Recently I told someone he should consider the rating of a product optimistic, because it was Chinese.
And that's not entirely accurate, because pretty much everything is made in China, good and bad alike.
But there was a common and absolute understanding what I meant. It was because the product was made by a company whose name was meaningless. It might have been "Sparkletek", or "Samyo" (not Sanyo, though the similarity is intentional). And the same module might be available from a half-dozen other companies, all too transient to care about quality or any reputation their names might accumulate over time.
Yet some would take offense, because they believe using "Chinese" in this context infers that all Chinese people/products fall under a negative stereotype. So what to do?
I could describe the product as something so blantantly racist, like "wun hung lo", that any sensible reader would infer that I'm using it to refer only to something that actually meets the stereotype.
I could simply say "Sparkletek is crap", but then meaning is lost. A reader might believe I've used that exact product, and pick the Samyo instead, or some other similarly crappy product; gaining nothing in the process.
In fact there is nothing I can do, short of regularly typing out the full explanation above, to accurately transmit the meaning that the single word "Chinese" already provides - without offending an overly sensitive few.
But I've got better things to do. I want to have a beer with my Japanese neighbor, who has a "rice car", and calls it such. Then later, hopefully eat a Bimbo:
And if that doesn't work out, I guess I'll spend the night banging on my Wang:
Personally, I love the fact that words and phrases have multiple meanings. If someone gets hung up on one meaning, and is offended by it, that is a
deliberate choice on their part. And is not my problem.
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