| Archive for langcafe2.myfreeforum.org Come in and have your daily cup of languages! |
| Porthos |
XenophobiaA short story...A couple of days ago, a woman who I had briefly encountered before came running out of her house to inform me of something. Somehow, she remembered my name, although I had no recollection of ever meeting her in the first place. Evidently, we had a short conversation about my health conditions and she remembered. Her next door neighbors have a sickly 9 year old son, who has a genetic disorder, whereby his skin tears like paper, so that he is all bandaged up like a leper. Recently, he developed a problem with his lower spine, and now he is confined to a chair. My heart about broke when she related the story to me. Anyway, his therapist reccomended that he have a young friend to associate with, capable of relating to his problems. This is where I come into the picture. The lady asked me to meet with the family and possibly hang out with the kid a couple days per week so he can have a friend. So, naturally being the soft-hearted dumb-ass that I am, I agreed. Then she says, "Oh btw, they're Pakistan. Is that a problem". I said, "Do you mean they're Pakistani?" To which she replied, "Yes, and they're devout Muslims." I said, "Of course that's not a problem. I'm not racist or prejudice against their religion." I thought it was strange that she would have to first make sure that I was okay with them being Pakistani. It just goes to show how xenophobic a lot of Americans can be toward people of Middle-Eastern origins, who they all deem to be "Arabs", even though Pakistanis are not at all Arabs. Here, people refer to Afghanis and Iranians as Arabs also, revealing their complete ignorance of the region and its people, which should be of concern to Americans, as it is the focal point of the majority of American foreign policy and military interventions. |
||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
About 25% of my school are of Pakistani descent, and then about another 25% are of Indian descent. It's an interesting situation, although the sorts of problems that you might imagine don't actually exist.
Here, prejudice against people of Pakistani origin/descent would not be considered xenophobia — it would be considered racism. I actually had the weird experience of being very much an ethnic minority on Saturday afternoon. I'd had to go to this other school to be filmed for a religious studies video (I had to talk about Jesus for like 20 seconds), and afterwards I had to walk down a long road to the bus stop so that I could go home. Almost everyone I saw was of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent, and most of the others were black. All along the road were Indian-style shops selling clothes, food and other items from the Indian subcontinent, and there was a wedding procession coming out of the Gurudwara. It was like being in a totally different country, even though it was actually in Birmingham — it was fascinating! 
|
||||||||
| Fredrik |
I wouldn't consider the lady xenophobic. Porthos. The information she gave you was just what I would have added myself.
Normally I am quite pro-PC, but in the end, what you do is more important than what you say. And she was helping this poor family out. |
||||||||
| Porthos |
No. I'm not saying she was xenophobic, but that the fact she even had to mention this in the first place is indicative of how xenophobic a large portion of the U.S. population is toward people from that region. |
||||||||
| Shouga |
And so very different from what it's like here in Devon! Whereas Birmingham is 70% White, Devon is 99% White. I believe there's about four blacks and seven Asian people in our school of 1500+. In all my time of being here in Devon, I can only admit to having seen about 10 people who are obviously Muslim. It sometimes seems like you're talking about a completely different country when you speak of Birmingham... |
||||||||
| Pauline |
I think it's better that she checked, because it's true that many people are brainwashed to think that muslims are all murderers and terrorists.
Porthos, it's nice that you will be a friend of the boy. I suppose that he go to a special school, or maybe it's not possible at all for him? |
||||||||
| KSa |
In the town where I live (70 000 inhabitants) there was one Black but he has probably left because I haven't seen him for ages. Yes, my country is definetely monocultural. |
||||||||
| Deborah |
Is there a Jewish population at all, in your town? |
||||||||
| Uriel |
As many black people as I saw in England and France, where they seemed to fit right in, I still can't really imagine black Poles. Even when I was in Germany, seeing a black person speaking German struck me as odd, and I couldn't help but wonder if they might be an American stationed there who had just learned the language.
