What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet…(Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, 1594)
Or not. I remember when a friend’s husband was employed by a large telco, he was asked to change his Islamic sounding name to “Michael” when taking calls from customers. Being a very easy-going fellow, he demurred, although his wife and I were scandalised that such a thing was even suggested.
The other day, a study was released which suggested that job seekers with “ethnic” names generally got less response to their applications than those with Anglo names. (Unless they were someone with an Italian name in Melbourne applying for a job as a waiter/waitress.)
This doesn’t really surprise me. I’ve known people who have had to change their name for CVs before.
Theodora Brown has an interesting post on the topic. Her point of view is as an Australian woman of Chinese extraction. She says:
I was surprised though, at the automatic assumption in the press and in discussion that the the adoption of names was simply for the benefit of the exclusively Anglophone. Particularly in a multicultural society, the adoption of an anglicised name is, these days, I think more for the assistance of benefit of non-English speakers rather than English speakers. A case of English being the lingua franca, so to speak, for the very many disparate groups who now call Australia home.
There’s a place for pride in one’s heritage, one’s background, one’s past, one’s principles.
And there is a case of just being practical.
I have to say that I hadn’t thought of it like that. Worth having a read.
81 Comments
Given that most Mandarin names are simple to pronounce by most speakers of the world (English speakers will have difficulty with those starting with x and c in pinyin, but should have no difficulty with all of the rhymes), I think this is just garbage. Even most Cantonese names aren’t too difficult.
.
Indeed, if we did really want to have names that most people of the world could pronounce, then Chinese names are far more simple than English ones (as are Italian ones) — the syllables in English are some of the most difficult and complex you can find.
.
I am therefore going to conclude that Theodora doesn’t know what she is talking about. I’ll give her the banana award.
It is a two way street, LE. Can you imagine a Chinese restaurant employing an Anglo or Sudanese Australian waiter? How many white people are employed by the Asian businesses in Victoria Street, Richmond? And just as significantly, why do the turds who do these surveys exclude ethnic businesses from the sample population?
Of course there is an element of racism involved in all of this but I’ve grown rather tired of hearing lefties single out white folk, and in particular white males, for a special whipping.
(1) How many different names are you allowed legally at any one time? (Apparently it’s a great lurk for debt avoiders). If it ain’t expensive, that would be what I would do if my birth name disadvantaged me.
(2) Conrad: Chinese names might be spelt easily, but tonal languages (and most folk don’t have the recently-discovered tonal language gene unless they come from one of the few ethnic groups associated with tonal languages) are a recipe for insult and disaster from names that are homophones to Europeans, but can have wildy different interpretations for tonal-language speakers.
“Mother is swearing at the horse because it ate the hemp” uses four words that to a non-tonal language speaker sound the same and in the Roman unaccented alphabet, look the same (“ma chi ma ai ma ma”)
See footnotes to my posts here and here for details on “ma chi ma ai ma ma” and the scientific papers on tonal languages and gene frequency
My Chinese name, when said in Mandarin, does have two “x”s
And if one does mispronounce it, it becomes something completely different and unintentionally hilarious 
Seriously, though, my point about having an Anglicised name in an Anglophone country had very little to do with phonetics as such, and more about finding common ground in the environment one happens to be in.
As I had to patiently and very carefully point out to a non-economist and non-linguist the other day (who was wondering at research showing that in Pompeii at least, literacy was close to 100%).
1. You do not need a properly developed economy to have near universal literacy. Example: Cuba
2. One letter=one sound makes a helluva difference when it comes to literacy rates. The frikking nong who inflicted first French, then English on the planet as a global lingua franca needs to be subjected to a serious performance review.
(As an aside, Mandarin is dead easy to speak, but I’m bloody glad no-one’s tried to make me write it).
SL@5
(point 1) “You do not need a properly developed economy to have near universal literacy”
Actually, I’d consider that provision of near-universal literacy is one of the key diagnostics of an economy functioning “properly” (the end) rather than assign intrinsic value to one system or another (the means)
(point 2) “One letter=one sound”.
With the to-and-froing about official languages for the EU parliament, would this put you in the camp of reviving the last real pan-European language?
