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Hi, Jack -
I used to think 'gook' came from the Korean word
for 'nation', too - but it turns out I was wrong.
The Koreans in Hawaii were called "gooks' decades
before the Korean War. In fact, 'gook' dates back to the Spanish-American
War.
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Etymology of 'Gook - geowk - goog,,,'
:
gook (guek) n. Slang (disparaging and
offensive); a nonwhite, esp. one native to a
country of E Asia or Oceania. Originated from
"gugu," a Filipino term, perhaps from Vicol "gururang,"
"familiar spirit, personal demon." --------------------------------------------------
English-Korean Dictionary:
Gook - dirt, filth, idiot, a derogatory
term for Arabs and Orientals.
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I'm sure any Asians who vistit this and other forums at
this website will find the word "gook" written everywhere by assholes who want
to offend people. I just want to take this opportunity to clear up some history.
The first time Americans have encountered Asian people in a wartime situation
was during the Spanish-American War in the Filipines. There, the Spanish Army
who had already made a colony there made use of the indigenous people as
soldiers whom the Americans had to go up against. The Filipinos generally refer
to themselves as "geowks" which means common people or peasants, since the
Spaniards kept most of those people in a state of paupery. Some U.S. soldiers
fighting there somehow picked up the word and refered to the Filipinos in a
benign way using that word. It was not until after the Americans defeated the Spaniards in the Philipines
and Emilio Aguinaldo led a rebellion among the Filipinos to drive out the
Americans from their homeland that the U.S. soldiers began using that word
"geowk" to refer to Filipinos in a contemptual sense. After a while, the
Americans finally defeated the rebels and the Philipines became a U.S.
territory, and the American soldiers stationed there continued the practice of
calling natives "geowks", only this time they have colloquialized that word into
"gook". After the suppression of the rebellion, the U.S. began to transport Filipino
laborers to California to work the fields in almost slavish conditions, while
all the time being called "gooks" by Americans living in that state who heard
American transporters calling them that. Since for some reason Americans can't
distinguish one Asian race from another, they applied that word to all Asians.
This became true especially during World War II when American soldiers would
routinely call Japanese soldiers, island natives and the like "gooks" if they
weren't calling them "japs" or "chinks". So remember when any ignorant redneck or bigot calls any of you a "gook",
they are just making a comical display of their ignorance of the Asian languages
and cultures. Who else except self-serving Americans would bastardize a
perfectly normal Filipino word into a seemingly disgusting racial epithet to
describe every Asian person they see? by Sugar ----------------------------------------------------
Americans saw the fighting in the Philippines largely in racial terms. The
term "gook" originated in the Philippine insurrection 1899-1900. It would later
be used in the Vietnam War. Americans looked down on the Filipinos as people who
were uncivilized. In an odd way, they saw them as un-Christian, which was ironic
since Spain, a Roman Catholic country, had been there for 300 years, but most
Americans apparently felt that didn't really count.
As a consequence, in 1899 and 1900 we looked at this as essentially a
superior power fighting an inferior people who deserved their inferiority
because they had not been able to organize their society, they had not been able
to "uplift themselves," as McKinley liked to say. And there was the feeling here
that what Americans were doing was pretty much what we had been doing in the
western part of the United States. A large percentage of the American military
commanders in the Philippines between 1899 and 1902 during the insurrection had
been military commanders in the Indian wars in the western part of the United
States in the 1880s and the 1890s.
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Enough said <g>
ysk
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