But that’s the thing - this shouldn’t be new to anyone who’s lived in the areas where these freak-outs are being recorded. It’s like flipping out that people are driving cars or that there are buildings in urban areas - people don’t suddenly get upset about things that have always existed in these spaces unless they’re not right in the head.
Yeah, absolutely. I can understand that people, even in California, might be racist idiots who managed to filter their experiences. I can understand that whites no longer being a majority or even the largest group has triggered a backlash by racists. But even in rural, traditionally white, Northern California where some of my family lives, hearing other languages has been a daily reality for decades, so I can’t understand how anyone could be so disconnected from reality that they expect to hear only English. But then again, I did grow up in downtown San Jose, so…
I[quote=“Shuck, post:63, topic:112617”]
But even in rural, traditionally white, Northern California where some of my family lives, hearing other languages has been a daily reality for decades, so I can’t understand how anyone could be so disconnected from reality that they expect to hear only English. But then again, I did grow up in downtown San Jose, so…
[/quote]
It doesn’t make sense because you’re rational and not a racist.
This lady has been bitching about “other” people forever.
One time, my wife and I were up in the redwoods - I forget which town exactly, but solid Jefferson, CA.
Anyway, we stopped at a diner and this cranky old lady was complaining to her otherwise silent old husband about this table of “hippies” who were around a table in the back. There was a music festival that week. I looked over and at the cars in the lot and instantly surmised that they were all engineers on PTO (like me) and collectively made more in a year than this couple have seen in a lifetime.
But all this lady saw were a bunch of hippies not working and lazing around eating hamburgers on a weekday.
Why she would give a shit is beyond me. They’re spending money in her podunk town.
They ain’t her kind.
I liked that about living abroad. It was hard to communicate when I needed to but it was nice walking around not being able to understand the content of random conversations.
When I moved back to the States it was harder for a bit to concentrate on my own conversations and block out the random ones.
Yeah my wife speaks Cantonese with her family. Knowing the context of a conversation and the meaning of a few words is enough. If she is talking to her sister and keeps saying “mama” then its because her mother is spending too much time using poker machines. If I hear “diem” it means they are organizing a dinner somewhere and discussing the time to book. Anything more complicated than that, they start to throw in English words, which make the meaning clear enough.
If the Koreans were speaking at an American coffee shop they way Koreans do back home I can understand the woman’s frustration. Though I don’t excuse her racism. Koreans are always preaching to us expats in Korea to “understand our culture” however, when they are abroad they fail to abide by western rules of etiquette. Western restaurants are quieter, they don’t blare K-pop. Here in Korea, Koreans are very loud in public, in fact quite often you can’t even converse while dining or at a coffee shop. Sometimes a group of Koreans will gather at a restaurant or coffee shop. They scream like a horde of Vikings. While their group has a great time the rest of the patrons just sit and sigh while gritting their teeth.
A Korean preaching about racisim!?? How rich is that? Any foreigner (like me) who has lived South of the 38th for an extended period of time must have choked on their Kimchi when they read this. Talk to any southeast Asians in Korea about racism here!
Koreans are one of the last nations to complain about racism until they clean up their own act.
on a less flip note, i think white supremacy (clearly this is a case of this: i doubt people who say ‘speak english in america!’ at non-anglophonality would also readily abandon speaking english while abroad—or, berate at, say, a french person to speak english…) erects this ideological barrier that prevents intellectual empathy, appreciation, and learning of/from other cultures.
Wouldn’t it be a nice change if they took responsibility for your imagination rather than insisting the opposite? Like, maybe they could show us how we’re supposed to do that??!? Just once?
White Guy 101: If you are talking it is to me and it is incumbent on you to make sense to me. It is my right and your responsibility that you make sense to me, speak my language (and dialect, with mutually comprehensible slang and movie references), and show compassion for my lack of tolerance for ambiguity and also for any emotional responses arising therefrom. (wish this was /s)
Sheesh. The fact that racism exists in one group’s home country doesn’t mean that when faced with racism against themselves in another country, they should just shut up and take it.