And the spelling thing that ghoti-haters (I think it was Shaw who said it could sound like “fish”) dislike, but I like, is that it reflects etymology, and makes it a bit easier for other PIE-derived-language speakers to guess whether a word root is germanic or latinate, and thus guess the meaning of the written word – including far down the track when accents have completely changed. (e.g. english/scot/german night/nacht/nicht)
(point 3) : Guess you are one of the lucky ones with the tonal gene!
Have just recently read Chesterton’s anti-spelling rant – an online version is here. A quote:
A Republican is not a man who wants a Constitution with a President. A Republican is a man who prefers to think of Government as impersonal; he is opposed to the Royalist, who prefers to think of Government as personal. Take the second word, “generally.” This is always used as meaning “in the majority of cases.” But, again, if we look at the shape and spelling of the word, we shall see that “generally” means something more like “generically,” and is akin to such words as “generation” or “regenerate.” “Pigs are generally dirty” does not mean that pigs are, in the majority of cases, dirty, but that pigs as a race or genus are dirty, that pigs as pigs are dirty–an important philosophical distinction. Take the third word, “encourage.” The word “encourage” is used in such modern sentences in the merely automatic sense of promote; to encourage poetry means merely to advance or assist poetry. But to encourage poetry means properly to put courage into poetry–a fine idea. Take the fourth word, “holidays.” As long as that word remains, it will always answer the ignorant slander which asserts that religion was opposed to human cheerfulness; that word will always assert that when a day is holy it should also be happy. Properly spelt, these words all tell a sublime story, like Westminster Abbey. Phonetically spelt, they might lose the last traces of any such story. “Generally” is an exalted metaphysical term; “jenrally” is not. If you “encourage” a man, you pour into him the chivalry of a hundred princes; this does not happen if you merely “inkurrij” him. “Republics,” if spelt phonetically, might actually forget to be public. “Holidays,” if spelt phonetically, might actually forget to be holy.
I knew a Chinese girl called Xiou – you’d be amazed at the variations she got. But there was no way she was changing it – she was a very proud girl, and proud of her name.
My Mum is tone deaf – seriously. If I hum three notes (C, D, E) she can’t tell the difference. I wonder how she would go if she had been born in Asia in a country with a tonal language?
That Chesterton is gold, Tim.
ML:”Of course there is an element of racism involved in all of this but I’ve grown rather tired of hearing lefties single out white folk, and in particular white males, for a special whipping.”
.
Well, I’m tired of getting discriminated against and harassed, mainly (but not exclusively) by white males.
.
DB: Most Mandarin speakers will understand their names in the wrong tone. In addition, most parents are generally thoughtful enough not to choose names that this can happen to (homophone jokes being part of Chinese humour).
.
TB: “and more about finding common ground in the environment one happens to be in”
.
I’ve no why you would think Chinese need to find a common ground given that they’ve been here since the gold rush and have been constantly discriminated against over the past 100 years. To me, given their success, despite the adverse conditions, it’s the opposite. They should try and resist any assimilation with Anglo culture.
Hold it, a name can tell you reams about a person and their character.
….
Godwin Grech.
“They should try and resist any assimilation with Anglo culture.”
Maybe Conrad, since the Chinese have been so successful, as you acknowledge, they don’t require your patronising advice on how they should run their lives
ps I tried to learn to speak Vietnamese once. The tones gave me laryngitis so I gave up after two days
I meant to write ‘anti-phonetic-spelling rant’, which puts it in the context of the above discussion, but glad you liked it, anyway, LE!
Don’t Australians from a non-European background frequently change their names for the English-speaking culture anyway? I have one friend on Facebook who signs in with his Asian name but signs all his emails with an Australian equivalent.
My observations re assimilation are these:
1st generation – generally retains the culture and history of their country of origin.
2nd generation – generally bucks against the culture imposed on them by their parents and want to “fit in” with the place in which they were born.
3rd generation – becomes fascinated with the history and culture of their grandparents’ country of origin, and resists attempts to “fit in”.
I’ve seen it myself with family members and friends. Eg, one of my relatives by marriage is Chinese by extraction – but speaks very little Chinese. After being bullied at school, he tried his best to “fit in” as a Aussie bloke and succeeded. But then again, in other ways, he remains very Asian (his dutiful and painstaking care of his elderly and demanding mother stands out in this regard).
His son, by contrast, learned Mandarin, is fascinated by Chinese culture and history and it seems to me that he generally identifies more with his Chinese heritage in many respects than he does with his Anglo-Australian heritage.
