very funny for them any more. Same with chad.
Authentic query; where does the term “hapa” come from and what does it mean, exactly? I’ve seen it in the context of Philippine people, but can’t make the connection? Is this a cultural or dialectic thing or does it mean something entirely different that I’ve missed?
Also, I know I can google it, but I’d love to hear insight from someone who self-identifies as opposed to some website’s interpretation of meaning.
It’s a Hawaiian term, supposedly a transliteration of english “half”. Full length (that nobody says) is “hapalua”. It used to only apply to people who are half native Hawaiian, but is super widely used in families like mine that have some Hawaiians and lots o’ Japanese. When I was a kid, it was pretty much used for kids that were 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 Caucasian. Nowadays it seems to be used even more widely for any 1/2 Asian: usually 1/2 white, but really anything not-Asian.
And interestingly enough (though I don’t use it, and haven’t heard it in my family where a LOT of the youngest generation qualifies), some people now seem to use “Quapa” as well for the kids that are 1/4 Asian. Clearly, taking the first part of the word from “Quarter”. This is a bit weird as “hapaha” is 1/4 (half half).
Waaaay back in time when I was little, you used to only hear it in Hawaii. Then it seemed to gain inroads in the Japanese community in So. Cal. Now… Everywhere!
I’d love to hear a linguist/etymologist’s take on it though, as I’m pretty sure that things fly pretty fast and loose in my family (conversations with some family members mixes English, Japanese, some pidgin, with some hawaiian thrown in.). And of course, the lesson from my grandmother: If you can’t remember the word for something, just say “You know, da nani!”, then get progressively more mad when nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about.
Ah right. I have heard ABC to mean Australian born Chinese or American born Chinese. Once in Singapore my son, who is half Chinese, was asked “Are you an abc?” by a local kid.
If anyone is being the semantic police in this instance I’d say it is you, trying to split hairs between “final solution” and “permanent solution”, both referring to the death of people as the “solution” to an issue.
Ah, thank you! I had a suspicion that’s what it meant. The first time I remember noticing it was from someone who is Phillipina, which is why I assumes it might be from there. I know that language is an amalgam of quite a few dialects. It reminds me of Puerto Rican Spanish; words blended, contracted and abbreviated in a poetic and playful manner. Sounds like Hawaiian has a lot of that as well.
