RICEBOY!

To define and clarify, from the webpage:

Rice-Boy is a stereotype. The typical Rice-Boy can be identified by his car, or rather what he does to it. Generally, Rice-Boy will start out with a car that was not meant to go fast (typically a Honda Civic), and attempt to "fix it up," usually consisting of aftermarket rims, lowering springs and an aftermarket exhaust system with a large exhaust tip.

Most Rice-Boy cars (or "Rice Rockets") have the usual complement of stickers proudly displaying features that the car might or might not have, most notably, the Honda VTEC sticker from the later model Preludes, and the plaques from the later model Integras.

Rice-Boys do not exclusively drive Japanese cars. There are quite a few fake Mustang '5.0's and Camaro Z28's out there, as well as quite a few strange looking Neons.

Yes, it is meant to be a racist slur.

'Cept for the fact that the guy who did the page is Asian himself.

oh that's an airtight case you've got there, 'tad'.

The guy's not very clever, Taddo. If he invented the term "riceboy" then fair enough, it might not be racist. But he didn't. If you call anyone Asian who drives a Japanese car a "riceboy", they'll probably hit you. It's offensive, it's always been meant to be offensive. I'll give him credit, he covers himself well. On one page he says "Riceboy isn't offensive!" and on the letters page he says "Of course Riceboy's offensive - it's meant to be! Some people aren't politically correct all the time!" He also claims that he's only taking the piss out of shit cars, not good ones, then criticises pretty much anybody who does anything to their car. He has a go at Hondas which are done up to look like Type Rs but doesn't consider that the people who drive them know they aren't Type Rs - they're replicas. Replicas might not be an ideal car, but the people who drive them are generally only going for looks anyway, and they've got what they want. There's a lot of reasons why people do this to cars - not being able to afford insurance, higher cost of petrol in traditional US cars (i.e. big thirsty engines as opposed to the Japanese philosophy of highly tuned small engines), just making their car the way people want it to look etc. - but he's picking on the wrong aspect. If he just focused on some of the cars that look very bad it might be alright, but some of them look pretty good and are quite well tuned. He skirts nicely around the issue of what he drives too.

The term = poo, the phenomenon = thrives. UCI, due to demographic default (half the campus population is Asian-American) has more than a few such drivers and cars around, while cities like Westminster and Santa Ana contain a number of shops that specifically cater to people who want to get their Honda pumped up or the like. My boss Jack (who is Chinese-Vietnamese in background) has no use for the term either, but is terribly amused by such folks. It's just muscle cars and low- riders for a newer time, is all.

I'm sure Asian people don't give a shit about the term " Rice Boy" meaning a show off car kid. Would Irish people care if you called Irish show offs Potato Boys? I think not. Or Americans "Corn boys". Anyways htat page is funny. My litttel brother tried to do that stuff to my dodge omni when he was using it, I had to un-riceboy it

I thought it was the name of the next Momus LP.

*ducks*

Well, *now* it will be, Suzy, you invoked him. ;-)

Ducks is a great name for a CD !

My guess is Nick's probably sleeping off Mt. Fuji-sized jet lag right about now. Can he be invoked out of a deep coma?

Back to the thread. The Riceboy phenomena exists in Japan, they call it Supercars according to a friend of mine who edits a magazine there. Also, Hell's Angels call Japanese-make motorcycles Rice Burners.

Rice burners is slightly less racist, I suppose, because it's not aimed at the person but the bike. Even so, suspect. The Japs have some crazy racing clubs all called stuff like Midnight Racing Club Of Osaka and shit. You have to have a car that'll do more than 217mph on public roads before you can join.

I've always referred to the cars as rice rockets but I've never heard the term rice boy. They're both obviously racist terms.

Oh please. It's not racist in the least. You're poking fun at the guy because of what he's done to his car, not because of his ethnicity.

Did it occur to you that riceboys aren't always Asian? They could be British/Russian/German/Somalian/Lebanese, it doesn't matter.

The term "racist" is tossed around far too often. It's a serious word and you shouldn't use it so liberally.

Riceboys have a better sense of humor about themselves than, say, crackers, wops, negros, micks, or wetbacks.