My own experiences of living in the UK are that try as you might, unless you want to be totally isolated from the natives, you have to bend and assimilate a little. And the natives have to bend and assimilate with you a little too. So I had to tone down my Australian forthrightness a bit, but my school had to learn that I was never going to be an English gentlewoman either, but despite this I was a decent sort. It’s a two way process.
In that vein, Tim T:
My mother told me that learning English was much easier than learning her own native language French. Very few gendered terms and fewer characters.
My name tends to get anglicised unless I correct people. Of course it doesn’t help that in ordinary English, putting ‘c’ next to ‘q’ tells most folks to start a new syllable.
On the other hand, having a French first name gives me a bit of a free ride if I post a comment somewhere with grammos in it.
“Maybe Conrad, since the Chinese have been so successful, as you acknowledge, they don’t require your patronising advice on how they should run their lives”
.
.
Just because you are successful doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have been more successful if you hadn’t been discriminated against. Your mindset is obviously caught in 20th century post-modern mediocrity, like many of your Aussie brothers
.
I made the comment, incidentally, because there are literally thousands of people whinging about assimilation and so on, as if somehow Australian norms were something to aspire to, and, even for the positive values, that aspiring to them is somehow better than keeping your own values when a trade-off occurs. I’m surprised by how many people believe this nationalistic nonsense, and go around claiming how Australian they are or have become, believing that to be a positive statement.
“My Mum is tone deaf – seriously. If I hum three notes (C, D, E) she can’t tell the difference. I wonder how she would go if she had been born in Asia in a country with a tonal language?”
From New Scientist:
QUOTE
Tonal languages are the key to perfect pitch
06 April 2009 by Hazel Muir
IF YOU want your child to have perfect pitch like musical maestros Mozart and Chopin, then start them early on Mandarin or Vietnamese lessons. The likelihood of developing perfect pitch seems to be strongly linked to the language people speak, confirming that children can pick up the ability when they are very young.
Estimates suggest that perfect pitch is very rare in the US and Europe, with only about 1 in 10,000 people being able to hear a single tone and identify it as middle C, for instance. But it is slightly more common in people who start musical training under five. [...]
To find out if Chinese people have a genetic advantage, Deutsch’s team tested 203 music students for perfect pitch – they had to identify all 36 notes from three octaves played in haphazard order. Those tested included 27 ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese students who had different levels of fluency in the tonal language learned from their parents.
It turned out that the Asian students scored no better than white students if they weren’t fluent in their parents’ language (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol 125, p 2398). But very fluent students scored highly, getting about 90 per cent of the notes correct on average (see diagram). “They did incredibly well. It was overwhelming,” says Deutsch.
This suggests that learning a tonal language plays a far greater role in perfect pitch than genes. [...]
END QUOTE
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227064.300-tonal-languages-are-the-key-to-perfect-pitch.html
LOL, maybe I should start teaching my kids Cantonese?!
Perfect pitch is a beat up. Apart from giving you a head start as a piano tuner, perhaps. Perfect Relative Pitch on the other hand is extremely relevant to everything from harmonising to improvising. IMHO
I think somewhere along the line I had a particularly obstinate ancestor who decided to barely anglicise their Irish surname. On one hand, it’s sort of neat, on the other, I stopped correcting people sometime during primary school.
ME, at the risk of sounding very flippant, I should hazard to guess that if a non-native speaker of any of the languages common on Victoria St was sufficiently fluent to get a job there, they’d probably be snapped up in a jiffy for a much better paying and more glamorous position somewhere else – whether interpreting, NGO work, IMMI or DFAT.
As for the other point about surveys – I assume that even if small ‘ethnic’ businesses (and most are small) advertise job vacancies openly, instead of doing via a poster on the shop window or finding a friend of a friend of a friend (like a lot of small businesses everywhere, I’d imagine) – there probably wasn’t a sufficiently big sample size to get some good stats out.
Conrad says:
“Your mindset is obviously caught in 20th century post-modern mediocrity, like many of your Aussie brothers ”
How very racist.
Look old swan, Australia occupies only 3% of Earth’s land mass and is only one of 195 countries. If you are the beaten down, oppressed and traumatised victim of discrimination you claim to be, why not consider spreading your wings and giving some other lucky country the benefit of talents?
My, this is getting a mite tetchy for a relatively light-hearted thread, and I’m surprised to see Conrad getting in on the act — Mel didn’t start this one!
