Re: alfa-digest V9 #628

[George Graves <gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

That's right. WOG is a British racial epithet that they applied to 
Arabs, Persians, Pakistanis, East Indians as well as Chinese and other 
East Asians kept under the thumb of "Empire". It's actually an acronym, 
and stands for 'Wily Oriental Gentlemen.'  I suspect that the slur 
Roger was actually looking for was "WOP" which is an national epithet 
applied to Italians by Americans. Apparently, in the late 19th century, 
things were so bad in Italy, that people would illegally emigrate to 
the USA, often stowing away on ship-board. When they arrived at Ellis 
Island in New York Harbor, and tried to get into this country, 
officials would take a piece of chalk and write on their lapels W.O.P. 
"WithOut Papers" because they had to be processed separately from those 
with papers. The term WOP stuck as a slur on  Italian-Americans. It's 
pretty irrelevant now that Italian-Americans are wholly integrated into 
our society, and it never did have the mean-spirited connotations in 
our society that some racial epithets have had (remember, WOP is not a 
racial slur, its a nationality slur). But one does hear it used 
occasionally in jest, such as: "Hey Richard, Is that damned WOP car of 
yours still giving you grief?" :->

George Graves
who loves his WOP car
and most other things Italian as well.



On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 12:20 PM, alfa-digest wrote:


> Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 10:37:47 -0500
> From: Ralph Moorhouse <ralfalfa@domain.elided>
> Subject: Re: Italian / American differences
>
> At 10:36 AM 7/8/2003 -0400, rogerlaf wrote:
> > Oh and by the way we do do things better than all you "Wogs"!
> Totally uncalled for comment - warrants a ban from the list.  Richard?
> BTW you have your definition of "w****" wrong.
>
> r
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