Is 'Canadian' a racist slur?

[randomness]

From http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_burman/2008/01/is_canadian_a_racist_slur.html:

What does the word "Canadian" conjure up in your mind?

Polite? Peacekeeping? Harmless? Heroic? A weak-kneed, pot-smoking, sexually-permissive anti-American? Or, perhaps, cheap?

This is a question being debated this week with both intensity and some humour in a variety of internet blogs in the United States.

The trigger point occurred over the weekend on the popular American website The Huffington Post, quoting a brief Canadian newspaper story that revealed that the term "Canadian" is being used in parts of the U.S. as a euphemism — as code — for a racist characterization of black people.

The comments wander off into how much one should tip in a restaurant, but I guess that was inevitable given the last two sentences:

The most startling revelation for me is that many Americans apparently tip 20% when they go into a restaurant.

That’s quite odd.

Perhaps one is supposed to tip less in Canada.

Comments

Somewhat OT

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

My absolute favorite piece of writing of all time (dramatic, I know) is a short story by Ursula Leguin called "The Fisherman of the Inland Sea." (Read it, you'll see why. It's beautiful, thought-provoking, and heartwarming.) It's set in an alien culture where the standard marriage involves 4 people-two men and two women. There are four supposedly sexual relationships in the marriage--the two homosexual and two of the heterosexual, and the other two heterosexual relationships are supposed to be sibling-like. (This is a very rough description--read the story!) Anyway, your comment made me think of that, because in this set-up the non-biological mother of any given child is called their "other mother." And in that setting it's a lovely, warm term for the relationship. I have often thought that if this type of setup could become established in the here-and-now it would make our family values problems vanish.