Please keep unpleasant opinions of both locals and blow-ins (now there’s a nice country Australian aphorism for you) rather more restrained than they have been on this thread thus far.
It’s just like when I worked in the Court system. I would try to anticipate which cases were newspaper worthy, and I’d get it wrong about 70% of the time. So it is also with posts – I am often no good at picking the ones which will be contentious! Not a journalist’s bone in my body.
I am therefore going to conclude that Theodora doesn’t know what she is talking about.
I think she does. Chinese names are not easy to pronounce in English. They’re based on a different music. And there’sm the problem that Asian names ofen don;t scan well when said in the Western way, family name last.
What she’s talking about is a cultural hub. The (American version of the) Anglo-Saxon is the standard and everyone relates to that. It’s for the same reason that BBC Engliish grew out of the Oxbridge triangle. Within the Anglo-Celtic spectrum of spoken language it was the one lingo that everyone understood.
Pretty much ’cause it was the accent of those barking orders most of the time.
Another related issue (which might even be used as an “excuse” for “misdirected” mail) is the name-ordering convention differences between European and many Asian societies.
Data-quality nazi that I am, I’ve always (unless the client is unmoved by my hissy fits) put in flags to indicate preferred position of surnames for each person in a database, as well as giving room to store preferred (in this case anglicized) and formal given names.
(I’d hate to get a letter address “Mr Bath David” that started “Dear Bath”).
A typical screwup might involve setting a given name to “Leigh” when “Lee” is the surname.
I wonder if any readers here have been merely annoyed by name-ordering on letters from government and private enterprise, or whether it has caused some real inconvenience (e.g. identification problems when dealing with helpdesks, or denials that a cheque has been received from you).
And is “Dai” an appropriate Chinese given name? It’d be a giggle if I could “naturalize” Dave the same way in China and Wales.
My husband had that reverse name calling happen once. Let’s pretend his name is John Smith. He got a call from Telstra where he was constantly called, “Smith John”, and couldn’t get a word in edgeways to explain he was “John Smith”. We got bills to “Smith John” for ages until he rang to explain what had happened.
Korean backpackers adopt Western names when travelling here. Had it explained to me that this was for ‘harmony’. Wouldn’t find us lot doing ‘harmony’ in Beijiing.
.
Wes-tun peepah arah ser-a-fish.
.
Ah fuckit harmony’s over-rated.
Actually, when I studied in Beijing, most of the international students who were studying Chinese with me did adopt Chinese names (if they didn’t have fallback ones already) – they were, oddly enough, also the ones who liked exploring the city, going on random weekend trips to Harbin or Xian, who made friends with the local students studying languages at the same school (BCLU), and generally got the most out of the experience.
LE@27 said “We got bills to “Smith John” for ages until he rang to explain what had happened”
I wonder if such bills could be conveniently ignored because they weren’t billing the right person? Immoral, perhaps, but no less a shirking of responsibilities than Telstra execs!
TheodoraBrown@29 said “most of the international students who were studying Chinese with me did adopt Chinese names”
Was there any positive or negative “discrimination” by tutors, shopkeepers, etc based on whether the non-Chinese students had adopted Chinese names or not?
Well, at the school itself there wasn’t much difference, but out travelling out and about, inflicting our horrible accents on the locals, the ….I’m not quite sure how to put it … if someone who didn’t look vaguely Chinese had adopted a “Chinese” Chinese name, rather than a phonetic transliteration of their name, and then introduced themselves there was generally “Oh, what a nice name, they’re a very famous person, etc, etc” and an entire spiel that was said rather more quickly, and with more colloquialisms that any of us could comprehend, rather than the more generic, slightly condescending, “??????” (Your Chinese – very good) which accompanied any phrase that anyone who didn’t look “Chinese” said in Chinese (and was generally said very slowly and very clearly).
But that being said, at the same time, they were also the same students who actually struck up conversations with shopkeepers, etc, so it’s a bit hard to tell, really.
I mean, none of us tried to put in job applications while we were there
It might be interesting, way down the track to do a reverse study if and when China actually has to import labour from abroad …. actually, I wonder if Japan has any interesting research on this issue, though I don’t know a thing about their employment/immigration scenario….
