They eat asian food like an average middle class gwai lo .
It was meant to be a throw away comment. At least to me I wasn't suggesting (even if such a creature exist) that my friends are middle class gwai lo
Anyway one guy got quite offended. Two other people leapt to my defence which was nice (but I was in all honestly blissfully unaware that it would cause trouble at all), but in principle he was right. Gwai Lo was always meant to be an offensive term. The question to me is context, and intent.
I have two friends (brothers) who are half-indian half-australian (only mentioned to bring up context), and their background makes no difference to my judgement of them as people. They've call me a fucking gouk, chink, slanty-eyed bastard, yellow peril etc, I've call them half-blood, mongrel etc, etc. None of us have ever been offended by it because of context and awareness and also the way in the which the word is used, and it is just in those case a stereotype that we don't believe in, and a ridicilous one at that. All of us are aware of the ridicilous nature of the comments so they are fine.
Its a weird line. Is it PC-hyper sensitivty not to use those terms or deragatory to use those terms? Gwai lo is a reverse racist term, and I despise reverse racism even more because I think if you have been the victim of racist behaviour you know how it feels so you more than anyone else shouldn't be engaging in this behaviour. Is it neither? Is it geniunely a matter of context? Does a word have power in and of itself? Not an easy question really.
Oh, Blacklamb asked me to ask you if you received the kimono?