As soon as I had that thought, it struck me that I was jumping to conclusions based on my own preconceptions about what a German "should" look like -- and that it was entirely possible that that person had been born and raised there. (And perhaps it was my own experience as an army brat that was coloring my thinking -- since I had been stationed in places that historically don't have black populations, like Germany and Japan, I'd gotten used to assuming that any blacks I happened to see there were simply transplanted Americans! But things have changed a lot since I was a kid....) |
||||||||
| KSa |
No. However, before WWII in certain towns/villages of the region where I live Jews made up to 50% of the population. For example the biggest town in eastern Poland, Lublin (100 000 inhabitants at that time, 350 000 now), was populated by Jews in 40%! Moreover, the biggest Jewish Talmudic school Yeshiva was located there and recently (3 weeks ago) it was officially reopened for Jewish community. There will be a synagogue there. Sadly, vast majority of Lublin Jews were murdered in the nearby Majdanek concentration camp. |
||||||||
| Elaine |
Re: Xenophobia
Another popular misconception about Iranian-Americans is that they are of Muslim faith, but a good number of them (at least those living in Los Angeles) practice Judaism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Sufism, and B'haism. |
||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
I saw one black person in Poland when I was there last (this?) week, and he could easily not have been Polish. Poland simply isn't a country of immigration at the moment, but that may change in the future. |
||||||||
| KSa |
Your impressions of Poland? |
||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
I absolutely loved it — even more so than last time I was there, because this time I got to spend two days in a Polish school, and was actually staying with Polish hosts. This isn't meant as a criticism, so I hope you aren't offended, but in many ways, Poland seemed to me to be kind of like Britain or Germany maybe about 10 or 20 years ago. My Polish host actually said the same thing when she was staying with me; she also said that she thought that Ukraine is like Poland 20 years ago. I find that many people in England seem to believe that 'Eastern Europe' is still fundamentally very different from 'Western Europe', and that Poland is a very poor country. My experience is that neither of these common beliefs are true — it's not really all that different. For example, before I went, a woman I know was saying how it would be interesting for me to experience a 'very different' European culture (in Poland), because, in her view, France and Germany (where I've previous stayed with people) aren't very different from England. I no-longer consider her view to be valid — actually, in many ways, I find England to be more similar to Poland than to France. |
||||||||
| Walker |
Re: Xenophobia
Pretty much the same here. If they're from the Middle East they're Muslim. They're all the same.
It still amazes me a bit when I hear a person of dark complexion speak Swedish with no trace of a foreign accent. It happens very rarely, but I recall this one occasion from when I lived in Uppsala and I was at the university library, and this (truly) black guy came to the table next to mine with his female friend. Obviously he was adopted and he spoke in a south Swedish dialect. It was so odd. I know I shouldn't have but I could not help but glare at him. |
||||||||
| Fredrik |
lol, yes, I know the feeling. It's kind of like:
- Wow, you're like totally....black! Cool! That many black people and foreigners have problems understanding this naïve, Nordic approach is the reason for all the misunderstanding we are having in the ongoing "neger" debate in Norway. I've read so much English in my life that I've come to view the word "neger" as offensive, but Norwegians who aren't much exposed to English and connect black people primarily with missionary work in Africa do not normally mean to be mean when they use it. For them it just denotes something exotic and far away, just as it did for Astrid Lindgren, when she described Pippi Longstocking's father as a "neger king in the Southern Sea", something which now has been deemed racist and to be censored. That's OK for me, though I will miss the line "min pappa är negerkung i Sydhavet" in Pippi's lovely Swedish (and the Norwegian country band Hellbillies' "Ein neger stod på Ål stasjon"), but what irritates me is that Norwegians are so moronly historyless that they don't discuss whether we can be called a nation with a colonial past when Denmark-Norway had sugar colonies based on slavery (the current US Virgin Islands) in the 18th century. Sugar was Denmark-Norway's biggest export and guess who we exported it to? Sweden! Their colonial project, Nya Sverige, quickly failed and ended up as Delawere! 
|
||||||||
| Walker |
Speaking of "neger", I read the other day that a symbolic prohibition against saying the word "nigger/nigga" in NYC had been suggested. Does anyone know more about it? Joanne? Seems like a very futile attempt to me considering how so many (?) young black people use the word "nigga" in their daily speech. | ||||||||
| Joanne |
Hi Walker  Long time, no see!
Yes, you're right, NYC symbolically (and so, not legal) banned it last Wednesday for the last day of February, which is Black History Month in the US. New York City bans racial slur. I see you've been posting more, Walker. Do you finally have regular internet access?? Say that it's so!
|
||||||||
| Uriel |
Re: Xenophobia
Glare or stare? I can't picture you glaring at someone! |
||||||||
| Walker |
Re: Xenophobia
Okay, thanks! And yes, it's so!