When I was in Japan, I would say my name the way it is spelled in katakana – that way it was syllabic and hopefully easy for people to understand and say. However, a number of people called me by the name of a cartoon character instead (which sounds similar to my name) – I happily accepted that.
“why not consider spreading your wings and giving some other lucky country the benefit of talents”
.
I have — I’ve spent a fair chunk of my life working OS, although unfortunately that opportunity doesn’t exist for most (I think we should have far more open borders incidentally). Again, your mind is caught in some sort of nationalistic ideal — I really couldn’t care what country I benefit. This “i love my country blah blah” is really pretty hollow in my books. I love parrots, kangaroos and so on, but that has nothing to do with “country”.
.
More seriously, I might note that just dismissing discrimination is one of the things that has lead to the endemic situation in France with the Arabs, the UK with the Pakistanis, and so on. At least in France (where I work quite often), that’s a pretty ugly situation to have (and no, they won’t spread their wings — France tried to pay them to do that, but it didn’t work, and it’s hard to see who would have most of them now in any case). So, if you want to create social outgroups, then you should expect similar consequences. In any case, if the Chinese did spread their wings, which would no create a shortage of doctors and so on, I’m sure we’d here a mountain of complaints, which is just one of the problems of being non-white. People complain when you arn’t successful, like the Lebanese, and people complain when you are, like the Chinese (they’re obviously trying too hard and taking all the good jobs..). So just saying “whites wern’t responsible for at least part of that” is just denial.
.
Conrad says:
“More seriously, I might note that just dismissing discrimination … ”
I’ve never just dismissed discrimination, Conrad. All I ask is that it be put in context and discussed in a balanced way. It may have escaped your attention but there is racism everywhere and it is often lethal. Think for example about the way bantu speakers treat non-bantus in Africa. Or the anti-Chinese pogroms in Indonesia, Vietnam etc, the anti-Indian violence in Fiji, the maltreatment of indigenous Sri Lankans etc etc etc etc..
And yes, sometimes people die because of racism in Australia, too. For example the recent death from heat exhaustion and dehydration of an aboriginal man in WA who was being transported to prison in a private security firm van. Nonetheless, in spite of all your bugaboo, it is the white nations who have opened themselves up more than any others and that legislate the most vigorously to protect minority rights.
Another important point, it is generally the ethnic minorities in predominately white countries who are most vigorously opposed to the rights and freedoms of non-ethnic minorities, such as gays.
…which is why I am always so surprised that conservative parties seem to have ceded the “ethnic” vote to the Left with hardly any apparent effort made at all …. I’d have thought that the votes that one could pick up from the socially and economically conservative elements of the various ethnic communities would outweigh any losses they’d get from what the US Republicans call “The Base”…
oh well, I’m no pollster or political strategist …
“it is the white nations who have opened themselves up more than any others”
.
That’s surely not true for two reasons:
1) part of that is thanks to colonialism and war. That’s why there are piles of Algerians in France, for example. I think “cleaning up the mess made” is probably a better term than “opened themselves up” in many cases.
2) What about nations like Pakistan? They have more refugees than any other.
.
“it is generally the ethnic minorities in predominately white countries who are most vigorously opposed to the rights and freedoms of non-ethnic minorities, such as gays”
.
I don’t doubt that some non-white groups have their archaic attitudes, but whites in Australia form the majority, and therefore have protection via the democratic system. Non-whites don’t have this, so the effect of racism is not symmetrical. That’s of course no excuse for minority groups to discriminate against others, but it does place more responsibility on the majority groups not to do it.
“That’s of course no excuse for minority groups to discriminate against others, but it does place more responsibility on the majority groups not to do it.”
Conrad thinks most of the honour killings in Europe are done by white people. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
I think you missed the point (seriously missed it) — I’ve no idea where honor killings even came from in this discussion — is it on your mind of late? It’s not on mine.
In any case, here is the argument:
If you, as the majority group, want to legislate so honor killings are fine, you can do it democratically (or harassing gays, beating your wife, etc. ). It then becomes legal.
Alternatively, if you, as the nutty minority group, want to legalize honor killings, you can’t, so you still go to jail when you do it.
Hence the costs of discrimination are asymmetrical. In any case, your example tends to be within minority groups, so it’s not an example of two groups with different levels of power over each other.
I wonder if Japan has any interesting research on this issue, though I don’t know a thing about their employment/immigration scenario….
