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veteran
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veteran
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tsouche!
Whoa!
You're not making tsushi out of me, mate.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Very late into this conversaiton....
Shanks, it seems like such a sad thing to have these thoughts going through your head whenever you meet people (nazi jerks aside where you are absolutely right that they are thinking bad things about you). I can see where you would get rankled when peoples say "your people". Here it is so commonly used as a pride thing "Canadians are my people" that I did not see it any other way.
I'm very troubled by your example though. I am very friendly by nature, I love meeting new people and feel that new and old friends are a blessing. When I meet someone new who is evidently not from Montreal I eventually get around to asking from whence they came. Not to belittle, or categorize negatively, but to get to know the whole person. I can’t imagine anyone being embarrassed about their country of origin (I’m not saying that you are here) so I have never hesitated to ask. I’ve never seen anyone be offended, perhaps it’s all in the way a person asks.
I don’t know what to say. It just seems so sad.
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old hand
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old hand
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>There was someone in our engineering class who went by the name of T. S. >Engineer -- I have to admit to not knowing what part of the subcontinent he came >from. I am sure he was Parsi. Parsi's have surnames like Engineer, Master, Doctor also Treasury-wallah, Tobacco-wallah, Brandywallah, Whiskywallah, Matchbox-wallah.  .
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addict
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addict
Joined: Mar 2000
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< some of my best Jews are Friends>
Thanks, Ted, I've passed your wonderful story on to several of my Quaker Friends.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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belM, I think you and I are just alike, in re: wanting to get to know people! Sometimes, you can just tell that someone is going to be "your kind of person", and in those cases, I just want to say, "Quick, tell me the essentials so we can get the real conversation going"!
Apparently shanks has not seen your post yet. I hope I'm not giving the wrong interpretation here, but I didn't have the impression he was embarrassed about where he's from.
Though I do know that some people are, right here in the USA; from here, that is, not immigrants.
I guess that, when one has been burned, esp. repeatedly,
that one learns to be wary of being burned again. The
theoretical conversation he posted sounds to me like typical human ignorance. Very different from deliberate
taunting/threatening, but still wearisome to have to deal with again and again, and again... Kind of like a very tall student whom people automatically assume must be on the basketball team, or maybe, that all Kentuckians are
barefoot hillbillies. (No danger of that happening to me, folks. But I've been given expressions of surprise that I and my fellow Kentuckians weren't.) Oh, dear, this is starting to sound very reminiscent of a post I made
long ago, but I'll say it again--I think the only thing we can do to combat ignorance is to do it one step (person) at a time. It's too overwhelming to think of changing the whole world.
I think you are right when you said a lot depends on how
inquiries are put. If it is obviously from friendly interest, surely not too many people would take offense.
Judging by his post in response to mine, I have to say that
I believe our sweet shanks can roll with the punches and come up smiling. Right, Sweetie?
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Joined: Mar 2000
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old hand
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old hand
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belM
These 'thoughts' going around in my head are pretty much exceptional - if you take the idea of the 'stream of consciousness', then these are just possible backgrounds. Of course I appreciate that most people are merely curious, and not in a judgemental way - it's human, and quite nice, to be interested in others.
Forget the nazi jerks - I think Jackie comes close to the truth - it can be depressing to see the inevitable categorisation (whether or not negative) to which you are subject once people have tried (and succeeded) in filing you in your particular pigeon-hole in their heads. Tall does not equal basketballplayer. Canadian does not equal "Eh" sayer! Indian does not equal woman suppressor. Yet, in all these cases, the stereotypes are 'sound' ones because they may represent the majority experience, or the most visible traits, of the groups concerned. I just find it irritating to be 'grouped'...
Most times, in any case, the stereotype tends to dissolve - I haven't ever met anybody who completely conforms to a stereotype.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
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Oh, dear! I've come very late into a Fascinating Fred (FF?)
Two things have struck me. First, I know exactly what shanks means about "your people," it is not so much the words as the tone they are said in (sometimes the tone is kept hidden, but it is still there) and the tone is that one of Absolutely English Total Bloody Patronage - an assumption that, whatever "your people" are, we, the English, are better than you. Brittania rules the waves and every other damned thing as well.
It is also used by the "upper" classes toward a class that is "lower." shanks is quite right to be offended by it - even if only mildly so, possibly with feelings of, "Oh, well! - they know no better." I have heard the tone on other's voices when speaking to "foreigners" - especially to black foreigners whose grandparents were born in England - and have cringed inwardly.
The second point is "wogs": I have always understood (by hearsay, not by research) that Egyptian labourers on the Suez Canal during the First World War (I think) either had passes or else had their clothing marked with the intials W.O.G.S. - Workers On Government Service. Most certainly, when I was but a child, the term "wogs" was always applied to Arabs, and it was only later that I heard it applied to people from India or Pakistan. Later still, I heard it applied to Carribeans as well.
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Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
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When I worked in New York for a few months many years ago, when fishonabike was still on stabilisers. I was hugely amused by answers to the question "Where are you from?"
In all innocence I asked the question, expecting replies like Brooklyn, Queens or even further flung places like Chicago or Texas. Instead people who seemed to me to be young North Americans gave replies like Ireland, Finland and Scotland. I was impressed that they seemed so at home in New York so I asked questions like "Is it very dark in the winter in Finland?" or "Are there a lot of flights to Ireland?"
I was astonished by the reply "I don't know, I've never been to Finland/Ireland". They then explained that their grandparents or even great grandparents came from the country".
I don't know if this is just a big city phenomenon or whether it was unusual. It just makes me wonder if asking where people are from in the UK (especially if we are guessing because their skin colour or accent is different to that most prevalent in the locality) is a much bigger deal than in the USA where many people can go back only a couple of generations to a time when members of their family were not born in the USA.
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addict
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addict
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Jo,
The same thing still happened as recently as two years ago in Chicago. People who had never been out of the US told me in all seriousness that they were Irish. I found it very confusing.
As for asking where people are from, I'm not sure that I found it an especially big deal when I was still living in the UK. I think it's to do with how you ask. Forget what colour someone is - if they talk the local language fluently with the local accent, assume they're local. If they talk the local language fluently with a non-local accent, ask a neutral question. 'Have you lived round here all your life? / How long have you lived round here?' They can answer with the name of another city or another country as they choose - and as is appropriate. This stops it being a nationality or ethnicity question and makes it a question about the person.
It also stops it being a question about their family's origins in Ireland when you're standing in the middle of Chicago!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Bridget - I agree. I phrase my questions a little more carefully these days. The problem is that I love to collect accents, so I'm always interested to know where they come from!
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