I’d like to apologize for language I used in an article I posted here this morning. It was offensive and hurtful to the community.
The article used a pejorative term for Japanese people when spoofing how people spoke during World War 2. I had never heard the term used outside of World War 2 documentaries and should have done a better job researching it. While I knew the term had a racial component (see internment camps), I believed that the term was primarily used as shorthand for the Japanese empire in World War 2 and that its use was anachronistic enough that it would be perceived as silly and not offensive. I was wrong.
Many took justifiable offense at the use of the term. My apologies and I hope you’ll forgive the oversight.
We’ll rerun the ducks article separately with just the facts so the comments will stay focused on the issue of the ducks returning to Wallingford.
Again, I’d like to extend my apologies and reiterate that I recognize how my language was hurtful.
I understand you are trying to be cute or sarcastic or something but this is one of the most offensive articles I have ever seen published on Wallyhood. I’m not talking about the Ducks of course. If this is the kind of articles Wallyhood is willing to publish, I need to look elsewhere for my neighborhood news.
Totally agree!! The Ducks bring an amazing amount of tourist business to Wallingford and Fremont — can you say small business support! And to talk about the company this way is just rude.
Hi Jessica, I am curious why you say the Ducks bring an amazing amount of tourist business to Fremont and Wallingford. I always assumed the Ducks don’t bring any business because they just drive *through* our neighborhood …
Agreed, I am a former Wallingford resident who still reads religiously, but no more. This particular writer has pissed me off before with his tone, but I’ve shrugged it off. This time though, I’m out. Bye Wallyhood. Jordan, you should NOT leave your baby in this guy’s hands.
Eric:
Your addendum does nothing to make this situation better. If you don’t have the personal integrity to remove the article, Jordan needs to.
This article is completely offensive and inappropriate. The internment camps were one of the low points in US history that devastated families. Talking about “killing japs” is not funny.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to accomplish but this is not it.
Makes me ashamed of our neighborhood blog.
I love this article. And hate the Ducks. The prior two comments confirm the strange and contradictory sensitivity in this area – that you can’t say much for fear of offending someone but everything else is permitted. Get a sense of humor. And that’s coming from the daughter of German immigrants who lived under Nazi Germany rule.
N*gger. I used it sarcastically in an attempt of humor, does that make it ok?
Christa, racism is not ok. Not in jest. Regardless of your own personal background or history.
Japs?! Really? Very poor taste.
Another poorly thought out and inflammatory post from Eric. A look forward to the day this blog grows up into something more useful and respectful for a major urban area like ours.
I totally agree! “Japs” is in poor taste. As were internment camps. Carpet bombing. Atomic weapons.
Eric here is reminding us of our racist and war-mongering past to ridicule the mindset that produced “japs”, internment camps, carpet bombing. And that produced the Ducks we have today. Is that what makes his comments uncomfortable, that it shows us how little our thinking really has changed since those ugly days?
And in a way, (whether he realizes it or not) he’s ridiculing the conservative mindset that keeps Seattle stuck in a parochial past.
Using the slur in no way adds to his message.
Wow! Time to unsub from this neighborhood blog is this is the kind of crap you’re willing to post. Get in touch when you enter a more recent era.
I also find the article offensive.
Lighten up commentors! Eric is using WWII rhetoric to remind us of how distorted thinking leads to rash action, like approving ducks for street use. There’s no indication he’s in support of internment camps or fighting Japanese…..quite the opposite. I’m glad to see the article and thankful Eric helps keep us informed. And the photo is great too. Turn your wrath toward the Ducks, support Eric and Wallyhood !
No one who reads the entire article and has a sense of humor would find this offensive.
I did.
Would you be defending him if he started off a post with the N word?
Read the whole article. Was appalled in the beginning at the reference to japs. Totally unacceptable. Insensitive, at the very least. Please remove the post. Please be more careful in the future.
Yes. Let’s stop talking about “japs” and get back to railing about keeping poor people out of Wallyhood.
Retract and apologize for this appalling piece. Awful.
OK Wally!! It’s time for you to fire this racist jack-wagon. He’s been pushing the line for a long time, and it has to stop. If Wallyhood is into slandering local business and ignoring its racist comments, it’s time for people in this neighborhood and on this forum to call and/or email the blogs/forum sponsors and talk to them about stopping their sponsorship or refusing to patronize them.