A lot of people who descended from Japanese who moves to Peru and Brazil after WWII came back to work in Japan in the 80s and 90s.
They had a very hard time of it.
Great movie partially on that theme called Kamikaze Taxi.
Adrien @ 26 – and, in all of this, hasn’t anyone thought of what it’s like the other way ’round (though I’m flattered everyone seems to be thinking of Chinese names in all this), for example, Chinese speakers who are accustomed to saying English names but not, for example, Greek, Hindi or Arabic ones? My Great-Aunt’s Greek neighbour is “Anna” for the benefit of my Great-Aunt and the other non-Greek, NESB neighbours in the street, and none of them to angst about it (her real name is Athina, which is quite hard to say properly if you’ve spoken Chinese for most of your life and only started learning English well into adulthood).
Dave @ 27 – another part of the experiement in question did involve sending out misaddressed envelopes with the various names – there wasn’t any statistical difference in the rates of “return to sender” mail. I’ve never heard of “Dai” being used by itself as a given name in Chinese (though it is a surname), but that’s not to say that it can’t. I have, however, heard “Dai”, being used as a Japanese given name, written with the character “?” ie, “big” – which is also how the word is pronounced in Cantonese
Theodora – yep.
My Korean ex-girlfriend pronounces my name Haju-Lian.
.
Not sure how she’d go with Marinos Kokkinos. You do need a standard lingo it’s just a shame that it had to be one where the grammar was written by religious hermit in the last stages of rabies induced psychosis.
Well Chinese is coming to the fore, Mandarin v Cantonese.
That’s great. I mean, Chinese is easy. Right?
Conrad, this is completely potty — it assumes that people, be they black, white or brindle, vote as an undifferentiated bloc based on race or ethnic identification, which we know not to be the case.
A concern with bloc voting (which occurs along tribal lines in many African countries, thereby undermining democracy there) was one of the stated reasons for opposing women’s suffrage and also voting rights for African-Americans. However, in the washup, in all but one instance, women and blacks voted their individual interests, not their group interests. The exception was female support for Prohibition in the US, which was not replicated in any other country that introduced female suffrage.
Bloc voting along gender or race lines is a sign — among other things — of political immaturity. It hasn’t been a feature of politics in Western nations for many a long day.
I think you need to be careful with colonialism arguments, too, because it can be as enriching as it is destructive (witness the creative bastardisation of the English language thanks to, seriatim, the Romans, the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and the Normans). Now three of those groups invaded Britain with a ferocity that puts modern colonial powers in the shade and hasn’t been seen in the world since some of the nastier stuff inflicted on the great Islamic civilisations by the Mongols.
Can’t exactly send the Normans back, can we now?
Adrien @ 41
Standard putonghua (the stuff you hear on telly and the stuff they write the pinyin/phonetics for) is fairly straightforward. However, the Chinese (any form of it) spoken by most native speakers bears only a passing resemblance to it. My general thought is that it’s a bit like BBC RP was back in the day – understood by pretty much everyone, but only actually spoken by a small portion of the elite – and sometimes not even really then.
The last time I was in China I was at a slightly surreal dinner party in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, where I was sitting next to a lawyer (it was thought we’d have some interesting conversation about our respective legal systems, I think).
– and though I probably can’t do simultaneous translating, my Mandarin’s good enough to survive a couple of months in Shanghai, sharing a flat with a girl who spoke only standard Mandarin and a dialect from her home region in Jiangsu. I think that the other lawyer and I were probably the Chinese-language equivalents of seating a Yorkshirewoman and a Cornishwoman next to each other at a dinner party 
We got along fine, but sometimes we just had no idea of what the other had just said 
Between her Shanxi-accented Mandarin, and my Cantonese-accented Mandarin, I’m not entirely sure she recalls the conversation the same way I do
“Conrad, this is completely potty — it assumes that people, be they black, white or brindle, vote as an undifferentiated bloc based on race or ethnic identification, which we know not to be the case.”
.
Well, we can test the theory in France right now. At present, Sarkozy wants to ban the Burqa completely in France. I personally won’t shed any tears over that, but it’s a clear cut case of oppression of a minority group via mob (white French vs. Muslim French) rule.
I don’t think it’s just the government incidentally, it’s just an example where one group has all the power in some situations. At least in my books, there’s clearly a distinction between, say, a bunch of white supremacists hassling Indians in the UK versus a similar group demonstrating in South Africa (this second group still exists, really!). It’s the power relationship between the two groups that matters since in some cases the minority group is essentially defenceless, so the same action has different consequences depending on whether the minority or majority group does it.
