Derogatory term: Wog
Question answered by FreeZone in Scientology
FredricRice asked this question on 9/5/2000:
I've run across Robert A. Heinlein's use of the term "Wog" in
his book, "The Number of the Beast." I know that L. Ron
Hubbard hated "Chinks" as he called them, and that the
Scientology cult uses the derogatory term for anyone who
hasn't been suckered into the cult.
Did Hubbard get the term from Heinlein? Or was the racist
term merely one od many used in Hubbard's time and Hubbard
-- and his insane cult -- merely adopt the use of the term?
Thanks.
FreeZone gave this response on 9/6/2000:
I don't see any reason to assume Hubbard got the term
from Heinlein. Most likely is that he picked it up in traveling
as a teenager. He never got out much from the white
communities where the natives were looked on with
contempt.
I think you can exaggerate the degree to which Hubbard
was a racist and some critics do. His notorious remark
about chinks in his teenage diary probably passed as quite
a witticism among the circles he was in at the time. He
was raised in an environment where the belief that whites
were superior was less an ideology than something taken
for granted as an obvious fact. He never really examined
the beliefs he was raised on.
If you pick out almost any of the adventure stories he
wrote, you can see racist elements and a white man's
burden attitude about the natives. They are shown as
villains or exotic background, never as heroes or even
developed characters - but then character development is
hardly the strength of Hubbard's fiction.
While Scientology is and has always been a heavily white
movement, it should be noted that a few blacks were in
leadership positions from quite early on, before it became a
PR element to bring in a token black face.
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