Since I’m off work this week, I’ll be calling the sponsor’s starting this morning.
Steve
I’m embarrassed for Wallingford. I hope outsiders don’t think we’re all racist jerks. Eric doesn’t speak for me, doesn’t represent my interests, and doesn’t seem to fit in the neighborhood. I’ve read all his crappy, whining, self-serving articles to date without making a comment, but this bigoted blog post hits an all-new low. When is Jordan going to cut ties with this rube and get back to some insightful, thoughtful reporting? Eric is Wallingford’s Donald Trump, and we shouldn’t be giving him this platform to spew his lousy ideas and demented rants.
AMEM!!
Steve
Hear, Hear!
It would be best at this point to not delete this thread but for Wally to ban Eric from posting, lock thread of comments and apoligize for his comments to show what Wallyhood will not accept.
Steve
Are you serious? The first sentence of this article contains a racial slur? You should be ashamed of yourself, take this filth down… I am going to stop reading Wallyhood blog until Eric is removed from the editorial staff.
Ugh. This is an important issue. As a cyclist who uses the Fremont Bridge frequently, I am distressed that the City has allowed these vehicles back onto our streets. For public safety, the new route is worse than the old one.
But rather than have a rational discussion, Eric (in an attempt to be funny, I guess) uses a racially offensive term and obfuscates the real story here. Not funny. Just lame.
Finally there are more people who share my anti-Eric sentiments. I basically stopped reading after his first insensitive article about the Ducks on the same day as the tragic crash. I know someone who’s friends with Jordan, I wish I could remember who that was. ‘Cause seriously, enough of Eric and his self-serving posts. Let him start his own damn blog!
What an amazingly offensive article, and completely unnecessarily. It’s rare that I enjoy an article written by Eric, but this one actually angered me. I could do without his writing on this blog anymore.
Nothing will change on this blog until sponsors have a say. Contact the blog sponsors.
Steve
Great to see that they made the necessary changes to the Duck Tours. They will be much safer now.
It takes a lot of rhetorical finesse to pull off what Eric is trying to do here, and he just isn’t up to it. I don’t think Eric is a racist, he’s just not as capable a writer as he’d like to be. In the world of old-school journalism an editor would have sent this back to him with a scolding note, and we would have gotten a rewrite that cut out the cutesy, “edgy” tone and stuck to the issue at hand.
YES!! You are exactly right. Not clever, just offensive.
I am a daily reader of Wallyhood and proud to share the blog as one of the best community aspects of our neighborhood. Waking up to this article made me question whether I should share this blog or continue reading it.
This article is so poorly written as an attempt of irony/humor and comes off bigoted. Where is the respect for Mami Sato, one of the Japanese women killed in the crash?
If Jordan is in charge, its time to reconsider your writing staff. Til then, you’ve lost a reader and blog ambassador.
I also hate the ducks, and feel they should be completely shut down. But as a member of an Asian American family in Wallingford, I’m very disturbed by the failed attempt at humor. Had the author quoted or posted actual copies of the racist rhetoric of the early forties, I would be less offended. The bad parody just creeps me out.
Hi Wallingrordsince89- I tried to fix things with an addendum to the article after I researched the term a bit. Hopefully that helps to explain things. I have never heard the term used by anyone in almost 50 years of being alive, so I considered it a pure anachronism at this point. Still, using the term in writing for a neighborhood blog without first doing that research and providing context was not the best idea, I need to get better at considering the range of my audience.
What a ridiculous addendum. The term is not “really just anachronistic.” It remains one of the most hideous things you can call a Japanese person.
This is classic racism: “I”m not racist, I”m just joking around.”
Where did you do your research? Perhaps 1950s propaganda literature? A simple look-up in Webster’s New World dictionary shows: “Jap: n. short for Japanese: a term of hostility and contempt.”
The term isn’t out of date. You’re out of date.
Yeah, just because you’re personally ignorant about what that kind of slur means to people, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem or that it’s totally clever and funny to throw it around in an article about a horrific incident where a bunch people died in our community. You could’ve presented information and made your points about the Ducks without heaping on a bunch of really tone-deaf offensive creative writing exercise here. It adds nothing to the actual necessary conversation about this topic, and it’s really an embarrassment seeing this on a popular blog which is one of the faces of our community.