Deport the Normans? Don’t tempt me. The BNP’s latest wheeze has been to reposition themselves as an organisation fighting for ‘indigenous rights’ and have now changed their membership policy so it is restricted to those of a native English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish ancestry (the fact that they’re white is entirely incidental).
The Equality and Human Rights commission is threatening a legal challenge unless the party complies with the Race Relations Act, but Griffin’s lot have been quite canny and I think have a fair point about the unfairness of law that supports groups designed for the benefit of a particular ethnic group, UNLESS it happens to be white. Suppose it depends on which legislation is held to apply. A Jewish school just gone caned in court for refusing admission to a boy because his mother was only a convert to Judaism.
I don’t buy their argument that white Britons are especially oppressed in this country, but I can understand that while a low-income asian family living in shoddy accommodation may well have suffered racial discrimination, their similarly low-income white neighbours next door probably don’t feel that their skin colour has provided them with much of an advantage.
It’s a shame the BNP are continuing with this race schtick. There’s a lot better argument to be made for giving working-class or lower-income people a political voice regardless of their ethnic identity. You virtually have to meet an old Roman-style property qualification in order to obtain political representation from a major party these days.
Uhh, hate to break it to you but local government in the UK is regularly decided by bloc voting along racial lines. There are several areas in the north of England which are solidly labour because the party puts up an Asian candidate and virtually all the Asian voters vote for him (even if they’re from a different religious or national group). It’s this practice most of the recent vote rigging scandals have sought to exploit for camouflage, which is why they’ve been mostly (but not exclusively) conducted by Asians with only the party affiliation having varied. The Birmingham Labour group was probably the most famous, having occurred on an almost industrial scale to exploit an experimental 100% postal election, but both the Tories and Lib Dems have been at it too.
Conrad says:
“At present, Sarkozy wants to ban the Burqa completely in France. I personally won’t shed any tears over that, but it’s a clear cut case of oppression of a minority group via mob (white French vs. Muslim French) rule.”
There is a case to be made for burqa clad women being *objectively* oppressed even if they aren’t *subjectively* oppressed, ie. don’t feel oppressed. As an example, there is plenty of empirical evidence that demonstrates burqa clad women suffer the adverse health outcomes associated with vitamin D deficiency, including osteoporosis.
Obviously objective oppression arguments are themselves natural allies of fundamentalists of all persuasions (eg Marxists and false consciousness), however I personally don’t automatically rule them out.
Oh yes and some good points there, DEM. Another example is Blacks and Jews in America block voting for the Democrats.
Theodora – We got along fine, but sometimes we just had no idea of what the other had just said
.
Wull tha’s e’ ruhdikulush lashie! ‘S ‘nay way ye cannae unnerstanz etsa same langwuj unnut? Ah’m fra Glasgee an’ a’ people fra’ Lundon ha’s nae trouble werkin’ my words ou’.
I can tell the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese. That’s as far as it goes. I like Cantonese the best, the music of it. Most of my Honky friends think Mandarin’s nicer.
Maybe ’cause they understand just what people say in Cantonese.
DEM: doesn’t stop it being a sign of political immaturity, which was my other point. That’s actually a pretty strong argument for breaking up the base culture of people on entry to the UK. You can’t have people running around pulling the kind of stunts characteristic of sub-saharan African dictatorships.
Crumbs British politics reeks at the moment, between rigged bloc votes and the expenses scandal…
OT Adrien: I take it you can speak Doric?
Adrien @48: Get tae f…
I take it you can speak Doric?
No. I speak Whiskey.
conrad
I am a white guy who does not – in any meaningful sense – know what it feels like to be racially harassed or discriminated against. This remains the case even though I have traveled to many non-white societies.
You say – quite justifiably – you are sick of being “discriminated against” and “harassed” by (not exclusively) white males. I hope you don’t think I am being insensitive in asking a few follow ups.
1. What form/s of “racial discrimination” have/do you personally encounter? Aren’t the laws working?
2. Ditto for “harassment”.
3. Interesting you note non-white males as well. Can you give us a break down by other ethnicities/races who harass you?
WOW! No moderation! Woo Hoo!
