![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/chingchonggirl-e1427848755733.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
And no, not the band.\u00a0 I actually really, really love the band Foreigner.\u00a0 They\u2019re one of those groups that I\u2019ve heard their music all the time growing up, and mostly in movies, like the\u00a0Rocky<\/em>\u00a0series, but it wasn\u2019t until I was older did I put two and two together, and realize that the band that sang the montage of my life growing up was in fact, Foreigner.\u00a0 But not\u00a0that<\/em>Foreigner, despite the fact that they undoubtedly rule.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about the\u00a0word<\/em>\u00a0foreigner, when describing people.<\/span><\/p>\n I was standing in line at Starbucks (big surprise), and this girl up and conveniently \u201cmeets up\u201d with a friend AKA completely cuts in line.\u00a0 It\u2019s not really that long of a line, and I\u2019m a pacifist and reluctant to make a confrontation over such a trite matter, so I begrudgingly let it slide.<\/span><\/p>\n The girl then begins talking about how she was leaving a particular location, at the same time as a whole lot of what I\u2019m guessing were classmates.\u00a0 But she didn\u2019t refer to them as classmates, she mentioned how \u201call the foreigners\u201d left at the same time she did.\u00a0 I wrinkled my eyebrow at hearing this, as it\u2019s been quite a while since I actually heard someone refer to people from other countries as specifically \u201cforeigners\u201d like this manner.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But then the girl (who was white, if it wasn\u2019t clear) kept flapping her gums, and it became apparent that she had to work with some of \u201cthese foreigners,\u201d because she mentioned how they even \u201cspeak foreign\u201d in text messages.\u00a0 And as if the, if I may call it, ignorance train could keep chugging, she whipped out her phone, and began reading out some text messages she had from her \u201cforeigner\u201d classmates.<\/span><\/p>\n Naturally, as is occasionally the case of a non-native speaking English, the text message was a little rough around the edges, but still getting the point across.\u00a0 A few missing conjunctions, some incorrect grammar sure, but still the point was comprehendible.\u00a0 But of course, that didn\u2019t stop\u00a0Little Miss Patagonia<\/a>\u00a0from gradually altering her voice until it became clear she was mocking an Asian studying abroad at Georgia Tech.<\/span><\/p>\n Needless to say, this whole exchange inadvertently overheard by proximity, got my mental gears turning to the point of where words are being put to brog right here, right now.\u00a0 The girl was clearly just a little bit bigot-y, if that can even be a proper description, but really it got me thinking about the word \u201cforeigner.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Technically speaking, foreigner is not an improper word, or necessarily a pejorative by itself, but there\u2019s just something about it that rubs me the wrong way, especially when used in the context that Little Miss Patagonia was using it, to basically clump a bunch of minorities together with minimal effort.<\/span><\/p>\n In the seventh grade, there was a kid in my class who was a known full-blown racist.\u00a0 Very, very likely had parents\/relatives in a Neo-Nazi, Aryan Brotherhood chapter in Northern Virginia somewhere.\u00a0 Without any regard to whether a guy could kick his ass or not, he flung the word foreigner around left and right, towards anyone who wasn\u2019t white.\u00a0 Towards me, towards my friends that weren\u2019t white, to the black kids, the Middle Eastern kids, it didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 All foreigners.<\/span><\/p>\n Other than band, with our white teacher, I had no classes with him, but now I\u2019m curious to know if he acted out towards any of the teachers that weren\u2019t white.\u00a0 Nor did I see him beyond the seventh grade, so I\u2019d have no idea how he would\u2019ve dealt with the requirement to take a foreign language, and being in a class with a Spanish, French, German or Japanese instructor; scratch that, no doubt he would have taken German.<\/span><\/p>\n One time, I remember he mouthed off to the wrong person, namely one guy who was like the de facto leader of the Afghan gang in the school.\u00a0 Now that I think about it, I don\u2019t think I remember seeing Mr. Racist after the day I remember seeing the Afghan gang leader marching down the hall, shouting out for him.<\/span><\/p>\n Back to the main point, the word foreigner isn\u2019t necessarily politically\u00a0incorrect<\/em>, but it definitely feels like a word that is, based on the negatively connoted context in which people tend to use it.<\/span><\/p>\n Little Miss Patagonia was already headed down a slippery slope with her story about all her foreigner classmates by simply referring to them as such, and I probably would have mentally branded her a racist before she got all ching-chong-sing-song with her impression of her foreigner classmate\u2019s text messages.<\/span><\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just this kind of instance that piques my racism-senses; it\u2019s simply the fact that an innocuous word has been used so poorly in at least my life\u2019s experiences, that I can\u2019t help but think that verbal injustice is on the menu whenever I hear the word foreigner at all.<\/span><\/p>\n This, is an example of why I think people can\u2019t have nice things.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And no, not the band.\u00a0 I actually really, really love the band Foreigner.\u00a0 They\u2019re one of those groups that I\u2019ve heard their music all the time growing up, and mostly in movies, like the\u00a0Rocky\u00a0series, but it wasn\u2019t until I was older did I put two and two together, and realize that the band that sang … Continue reading Let\u2019s talk about the word \u201cforeigner\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,15,89],"class_list":["post-40259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-observations","tag-og","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40261,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40259\/revisions\/40261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}