What? This is the stupidest shit ever lol. How is this racist? If referring to someone as “an American” or “a Kenyan” or “a French” is not racist, why would saying “a Japanese” be any different? Japanese is literally the noun and adjective depending on how you want to use it just like any other demonym
It’s not inherently rascist, I should have took more care in my phrasing.
What I meant was: people who who drop the person or personhood identifier in favor of national/racial/other sorts of identifiers are often those who engage in broad strokes judgements based on origin.
A key part of English, at least based on my understanding of it, is the clear delineation between person and non-person. Removing that reference to personhood by simply using an adjective of origin is closer to calling them an “it” than otherwise.
That’s just my read on the topic though, I’m welcome to hearing otherwise because this could be an interesting convo.
Yeah, turns out the lingual patterns my grampa used to refer to Chinese and Japanese people is not great, in 2024.
edit: To be clear, he used different slurs, he wasn't so racist as to use the same slur for Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laoceans, and island people.
That guy shouldn't have said that but I see plenty of Japanese people who are fairly fluent in English say things like "As a Japanese" or "I am a Japanese and I..." It appears in quite a few youtube comments and other social media comments from what I've seen. They'll also say it out loud in interviews and stuff.
It's technically correct as a noun for a Japanese person, like "a German" or "an Italian." It just sounds weirdly antiquated and kinda racist in modern day.
What's racist about it though? Like isn't just because most people that would say "I met a japanese" are the same people who use the words "a female" when they talk about women? Is there anything actually racist in the phrasing itself, that makes it different from referring to other nationalities?