I would boycott Pontins but I have no intention of going there anyway.
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That’s actually fine. I personally understand the difficulty but the secret to any language is learning the “ear”. Once that twigs everything falls into place very quickly.
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Honestly, Pontins are doing anyone with those surnames a massive favour by refusing their booking. 
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Noel and Liam Gallagher cant go. 
Hang on a mo, there’s plenty of signs that take the piss out of English too. Upper Vicars Bottom for one. Is it racist to laugh at that?
Probably not if they named a Covid variant after it.
But seriously that’s just a stupid name rather than a cheap shot at the language itself.
Any language that has a name that long is fair game for a joke IMHO. I’ll grant you that that joke would never be cracked at a place name in India or Kenya.
“In “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” an Asian person is portrayed wearing a conical hat, holding chopsticks, and eating from a bowl. “If I Ran the Zoo” includes a drawing of two bare-footed African men wearing what appear to be grass skirts with their hair tied above their heads.”
Should be banned instantly. I’ve never seen an Asian person in a conical hat using chopsticks eating from a bowl. Equally, the idea that anybody from Africa has ever been barefoot and wearing a grass skirt is simply beyond me.
Next you’ll be telling me that Mexicans wear sombreros, Eskimos wear animal furs and Aborigines used to hunt with boomerangs and play didgeridoos. We’re all identical with not one iota of cultural heritage or difference. To say otherwise must be most dreadfully racist.
I think the issue, as I think you know full well, is that those are negative stereotypes. Comedy Chinaman depictions, with pointy hats and the like, were used to mock and ridicule Chinese people and communities. Same with the African stuff.
I don’t think this is the right decision, personally. But let’s not pretend it’s crazy. It’s borderline.
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Times have changed but it’s surely no surprise that Boomers and those, like me, of Generation X have turned out to be such monsters given the shit our parents were giving us to read…
Lets look at it from another angle then. What was the motivation for putting that together. Trying to be funny? Why did they think it was funny?
Because a language has sounds and pronunciations that many English cant fathom so it gets bracketed as funny? Is Gaeilge or Gaelic funny as well? I dont think so.
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I remember you doing quite a funny Dr Seus take off years ago. Personally I can’t walk that track because I have duck feet.
I’d say the pointy hat and chopsticks are as offensive as considering that all Englishmen wear bowler hats or bearskins.
Ever been on It’s a Small World?
The Lallana Doctor Seuss poem was lost to the TIA closure I’m afraid.
Coincidently Mulberry Street was one of the books I grabbed of the library shelf with the kids before the latest lockdown. When I read it to the little one, the Chinaman bit did feel uncomfortable.
I don’t think you can compare it to English gents in bowler hats. That imagery was never kicking down in the way African and Chinese stuff was. People didn’t suffer, bar some very gentle Python-esque ribbing, from those stereotypes.
They just jailed, deported and murdered those who tried to teach our language.
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This is what was done in Wales
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BBC 5 live now. The show is about asking why people from the BAME community (don’t like that term but they’re using it) don’t go for many outdoor pursuits like camping, walking, skiing etc. I wish there were some real news right now.
That’s one way of starting a conversation, I suppose.
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