The way Japanese-Americans were treated here and elsewhere during the last century was horrifying. The duck-bus crash was horrifying. I still think about it when I go across that bridge. I’m all for witty humor, and I’d enjoy some creative and clever writing on a subject that’s less contentious, which is most subjects around here. Tell me your best vegetable puns for announcing the farmers market opening day! Make a joke about sausage for the Wurst Fest! But this is really not an appropriate topic for that kind of thing. At all.
I appreciate your attempt at an addendum, but doubling down on your mistake and dismissing the concerns of your readers just because you don’t personally find the term offensive, is really just adding condescension to ignorance. An apology and explanation of context should go at the top of the article, not the bottom, so that it at least sets your intended context, if you’re unwilling to just edit your racist language or retract the post and write an appropriate one on this topic (which is really what ought to happen here.)
PLEASE Eric! Shut-the-Hell-Up!!
You abviously don’t get it. Even your addenendum is pathetic. No apology, only justification and MORE Racism!!!
Please, just shut up!!
Steve
A are you nuts Eric
B are you trolling us?
10 seconds with Wikipedia shows a letter from a freaking Japanese government official to a newspaper in *2012* – follow his goddamned instructions
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2011/04/letters-229/
Not acceptable
Sir: I refer to the article by Rod Liddle in the 26 March edition of The Spectator. Although the focus of the article is on the events unfolding in Libya, Mr Liddle makes passing mention of the recent disaster in Japan, including use of the expression ‘white-coated Jap bloke’. May I point out that most Japanese people find the word ‘Jap’ offensive, irrespective of the circumstances in which it is used. At a time when many people in Japan have had their lives devastated by the earthquake and tsunami, while others are working tirelessly to secure the safety of the stricken nuclear plant in Fukushima at considerable risk to themselves, I find the gratuitous use of a word reviled by everyone in Japan utterly inappropriate. I strongly request that you refrain from allowing the use of this term in any future articles that refer to Japan.
Ken Okaniwa
Minister, Embassy of Japan, London W1
Thank goodness others noted the article’s offensiveness. It really is not humorous, given both past history and the most recent accident. We can do so much better.
This post is way out of line. The ducks are a legitimate neighborhood concern and definitely merit discussion here… But the author could’ve made his point – and even been clever – without hitting us in the face over and over with cringe-inducing offensive racial slurs. I’m kind of shocked that you published this, Wallyhood.
Well, I am very against the Ducks returning. I skim articles and screen out most poor writing.. so didnt really get the racist stuff.. tho knowing the author somewhat I assume he was trying to make a joke which has backfired for many,
Main point of article remains– the Ducks are back. As a driver who uses 99 and also the Fremont Bridge.. and who has been bothered by their girth and recklessness I wish it were not so.
“… the term is really just anachronistic. Has anyone heard it used as an epithet outside of the context of World War 2?”
Said the white man in a white neighborhood.
Is “Jew” really a “simple ethnic description”?
I’m cancelling my subscription and asking for a refund on the remaining issues!
I’m pleased to arrive at this thread and see the outrage that has been posted already. And I’m pleased to see it has been deleted.
Having brought up racism on this blog previously, and receiving little support, I’m heartened that at least overt and obvious racism strikes nerves in my community.
Thanks, neighbors.
<3
Pre-Eric Wallyhood was better. Period.
It’s sad that it took this column to get us to all say that.
Jeff,
Actually, if I’m not mistaken it took at least one if not more of the great blog Sponsers to pull their advertising to get a proper response.
Thank you Ivar’s for weighing in on the issue, I know where we’ll be having dinner this weekend, and hope other faithful’s will too.
Steve
True, this was brought to my attention by Ivar’s. I’d like to think we would have responded the same regardless, though, without it. But, either way, great respect to Ivar’s for standing up so quickly with the community to voice their concern.
Wow! A lot of hateful comments here from all sides of this issue. I take the apology as genuine but would concur with a more vigilant editorial board scrutiny of submitted materials. As my English teacher at dear old Lincoln High taught me, word choice’ is important.
