Alternate Reality

I’ve been an avid SciFi reader since the late 50′s. The trend over the last twenty years in SciFi has been away from hard core to fantasy. I loved the old time travel story’s with a passion so I wondered what Andre Norton would have written about Hawai’i coach Greg McMackin’s blunder in using a word he shouldn’t have used.

Would she have written a story about time travelers accidentally changing the course of history causing the British to win the revolutionary war? If she had,  Greg McMackin’s use of the word would have had a totally different meaning. He would have meant the players were dancing around like a bundle of sticks or branches.

Sadly, what Greg McMackin did wasn’t a SciFi story, it was real life and he really blundered in the way he used the word. Anyone who knows him knows that his crying while apologizing wasn’t an act, it was the real man truly sorry he had hurt the gay community, the fans, his school and his players.

It’s sometimes difficult for someone not raised in Hawai’i to understand not only the way people talk, but how words are used. Due to the waves of immigration of Chinese, Mexicans, Portuguese, Japanese and Filipino’s there were tensions between the races. They came up with a unique way of dealing with the problem; humor. There are jokes about the length of a Japanese persons legs,  Filipino’s eating dog, Potagee’s being dumb and Haole’s diets to name a few. Thats all they are though is jokes and Hawai’is favorite comedians like Frank DeLima use them in their on stage humor.

They also came up with a way of distinguishing between using a word to describe a person and to slur a person. Here’s some definitions from the Pidgin dictionary and their usage.

popolo
(poh poh loh)

Definition: slang term used to describe an individual of African-American descent
Used In A Sentence: No, Ku`uipo’s boyfriend stay popolo.
In English?: Actually Ku`uipo’s boyfriend is African-American.

Potagee
(poh tah ghee)

Definition: slang term used to describe an individual of Portuguese descent
Used In A Sentence: Randy stay one pocho or wot?
In English?: Do you know whether or not Randy is Portuguese?

Mahu
(mah who)

Definition: homo sexual; a man who acts very feminine or like a woman
Used In A Sentence: Ho dat Charlie, he so mahu yeah?
In English?: Does that Charlie bat for the other team?

Haole
(how lee)

Definition: slang term used to describe an individual of Caucasian descent
Used In A Sentence: Damn haole!
In English?: I wish that Caucasian individual would understand me for once!

The way you distinguish between describing a person and a racial or sexual slur is that they would simply add fu^&*#g in front of the word and it became a slur.

Why go thru all this? Coach Greg McMackin wasn’t intending it as a slur he was using it as a description all though a not very good one. It got blown all out of proportion by the media and activists. Should he have used the word no but lets face it even those who are yelling the loudest about it say things like that on occasion.

Is $28,000 a letter enough of a punishment to satisfy the media and activists only time will tell.