The Community Page received another large batch of e-mails in response to Debito Arudou's followup Sept. 2 (Sept. 3 in some areas) Just Be Cause column on the use of the word "gaijin." Following is a selection of the responses.
Here in America, we hear about the word "gaijin," but its significance is not clear to us. However, when your writer connects it to the N-word . . . well, that is, as Frank Baum would say, "a horse of a different color" — we get the impact immediately.
Hence, as an African-hyphen-American, and one that has living relatives of three other ethnicities, I say, "Well done." I hope your Japanese readers will not live in denial like their American counterparts. Slavery has now been dead some 200 years and its cousin, segregation, over 40. But the stench from both of them lingers like unventilated raw sewage.