Vooks and slurs

The Ark Lords (Rome's Revolution #2) by Michael Brachman

In the world of Rome's Revolution and The Ark Lords, everybody is politically correct. At least that is the case before the Essessoni showed up. That particular group brought with them all their prejudices and ill-mannered speech. The Essessoni are certainly not very politically correct. In fact, the Essessoni, because of all the pressures on Earth before they left, are mostly hyper-aggressive, boorish individuals without manners or "couth" so it is not surprising that as soon as they got to Deucado, they started coming up with stereotyping and racial profiling.

This sad trait seems to be a normal component of human nature. In fact, while researching this article, I came across a website called The Racial Slur database. This "objective" web site lists every known people and every known racial slur to show that humans are equal opportunity racists and bigots. Here is just a snapshot of what you'd see on that site:

Every one of those names takes you to a page which enumerates all the racial slurs the authors could find. Kind of disgusting, if you ask me, but that is the human condition.

So the Essessoni, the bad ones, follow the same pattern. Edgar Mullen was meant to be our Exhibit A. This is where we first hear the term "vook" which is meant to be a racial slur against the Vuduri:

     “Yo,” came a man’s voice. Edgar Mullen strode into the room, raising his arm in greeting. “Bierak, it’s been a while.” Edgar was shorter than Rei and stockier. He had a full head of hair which was just graying a bit around the temples.
     “Yeah, Edgar, hi” Rei said, shaking his hand.
     “So this is Rome?” Edgar asked, seemingly surprised. “Last time I saw her was the day we were going to attack the vooks, I mean, the Vuduri. She was rather preggers as I recall.” Edgar inspected her top to bottom. “You sure are a looker up close,” he said, leeringly.
     “A looker?” Rome asked.
     “He means you’re beautiful, honey,” Bonnie threw in.
     “Er, thank you,” Rome said, sidling up a little closer to Rei.

Obviously, since the Vuduri don't exist, I had to make up the racial slur referring to them. I just wanted to show you that Edgar was an insensitive boor. I guess you get that by now.