Posted by Cultural and/or racial context in language is key. From Ta-Nehisi Coates’ dispatches from Paris:
The historical upshot of this is that Frederick Douglass necessarily belongs to black people in a way that Benjamin Franklin can never belong to democratic-thinking white people. On similar terms Susan B. Anthony will always belong to women, in a way that Ralph Waldo Emerson can never belong to a democratic-thinking me. We see this in our vocabulary. It is the reason why my friends hear “I’ll fight every nigger here” one way when it comes out of my mouth, and another way coming out of Riley Cooper’s. It is the reason why “bitch” sounds one way coming out Samantha Jones’ mouth, and another way out of mine. Why “poor white trash” sounds one way coming out of Toby Keith’s mouth, and another way out of mine.
What Coates here is talking about is code-switching. Every race/group does it, to some extent. Certain communication styles, certain descriptive words belong to groups more than they do to others. “Oh black people use the N-word! Why can’t I?!” Because you’re not black!
But what examples do we have of South Asian code switching? Other than just switching languages, I’m not sure of many examples.
Also, from a pejorative standpoint, there is no term that matches the n-word or even cracker. When people say towelhead or raghead, that’s too specific; though Sikhs would get massively offended. Sand N*gger is sometimes employed against Desis but it’s actually a derogatory term for Arabs, not South Asians. At one time, the word “coolie” was pretty prejudiced; it referred to unskilled laborers but the word fell out of favor in the late 1800’s. Plus it was never just for South Asians; it also described Chinese people too.
If there’s no pejorative, there’s no opportunity to re-brand it the way that folks do with redneck, cracker and the n-word. To be sure, I’m not lamenting the absence of a generic derogatory term for Desis. It’s just curious to me.