For those getting notified on comments, as Don notes, Eric has replaced the original article with a retraction and sincere apology. As long time readers know, I’ve put my foot in my own mouth more than thrice here, and I appreciate Eric taking ownership and responding.
I’m sorry for any damage this has caused to our sense of community and conversation. I hope you’ll give us a chance to rebuild.
Actually I’m not sure the notify on comments is working. I was the first post his morning and haven’t got an update all day (and yes I have checked my junk folder)
I think Jordan mad the right choice here. Everyone makes mistakes. This whole thing reminds me of Macklemore dressing up like Fagin for a Thriftshop performance. We in the Pacific Northwest can be really clueless. We are progressive but then there really isn’t enough diversity for us to be schooled on what is and is not appropriate. It takes something like this to open our eyes.
I once mistakenly though that “Polack” was an okay substitute for Polish, and it most definitely is not. Everyone makes mistakes, and people on their high horses should ask how they’d want to be treated when they make theirs.
AAinWallyhood and Foobius Barbius,
At least we have a few voices here that don’t immediately react into knee-jerk political correctness and can give a measured response. During the war the Seattle Times routinely used the word in its articles and large bold-face headlines, just as it called the Germans “Gerries.” During the mid-40s it was believed that the Japanese had submarines off the west coast and the Seattle Times warned Seattle residences to voluntarily impose a black out as did our Rep. (or maybe Senator by then) Warren Magnuson. In fact, one Japanese balloon bomb actually made it across the ocean and killed a kindergarten teacher on a field trip with her students on the Oregon coast.
I consider the word “Jap” — don’t faint now – similar to other abbreviated American slang words that save us the effort of having to pronounce another syllable. Of course, it is not acceptable now. But I was not given the opportunity to read the original article. Perhaps Eric was using it ironically; I suspect he was.
I’m so glad to know — this is irony now folks – that I have so many neighbors upholding the Corinthian columns of the moral universe so that my sensitive psyche is not damaged. I also wonder how many of them have never had a “racist” thought. Few I suspect. And that goes for people of all ethnicities. As a historian of world history, I feel pretty confident saying that people have always had trouble, at least at first, trusting others that don’t look like themselves. Perhaps that comes from our prehistoric ancestors, whose brain and endocrines structures we have inherited. And they were likely to attack strangers with more than words.
Just think of how Americans 50 to 100 years from now are going to judge us. I doubt using derogatory terms will be high on the agenda of our shortcomings.
I just want to say, what a well written and insightful article, sitting here masquerading as a comment. have re-read this a couple of times over the past couple days.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has been annoyed by Eric’s history of being inflammatory — sometimes seemingly just for the sake of being inflammatory, and sometimes simply because he’s not particularly careful or thoughtful. Regardless, I agree with others: Wallyhood was better pre-Eric.
ARE YOU SERIOUS!!
Friday morning Wallyhood Shoke Jock writer Eric wrote an article using a racial slur. What followed was an outcry from readers about his racist bigotry.
In response to the outcry of his racist bigotry, he wrote an adendumm using the same language and justifying his writing without an apology.
After even more backlash from his response, Wally (aka Jordan) pulled the article, followed shortly after that by re-posting the same article with an apology USING THE SAME RACIST BIGOTRY THAT STARTED THE ENTIRE ISSUE!!
The challenge I’m making is to every Advertiser Sponsor to pull their support from Wallyhood.org until “at least” the writer’s and owner stop printing this bigotry in our neighborhood, and keep their personal bigotry to themselves, unless of course you condone this bigotry.
I also challenge every Wallingford resident’s to stop patronizing the advertiser’s that condone this kind of writing by not removing their sponsorship.
Steve
Steve: I’m really sorry you feel this way, but I’m also honestly confused. You say the apology is “using the same racist bigotry that started the entire issue”. I don’t see it. What in his apology is bigoted or racist?
I’m honestly lost.
I originally wrote this article using the term “jap”…..where’s the confusion?
The first paragraph of his apology was perfect, it should’ve stopped there. Everything after that is just more BS by deminishing what he said along with demeaning his audience. I think you both need to do your homework on what an apology really is, and what it’s not! Believe me, I’ve had too.
