'Canadian' is the new 'n-word'.

I find this darkly hilarious on soooo many levels.

From several blogs, including Foreign Policy, Racialicious and Jack and Jill Politics, this gem on the new codeword racists are using instead of nigger.

Canadian.

Earlier this month, an e-mail that had been circulating since 2003, written by a Houston assistant district attorney Mike Trent, resurfaced. The e-mail was short, only about 100 words, and was sent to the entire office. It started out by praising a junior prosecutor for a job well done. Then the message continued:

He overcame a subversively good defense by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing."

If you're wondering why Canadians were on a Texas jury when only U.S. citizens are allowed to serve, well, there weren't any. Other members of the D.A.'s office who got the memo were wondering the same thing themselves. They looked at an online database of racial slurs and found that "Canadian" was a term used to mask more openly racist terms. Trent claims that he was unaware of the meaning, overheard someone saying that there were Canadians on the jury, took that literally, and just repeated it in his e-mail.

Oh my, where do I start? First thing I guess that would make me a 'Canadian Canadian' since I'm (gasp!) both black and born in T-dot.

Second, I noticed in the comments sections that many people said the term is quite common among restaurant waiters who use it to insult black diners, often right next to them. Ooooohhh the hilarity of a waiter trying to belittle me is fantastic!

Third, the hilarity of Americans using it full stop, is just CRAZY. Have these people been outside of the nest? Do they have any idea of how the rest of the world views Americans or which nationality would be considered more of a slur outside of the USA? No? Then let me illustrate.

Three years ago I was on vacation in London and using my traveller's cheques. Hence I needed ID. I told the cashier at M&S that I would be using my Canadian passport and he chuckled a bit, then shared this gem - that he was seeing tons of American tourists who were trying to pass themselves off as Canadians because it was so embarassing to be an American at that point (this was about the time that dissatisfaction and disaffection with the war in Iraq etc started to peak). Problem came when the poor Americans had to present ID or even when they whipped out their American money - gave it straight away.

Canadians - the nationality, not the race - have no such problems.