Readers may remember the uproar among the offended Asian Americans triggered by Vietnam War hero Sen. John McCains unwitting gook remarks disparaging Vietnamese in the middle of his abortive presidential campaign. The chastened candidate later offered public apologies, renouncing all language that is bigoted and offensive.
Now let me add a personal footnote to this latest chapter in the strange, wayward career of the G-word which over the years has degenerated into a catch-all slur for both foreign Asians and Asian Americans who look all alike to many mainstream folks.
Once upon a Jim Crow time, a funny thing happened on my police/court beat while I was working as a cub reporter at a small Tennessee daily. The year was 1956 a couple years before Mother Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section of a Montgomery bus.
I was probably the first and lone Oriental reporter laboring in the newsrooms in the south navigating in the twilight zone of segregation where blacks couldnt dare cross the color lines. Back home in Korea, I had been often admonished by my elders that I must follow the racial customs of the south where people of color were segregated under the law. While in Rome, they warned, do as the Romans do. And I was determined to follow that piece of advice in the interest of sheer survival.
Part of my reporting chores at Kingsport Times-News, Monday morning proceedings in both City and General Sessions (county) courts were hectic, usually drawing a ragtag collection of weekend warriors charged with public drunkenness, brawls, stabbings, prostitution, speeding and DUIs.
As I was walking past a long line of bleary-eyed, disheveled defendants, along with a jailer who had just returned from a military tour of Korea, I heard someone yelling, Hey, gook, come here. That G-word was jarring to my ears. During my Dixie sojourn, I had grown accustomed to the all-too-familiar sounds of Chinaman, an appellation reserved for Orientals, among the respectable circles or Chink, popular among the less-refined lower-class. I would simply brush off those slurs since I wasnt quite familiar with the slang. Back home in South Korea I had occasionally run into street scenes where some irate GIs dogged by roaming bands of urchins fought back with the G-word, but I wasn t personally subject to the slur in the American south until that unguarded moment. The racial epithet apparently had spread into popular lingo in the States after the three-year police action in Korea.
Almost automatically I turned around, shouting in the direction of the taunting voice. Are you talkin to me? Come to think of it, I was like the paranoid Travis (portrayed by my favorite Robert De Niro) freak-speaking into a mirror in movie Taxi Driver.
Are you talkin to me? I repeated louder.
Yes, I am talkin to you, gook, snarled the mousy-looking jailhouse habitue from a nearby hamlet. I am no gook I am Korean, I spewed out.
Yes, you are gook, boy. Come here and wipe my a . The accompanying jailer was visibly agitated: Lee, are you goin to put up with this s ? Are you chickens?
Thats when I found myself caught between a rock and a hard place. I am on my assignment, come rain or sleet. Am I to get entangled in a jailhouse confrontation? You could slice the tense air with a knife. The eyes of the whole surly bunch were fixed on me.
At that moment, a thousand thoughts swirled in my head. I kept hearing a voice inside. In Rome, do as Romans do. The Korean War veteran had unintentionally pushed me into a corner where I had to defend my Oriental face.
I will arrest this s on public profanity charges if you just file a complaint with me, he whispered. Before I knew what I was doing, I dashed off my complaint. Neither the deputy nor I realized that the G-word was no profanity. It was a slur, just like the N-word which was heard in common conversations among the whitle folks in those days. It had little to do with deity or religion. But it didnt matter then.
The presiding judge with a huge Santa Claus nose, tipsy half the time while on the bench was sober this time. When the county attorney called the case, it was my turn to become an accuser, not an observer. And his Honor who would inject the N-word liberally in our small talks in his private office was at the judgment seat on the G-word.
Did this man call you a name G-O-O-K?
Yes, Sir, your Honor.
Ditto for the jailer witness. Southern justice was swift.
In my court, G-O-O-K is a four-letter word. The judge banged the gavel, Guilty.
The word spead fast to my city editor, an AA member on the wagon for nearly a year, who was adamant: Be sure to include the item in your story, just to warn them town drunks.
My next morning storys last paragraph read:
The public profanity charge was brought by Times-News reporter K. W. Lee against a Church Hill man. (General Sessions Court) Judge S. G. Gilbreath levied a fine of $25 plus cost.

A pioneer Asian American journalist and the former editor of The Korea Times English Edition, K.W. Lee has been invited again to lecture a course on Investigative Journalism
Communities of Color: Exploring
California Pacific Rim Mosaic
at UCLA this fall.