Sometimes when I screw-up, all I can do is simply apologize, take the hit and try to get past the issue while learning from it. Good luck to ya Wally.
Steve
I think there’s a difference between using a term and referring to having used the term (case in point, you used the term in your reply.) Nonetheless, I have edited the apology to remove the term entirely, out of respect for your feelings and opinion.
You know this is a hard gig. Notice the word police going after Eric for “accident.” Give the guy a break. We’ve all been there and if you haven’t then you’re not being honest with yourself.
Well put! Thank you. I could not agree more. As an Asian-American, I know what racism is–and isn’t. I don’t need my non-Asian neighbors crying racism any time offensive language is used, especially when it’s an accident and there is no ill-will behind the author’s words. Eric meant no harm. He learned his lesson. Sad and unfortunate for Wallyhood; I will definitely miss it.
Thanks for reflecting and apologizing, Eric, and thanks for stepping in to do damage control and improve the blog, Jordan. And thanks, Wallingforders, for the collective outcry for us to do better. Here’s a good resource for when we get called out! http://squinky.me/calledout/
When I was a young child in the Pacific Northwest, World War II felt like ancient history. Nevertheless, I not infrequently heard racial slurs directed at our family’s Japanese friends/family/fellow parishioners. It wasn’t hard for even a young kid to figure out that certain words were outright vicious.
It did take me until I was about in middle school to figure out that the game where the kids scream “Bombs over Tokyo” before dropping large rocks on frozen puddles, also was based on extremely nasty racial references and implications. OK, I had figured all that out by the time I was twelve. How can anyone who is almost 50, who has spent more than a year in the Northwest, NOT understood these things? The Northwest has always had an alarming undercurrent of anti-Asian, particularly anti-Japanese hostility. It’s shocking that anyone who lives here and considers themselves any kind of “reporter” would not be just informed about, but also deeply sensitive to that history.
Where there are issues and concerns of deep importance to certain groups of one’s neighbors, but a person simply doesn’t think these issues are worth bothering to find out about, is not innocent ignorance. It’s racism.
Leave it to an innocent neighborhood blog in the heart of PC Seattle to provide context and enlightenment for the rise of Trump, the cluelessness of the electorate, and why America is so polarized in the new millennium.
I am one of those Japs that “Eric” apparently didn’t mean to offend with his oh so droll reference. Pure anachronism? Pejorative? He’s never heard the term outside of WWII documentaries? What world does he live in? Oh yeah: he’s a white guy. Well, I grew up being taunted and suffering explicit and implicit discrimination because I’m of Jap extraction, third generation. Granted that was in the midwest. But my father and his family suffered unbelievable pain here on the west coast when they were split up and thrown into concentration camps (and let’s not sugar coat what we call them).
Eric, you’re at best insensitive and clueless; but you may be worse than that, as others have suggested, and that’s scary. FDR, who is mostly regarded as the wise leader of the nation during a horrible period, is forever diminished in my book because he threw my family (American citizens!) into prison camps with no due process and no constitutionally justifiable reason. His wife Eleanor, however, visited my dad’s camp in 1943 and wrote the following in Collier’s:
“I can well understand the bitterness of people who have lost loved ones at the hands of the Japanese military authorities, and we know that the totalitarian philosophy, whether it is in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy or in Japan, is one of cruelty and brutality…. These understandable feelings are aggravated by the old time economic fear on the West Coast and the unreasoning racial feeling which certain people, through ignorance, have always had wherever they came in contact with people who are different from themselves.
“To undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally but we seldom have the foresight. Therefore we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes and I hope that the recommendations of the staff of the War Relocation Authority, who have come to know individually most of the Japanese Americans in these various camps, will be accepted.
“…A Japanese American may be no more Japanese than a German-American is German, or an Italian-American is Italian, or of any other national background. All of these people, including the Japanese Americans, have men who are fighting today for the preservation of the democratic way of life and the ideas around which our nation was built.
“We have no common race in this country, but we have an ideal to which all of us are loyal: we cannot progress if we look down upon any group of people amongst us because of race or religion. Every citizen in this country has a right to our basic freedoms, to justice and to equality of opportunity. We retain the right to lead our individual lives as we please, but we can only do so if we grant to others the freedoms that we wish for ourselves.”
