Haafu vs. Daburu

WaynO (I hope he doesn’t mind being called that; I have to have some way of distinguishing between all the Christian Waynes on the internet) asked in a comment box down there,

Hey Emeth, what’s a “fellow Haafu/Daburu”? My first reaction read “Haafu” as “half” and I thought of the wonderfully scintillating fact that I am half Asian – as you are as well.

Eh?

My answer.

Haafu is what bi-racial children have been called in Japan for quite some time. It is the Japanized version of the English word “half.”

More recently, politically correct/wimpy Westerners with haafu children consider it a derrogatory term because it implies the children are only “half” human, or only “half” of them count (i.e., of course, the Asian half, LOL). So they’ve come up with calling their children daburu which means double. They are twice as good as “normal” people.

Personally, I don’t feel insulted if people call me haafu nor do I mind being called daburu. But I’ve been called haafu for most of my life, so I’m more used to it. Being called daburu somehow reminds me of being doubleheaded or two-faced or having a forked tongue or a split personality.

Being half Chinese, I get the best of three worlds. We had a family friend, a friend of my maternal grandmother, an upper-class Chinese gentleman (he died a couple years ago in his mid-90s). He was terribly offended that my mother would mix her blood with Western barbarian blood, and he called me and my brothers dogs, mongrels, mutts, etc. etc. to our faces when we were little. We were not fit to be called human. Talk about racism! LOL. But nobody in my family really minded. And other than his calling us names and being totally disgusted when the topic came up of our mixed ancestry, he was a perfect gentleman, and very kind to all of us.