A bit of both, I think. I was waiting for a guy who was really, really late and I wasn't too happy about sitting there waiting. And I guess my state of mind was somewhat projected onto that black guy for some reason.  
|
||||||||
| Travis |
As for an episode here at where I work, two new contractors who were from England came here recently to work in the software verification department here. Such seemed really strange to me, as while I have seen/heard English people many times in media content and communicated with people from England frequently online, I realized that I had probably never even spoken with someone from the UK ever in Real Life before. This was made only stranger by such individuals having a shared native language (aside from Welsh, Scots, and Scots Gaelic of course) and coming from a country with which there supposedly exists some kind of "special relationship" and underlying shared culture, while I have known many individuals from a range of other countries, especially from East Asia, to a lesser degree from South Asia or Latin America, and on a more limited basis from continental Europe (largely Germans and Russians). These people are supposed to be like us here, and yet these are the first ones I have ever spoken with and it just feels really strange. Whlle I have spoken with many other individuals who spoke English English, such as one of the development team leads here, they have all been non-native speakers, said team lead, for instance, being German, and they for some reason really do not seem any more foreign despite not being native English-speakers. | ||||||||
| Deborah |
Geez, Travis, where do you live, Wisconsin or something?? 
|
||||||||
| Travis |
Well, yes, I don't live in the UK, but I still have known a whole range of people from continental Europe (bunch of Germans over the years, bunch of Russians at where I work now, and a few other people here and there from places such as Hungary or Poland) while having known practically no one in Real Life from the British Isles, despite how people so often speak of the US and UK in the same breath while contrasting both with continental Europe... It's weird when Germans seem almost less foreign than British people do, despite having a different language and all... |
||||||||
| Uriel |
Really? I've run into quite a few Brits in the US (not to mention a few in the Uk -- and in Germany, even my dad's maid was from Nottingham!). Hell, we probably had at least seven or eight as clients when I worked at the vet clinic (all women, oddly). It's a little jarring when they open their mouths and out pops that accent when you aren't expecting it, but after a few minutes it's all good, and the next time you meet them you don't even think about it -- it just part of them, like their hair color.
But, of course, I live in the sunny southwest, not frigidly-cold-in-the-winter Wisconsin -- where do you think English people who want to get away from British weather tend to end up?! 
|
||||||||
| Travis |
Wow - just the idea of running into any British people seems somewhat weird, much the less running into them on a relatively regular basis... Of course, the only people from Western Europe that seem to show up here these day much at all are Germans, the French people at my workplace notwithstanding (as they are all in connection with Airbus, which my company is contracting for). And even then, Germans are sort of a special case here in Wisconsin for historical reasons.
Of course, we do seem to get Russian people here these days, and there are definitely warmer places for them to move to than Wisconsin if they really wanted to get away from the Russian winters and all. |
||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
You know, to me, Germans often seem less foreign than Americans do, so I'm actually not too surprised. I should say that many British people probably don't realise how much they have in common with the Germans. Those British people who have actually been to Germany, however, do tend to realise this, even though they can sometimes be reluctant to admit it. Things have changed since the World Cup though. However, recent geopolitical events and media coverage involving the United States have unfortunately changed the view of Americans here as well. 10 years ago, most British people would probably have been happy to have been associated in some way with Americans, whereas thanks to George W. Bush, being likened to Americans has become something of an insult here, I'm afraid. |
||||||||
| Uriel |
I find it funny that the rest of the world takes him so seriously! We change presidents like we change underwear -- every 4 to 8 years, whether we need to or not. They come and go, and no matter who they are, about half of the country loves them, and half of the country hates them ... the joy of the two-party system!  W. will be outta there next year, and then what? You'll all love us again? Whatever!
|
||||||||
| Travis |
Strongly agreed, I must say. George W. Bush is just one element in the US political system, and does not really define US policy as a whole these days due to not having control of Congress and having relatively limited credibility (even though there was a time when I worried that he could potentially attain effectively autocratic powers). Furthermore, who is president does not really influence the nature of the political system in the US in the long term, which is more a matter of having two parties that are relatively close to each other (except with respect to particular pet social issues) playing musical chairs with the presidency and, on a more limited basis, control of Congress. It is not like the nature of the US as a state and as a society really changed all that much when George W. Bush got elected to office - it is just that his policies with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan have gotten a lot of attention. Rather, he is not all that much different from how the equally right-wing Ronald Reagan was, who had similar policies both domestically and externally, which is something that people forget. |
||||||||
| fab |
" I should say that many British people probably don't realise how much they have in common with the Germans "
Yes, UK and Germany have much in common, But the British have even more in common with Dutch people and Netherland are very similar with th UK in terms of language, culture, climate, architecture, food, etc. Even more than with Germans in my opinion. They have also as much in common with Scandinavians than with Germans (maybe more in some points). |
||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
I've never actually been to the Netherlands, but I do agree that Britain (especially England) is probably more similar to the Netherlands than to Germany. I also agree that, in many ways, the Netherlands is more similar to England than to Germany (except for language, even though you did mention this — but even then, it's not actually all that much more different). And actually, there is also at least one similarity between Scotland and the Netherlands which they do not (really) share with either England or Germany: Calvinism.