Her last paragraph seems more relevant now than ever. Pure anachronism, indeed.
@oceanography,
Thank you for speaking up. There are some that might think the connection between Eric’s hateful article and internment camps is tenuous, but the reason FDR could detain American citizens without trial was precisely because people felt comfortable dehumanizing them.
Eric’s article shows that some people still are comfortable doing that. We even have presidential candidates who are comfortable dehumanizing other groups of people (Latinos, Muslims). We all need to be ready to fight back against the ignorance and hate, and to show its dangers.
You guys don’t know what hateful is. Eric’s original article clearly referenced the abhorrent attitudes as “that’s what they USED to think”, NOT “what I or we think today”. He shouldn’t have used the terms he did because the names alone can cause hurt, and because it trivialized the suffering of Japanese-Americans, but he recognized and apologized for that.
Hateful means he was full of hate. If you can’t tell the difference between carelessness and hate, you’re part of the polarizing problem, not the unifying solution.
I couldn’t agree with you more, @Wallyhood. Carelessness (and/or cultural ignorance) do not make a racist. Hate does.
I will truly miss this blog. Hope you will be back at it again, after a little breather. Thank you for your contributions to this neighborhood!
Jordan,
I said “hateful article”; I never accused Eric of being hateful. That said, if you’re going to make writings available for public consumption, you should be aware of what is acceptable speech. Eric’s speech was not acceptable, and I’m glad he realizes that now.
Wow, I used to think that I lived in a land where free speech, even that which is vulgar or not of our liking, was protected by the first amendment of our Constitution. Thanks for the reeducation, Comrade Skyler.
Leave it to rich white folk in precious Wallingford to get more worked up over someone else’s use of a racial slur than they are over their own structural racism and classism that keeps ethnic minorities and working class folk out of the neighborhood.
I don’t know whom you are talking about. Many of us have been in the neighborhood for decades. I bought my house for $36,000 in 1976, when Wallingford could barely be called “middle-class.” . As for “structural racism and classism that keeps ethnic minorities and working class folk out of the neighborhood,” aren’t you really talking about the capitalist system and supply and demand? What is a neighbor supposed to do about that, I wonder?
Rich white folks? Really? I suspect that Y’All does not live in Wallingford because he would know from experience that speculative development drives up prices, not racism. Wallingford originated as a low income, pretty rough neighborhood because of the Gas Works, which deposited a thick layer of soot (my attic was covered with it) when the wind blew the wrong direction.
There may be economic issues associated with being able to afford to buy a place anymore. Plus many existing homeowners struggle to pay the property taxes for a home they purchased 30 years ago, taxes that now approach the level of monthly rent (over and above whatever mortgage they pay).
Perhaps Y’All refers to structural racism (and sexism) in the job market, where it can be more difficult for women and minorities to make equivalent salaries to afford the escalated prices. But that is city-wide, and not many in the neighborhood have control over how much someone earns. Many of us chose to live in the City and send our kids to public school because we WANTED diversity, not to exclude.
Hang onto your hats. If you thought prices are out of hand now, pricing will only get worse once the developer-dominated HALA recommendations are imposed and the bidding war begins over the remaining affordable properties. Do not blame the current residents for what out-of-town speculation is doing to housing prices.
Developers do not build “new affordable housing”. They tear down affordable housing and build new because they can charge four times the square foot amount compared to existing homes. Either that, or developers call it “affordable”, but the City subsidizes the rent and taxes the rest of the city to make up the difference. Either way we will be paying more and developers will pocket the profits and move on to another place where they do not live.
Here is a timely story from today’s Crosscut. Expect to see a lot more stories like this as the speculation increases under the ill-advised HALA recommendations.
http://features.crosscut.com/a-home-disappears-in-ballard
For what it’s worth – of course I don’t speak for all of my “kind” – I too am Asian American. Having suffered real prejudice and discrimination in my life, I can tell the difference between a joke and not. What’s in Eric’s article seems clumsy at worse, hateful reactions “on my behalf” are much more serious. Don’t presume I need you to come to my defense. What we all need are more tolerance and forgiveness to address that much bigger problem.
Could not agree more. Thank you!!
The Wallingford community dismantling systemic racism and oppression: one community blogger at a time.