Last week the Edge posted a brief piece on the case of the Portland-based rock band The Slants, and their effort to register their band’s name, and thus brand, in the US.
And then we got a comment — it turned out to be from the band’s bass player and founder:
Over the next couple of days this led to a series of tweets and emails and resulted in the following questions, posed by us here at Culture on the Edge, to Simon, concerning identity and the band’s ongoing efforts to register a name that, at least according to the US government, is inappropriate because it can be read as a racial slur.
The issues are so central to what we, here at Culture on the Edge, have been discussing that we’re really quite pleased to post this two-part exchange. (Read part 2 here.) Continue reading “Identity in Law and in Practice: An Interview with Simon Tam of The Slants (Part 1)”
I was at Chipotle this weekend, waiting to order my favorite fast food (crunchy chicken tacos with veggies, heavy on the corn salsa). The man behind me in line spoke fluent English to a child with him, but when it was his turn at the counter, he looked at the young female employee and began ordering in Spanish. The glitch in the plan was that while he was talking to a woman with brown skin (who, according to popular identifiers, might have a better chance of being a Spanish-speaker than others), she was not a Spanish speaker at all; in fact, as she pointed out to him, she was Asian. After a few embarrassing laughs the burrito bowls and extra guac were ordered, and everyone scooted out the door.