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I was watching this Bollywood film, I like them and have been introduced to them since my husband is from Bombay, India. I asked him what a "coolie" was years ago, and he said it was nothing negative like in the caribbean.

Let me put some perspective on how all this ignorance came about. Since most of the Indians who came to TNT and Guyana, JA came from Uttar Pradesh and an areas close by. Classism is forever a sign of "status" so a group of people( all Indians) started calling each other coolies?!

Coolie: A person who works on the railway system in India- especially in Bombay. Coolies lift and deliver all the bags for customers. It is hard work (physical) and they are looked upon as donkeys and are not paid well.

I just wanted to say calling someone a coolie is NOT really that insulting, I guess it is like calling someone a worker? Most Indians in TNT dont know ANYTHING about India!!!! I see posts on different web sites and I just laugh because I know more than they do.

I just want to say words do hurt, and as adults we should learn to communicate with love and respect even in anger!

Hope everyone learned something from this post.

yeah, I was thought what is a coolie in Primary schoolback home in Guyana, a lower class and to add to what u said they were of a darker complexion. good food for thought

I've answered quite a few posts on this subject and adding that same definition. I guess it goes back to the fact that it's the concept of being called a name used to put down a race, or a name given to people to lower them! You see, even though they may not know the history of the name, some use it with the idea of it being negative, but not trying to come across negative!Prime example: The word "Ni**a" was used on blacks as a mental reminder to them who was their supposed "SUPERIORS" sooo, I guess anyway of using the words have some negative connotation, I mean we can use them, but do we really think why people use it?

Right, in any case-i think that definition is more of a reason not to use the word. It is obviously a word to classify a group as inferior-and since i'm against the word N*gg*r for those reasons I'd refrain from using it.

On top of that, I don't know if you all know, but who are we to judge how bad the conditions were? Maybe it wasn't as bad as slavery and the word N*gg*r but it could have been close.

In any case I don't think these words should be used periods, and I think it mostly starts with music for that N word

Call me dotish Pt. II

You still don't understand why the term is offensive? The term itself and its origins might be benign (indeed even Chinese who labored under similar conditions under the British were called coolies). What makes language powerful however, are the connotations behind the word. Take the difference (as some would have you believe), between "Nigger" and "Nigga". Both originated from a benign word (Negro...black in Spanish, of course), but each carry serious and even disturbing connotations. Where the confusion over the pejorative/offensive nature of the term "coolie"?

Hotep

To add to what was said above, the thing about the use of the word “coolie” in the Caribbean and indeed in other parts where the British transplanted Indian indentured labourers is the CONNOTATION. The Brits employed the word “coolie”, like the Spanish term “Negro” and “nigger”, in a deliberately derogatory manner. “Coolie” was used to degrade and dehumanise the indentured labourers, this was necessary to maintain colonialism and its underlying doctrine of white supremacy.

It’s good that questions like this is brought up in this forum. We urgently need to openly discuss and deconstruct race topics so that we can finally put them to rest, if only in the Caribbean. I would like to see more of these questions as well as topics regarding religion -- such as its stultifying effects -- so that we can have a clear understanding of the way societies in the Caribbean were shaped.

Well after all is said and done, words are not just words, and particularly in the West Indies Coolie is a bad word.
All the time T&T I get called Darkie and take it as compliment. Here in Australia it's a terrible word, and never used. It's most derrogatory to blacks.
So be careful, and just delete the word Coolie from everyday vocabulary, everybody, please.

im sorry ysf im confused. u basically gave the reason why it should be offensive. ent?

now beiing that your husband is from india, u should also know that for the most part they accept their lot in life (due to their religion and culture), now in the western hemisphere it isnt like that at all. it would be the equivalent of making a statement that the only thing that black people are good for are sports.

Say nothing of the fact that many Indians still believe in this caste system nonsense. I'd wager that he doesn't belong to the so-called "Untouchables" or else he might have a different opinion on the offensive nature of the term. It's almost like a man arguing that the term bitch isn't offensive.

Term Coolie is a derrogatory term for a person of Indian descent.

Just like theres the N-word, for African people,
crackers for white people.
and chinks for chinese people
and sand n-ers for arabs...though I see no difference...

even if your husband is from India, he has a different culture from the Indians from the caribbean and if he sees no problem with it, I guess he has bought into the eurocentrism that this world tries to stuff down your throat all day , every day and hes a bamboozled dunce.

Sorry for being mean....

Say nothing of the fact that many Indians still believe in this caste system nonsense.

True, very true. But let me throw this back at you from a different angle. The caste system of India is as far as I am concerned no different from the caste system of the West, if you study carefully the central tenets of capitalism.

the Indian word for 'caste' is 'varna' which measn 'colour'; the philosophical and economic constructs of Western Europe/Euro-America is built upon the belief that WASP's are the epitome of the civilised and refined. Though many "people of colour" are let into some aspects of the ccultured life, there is a glass ceiling which may never be broken as long as the system is maintained.

The capitalist system is geared to the maintainence of their lifestyles and positions of prominence. And, like the caste system of India, it is so ingrained into every strata of our existence that we, the descendents of the colonised, hardly ever challenge it.

I agree with this, chang e will be difficult, because you said it...it is sooo ingrained, we do not realize it shouldn't be so.