Do you mean that the British have as much/more in common with the Scandinavians as/than with the Germans, or that the Dutch have as much/more in common with the Scandinavians as/than with the Germans? Actually, I often think that Scotland would be more similar to Scandinavia (except that standard of living and quality of life is noticeably lower in Scotland than in Scandinavia, especially Norway), whereas Southern England would be more similar to Northern Germany. |
||||||||
| Walker |
They may come and go and President Bush may be a cartoon, but he's there now. Look at Iraq and the many thousands of deaths there; when that guy says "we gohn getcha!", he ain't foolin' around -- he means business. I'm just saying he's not somebody you want to mess with. |
||||||||
| Uriel |
For that matter, it's not even a right-wing republican thing; need I remind everyone that democrat president and tireless diplomat Clinton bombed Baghdad about every other Thursday during his tenure, and was on the brink of asking Congress for invasion rights when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke? Iraq got a half-decade reprieve due to nothing more than some sticky stain on a navy-blue dress. |
||||||||
| bruce |
Haha, that's a very witty remark that I've never heard of before. But still, the president of the United States is pretty a big deal! He's not only the President of the United States, most powerful nation in the world. He's the leader of the FREE WORLD! And even though a lot of his power may be restricted by the whole political system of the U.S., he still has a lot of power in those Texan, rancher hands of his. |
||||||||
| Travis |
This is somewhat belated, but these people actually weren't from the UK at all it turns out (unlike what I had been told earlier). Rather they were from North Carolina, and spoke a non-rhotic coastal Southern dialect that did not sound much at all like your typical modern rhotic Southern dialects. As a result, I did not recognize them as actually being Southerners off-hand at all until I actually was told they were really from North Carolina. Consequently, I actually have met no British people in Real Life up to this point... |
||||||||
| greg in noord-frankrijk |
I think "Bush" is just a buzzword, a kind of convenient semantic shortcut to refer to *anything* people don't like about the USA. Many people know that the actual guy called Bush isn't a problem, only a symptom of a wider system that won't go once Bush is thrown into oblivion. But time will tell us more about that soon. |
||||||||
| Travis |
The matter is that people forget that Bush really is but one element in the US political system; he is not some dictator controlling everything, as much as he may have had aspirations towards such at one point. This election in 2008 will come and go, and honestly things will probably not change a whole lot, all things considered. The most domestic change that you will probably possibly see is that the Democrats might just be able to push through some kind of healthcare reform, and even then I am very doubtful in reality. Likewise, I doubt that their foreign policy will be really fundamentally different from Bush's, their likely eventual pulling out of iraq aside. In the end, though, things will probably operate much the same as both domestic and foreign policy go, with most of the differences being superficial and limited to a few pet matters such as healthcare and Iraq. |
||||||||
| Walker |
Totally off-topic, but, Travis, is your use of the word "such" a dialect thing or is it just you? Its occurence is very frequent in your posts, so much, in fact, that it makes you wonder what the deal is. Do you say it as often as you write it? | ||||||||
| Travis |
I am not sure about the exact frequencies with which I use such, but I do definitely use it a good amount in my everyday speech as well as my writing. As for whether it is a dialect or an idiolect thing, I really would not know, as I have not really paid attention to it that much in Real Life myself. |
||||||||
| Lazar |
I have noticed that you tend to use "such" as a pronoun, which I don't usually do. | ||||||||
| Travis |
That's likely a quirk of how I write, because in actual speech I tend to use such as a pronoun less than in writing, and instead tend to use that as a pronoun very heavily in speech. |
||||||||
| Uriel |
Hmm. I didn't notice anything odd about your use of "such". | ||||||||
| Rio |
Well in Australia, we have every colour and size here so nothing surprises us. However, I'm sure someone from overseas who would see say a Vietnamese or African background person speaking with an Australian accent would be pretty flipped out. And as for the migrating British, most of them are floating around Australia (esp West Adelaide)! | ||||||||
| Uriel |
You have a lot of African blacks in Australia these days? | ||||||||
| Loic |
Rio: Plenty of Poms in Perth too, I'd say. I am always surprised to hear the sheer number of people speaking with plummy rounded vowels when I am there. | ||||||||
| Rio |
plenty from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia |
||||||||
| Uriel |
I'll be darned. Do they fit in? | ||||||||