Nip
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{{Other uses|NIP (disambiguation)}}
{{short description|Offensive term for Japanese person}}
File:BugsBunnyNipstheNips Lobby Card.png]]
Nip is an ethnic slur against people of Japanese descent and origin.{{cite web|last=Savill|first=Richard|title=Vicar says sorry for 'nip in the air' Japanese joke|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1530528/Vicar-says-sorry-for-nip-in-the-air-Japanese-joke.html|publisher=The Telegraph|date=4 October 2006}} The word Nip is an abbreviation from Nippon (日本), the Japanese name for Japan.
History
The earliest recorded occurrence of the English slur seems to be in the Time magazine of 5 January 1942 where "three Nip pilots" was mentioned.{{cite book |last1=Glusman |first1=John A. |title=Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-1945 |date=2005 |publisher=Viking |isbn=0142002224 |page=167}} The American, British, and Australian entry of the Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II heightened the use of racial slurs against the Japanese, such as Jap and Nip. The word Nip became a frequently-used slang word amongst the British Armed Forces.{{cite book|last=Hughes|first=Geoffrey|title=An Encyclopedia of Swearing|url=|url-access=|year=2006|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|location=New York|isbn=978-0-7656-1231-1|page=261-262}} The 1942 Royal Air Force journal made numerous references to the Japanese as Nips, even making puns such as "there's a nip in the air". This phrase was later re-used for Hirohito's visit to the UK in 1971 by the satirical magazine Private Eye.{{cite magazine |title=Hirohito |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6pMeAQAAMAAJ&q=Private+Eye |date=May 1993 |publisher=New Yorker Magazine, Inc. |volume=69 |issue=11–15 |page=52}}
As part of American wartime propaganda, caricatures and slurs (including Nip) against the Japanese diffused into entertainment,{{cite book|last=Casey|first=Steven|title=Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public opinion, and the War Against Nazi Germany|year=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=0-19-513960-7|page=[https://archive.org/details/cautiouscrusadef0000case/page/67 67]|url=https://archive.org/details/cautiouscrusadef0000case/page/67}} such as exemplified by the Warner Bros. cartoon Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944).{{cite book|last=Bennett|first=M. Todd|title=One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II|year=2012|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-3574-6|page=102}} In General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War (1949), George Kenney made racial statements about the Japanese, remarking for example that "Nips are just vermin to be exterminated".{{cite book|last=Meilinge|first=Phillip S.|title=Airmen and Air Theory: A Review of the Sources|year=2001|publisher=Air University Press|location=Maxwell Air Force Base|isbn=1-58566-101-5|page=38}}
In a manner to evoke further anti-Japanese agitation, a Seattle Star editorial titled "It's Time to do Some Thinking On Nips' Return" from December 14, 1944, discussed the citizenship rights of Japanese-Americans and framed their return to American society as a problem.{{cite web |last1=Speidel |first1=Jennifer |title=After Internment: Seattle's Debate Over Japanese Americans' Right to Return Home |website= Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project |url=http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/after_internment.htm |publisher=Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington |date=2005}}
On 16 November 2018, the abbreviation for the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems was changed from NIPS to NeurIPS in large part due to its perceived connotation with the slur.{{cite web |last1=Brown |first1=Jennings |title='NIPS' AI Conference Changes Name Following Protests Over Gross Acronym |url=https://gizmodo.com/nips-ai-conference-changes-name-following-protests-ov-1830548185 |website=Gizmodo |date=19 November 2018}}