Going Hawaiian

Sometimes when I see one of my past entries I think, "Gosh, I'm already a grumpy old guy. I'm just like Abe Simpson." But at least consider yourself somewhat spared because when I am grumpy it's usually terse grumpy and not some long winded rambling thing that would suggest oncoming senility. I'm sure we've all seen that before in other people's blog.

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica again. I find it interesting that in that world where there are only 40,000 humans still left fighting for survival each day, that they exhibit all the frailities and insecurities of the human psyche except one. They have forgotten racism. There are black, whites, hispanics, and Asians living in a world where they don't judge each other by the color of their skin. There only prejudice is against the evil Cylons trying to destroy them. Because Cylons are machines, humans refer to them as frakin toasters. Maybe someday with the advance of artificial intelligence in our world, that will become the next way we choose to divide ourselves from each other.

Okay, I was reading a piece the other day by Goeffry Nunberg the famous linguist. He pointed out that if we call people Asian-American or African American we should really be referring to white people at European American. However the word, caucasian is still in vogue for white people even though it's an inaccurate archaic descripter. He concedes that through the years pc words have gone in and out of fashion as people try to define themselves and each other so that there's not much logic to the designations anymore. Are the geographic monikers really better than skin color definitions? Does caucasian sound more scientific? Does it lead people to think differently because of that psuedo-scientific posturing?

So I've been thinking, I'm going to lose the word caucasian. When referring to white people, I think I'll be adopting the Hawaiian term, "Haole."