The closest I have experienced this stuff was when working and living in London, whenever the “colonial” or “convict” line was used. It’s not that I am ashamed of lower class or even criminal forebears, it’s just the unspoken whisper – even if allegedly i jest – “don’t get too uppity sonny”.
The other time was working in the US and being typecast as a knuckle-dragging sexist, foul-mouthed, Crocodile Dundee clone. All of these are true, but when they are pointed out in a professional context, it can be grating.
Talk to black Americans who have gone to find their roots in Africa. You’ll hear some really fascinating tales and insights. Same with Australian-born Greeks going to Greece for the first time.
Looks like someone had a comment party when he discovered that Akismet wasn’t on his tail for once!
Make hay while the sun shines, mah deah!
Hopefully, just hopefully, Akismet will start being more sensible.
MMm what does a gay Mick Dundee look like I wonder.
Adrien, now I’m thinking of really awful variations on “That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife”, but no, I shall restrain myself.
You mean Mick Dundee was STRAIGHT? In THAT jacket?
Here are the answers JG:
1. What form/s of “racial discrimination” have/do you personally encounter? Aren’t the laws working?.. Ditto for Harassment.
.
Verbal and the occasional physical abuse. Destruction of my property. Refusal of service (!). I’ve even been told to leave a pub for no reason other than ethnicity (that was a long time ago). Obviously these things are still illegal now and are also not nearly as bad as some of my heterosexually challenged friends, who people were far more hostile to, and they’re generally even more harmless than me! That’s one of the reasons I think they are one of the most harassed groups (of course, having the death penalty against them in some countries makes any other comparisons rather trivial in that respect).
.
It’s hard to quantify things like jobs and the like, since you might just being paranoid, or you really might being discriminated against. That’s why there are scientific papers looking at things like social in/out group membership.
.
I wouldn’t say the laws are or are not-working — it’s impossible exactly what effect they have in many circumstances. Alternatively, they do stop blatant vilification of some groups, so they might stop some things indirectly. They also stop government mandated discrimination.
.
3. Interesting you note non-white males as well. Can you give us a break down by other ethnicities/races who harass you?
.
Sure, being in part of the most disliked group of the 70s/80s (I’m mixed race), that includes most euro-groups, which are basically the only ones I bumped into then (although they’re all white). In France, I’ve had verbal/racial abuse from some the browner members of humanity (who I guess Asians consider white, so perhaps I have a very white world!), although they seem to harass whoever they feel like depending on the circumstance, and I doubt what they are saying is racially motivated — it’s just whatever nasty stuff comes out of their mouths at the time. I’ve had a similar experience in the UK from bored Pakistani males, despite having spent almost no time there (some friends of mine that studied in Leeds have suggested that they have a bad habit of harassing East Asians).
Conrad, being “mixed race” is sometimes hard, I think. As you can see from one of my comments above, my cousins are Eurasian, and I think the older one feels that he doesn’t entirely belong in either camp.
But then — I’m Caucasian, but have never had a feeling of “fitting in” with the majority culture. I suspect I just don’t really fit anywhere. Always been one to go my own sweet way.
I think the older one feels that he doesn’t entirely belong in either camp.
A Eurasian friend of mine lives in America where she became very racially conscious (for some strange reason).
One of her (Japanese-American) boyfriend’s friends referred to her as a half-breed! Asians can be terribly ethnocentric about that stuff. There’s more than one website published by a resentful Asian fella complaining about the white guys who steal ‘his’ women. Most of ‘em run up pictures of Eurasian models to ‘prove’ that such people are not attractive. And the Falun Gong mob actually state that Eurasian don’t get into heaven. Apparently inrer-racial bonking is a big no no.
(Methinks it’s a way to discourage dudes stealing ‘our’ women).
Mmmm. I can see what he means.
But then — I’m Caucasian, but have never had a feeling of “fitting in” with the majority culture.
Spend some time in Box Hill.
No really do. Oustanding eats.
My dear Adrien, I LOVE BOX HILL. I have a dumpling fetish. MMMMMMMM.
In fact, I was born in Box Hill. Seriously.
Yeah? Have you been to Indochine? Best rice paper rolls ever. I haven’t been to Box Hill in ages.
But of course I have. I reckon I’ve sampled most places in Box Hill at least once over the years.
A guy once took me on a date, and we decided to go to Box Hill. We got there, I asked if he had any preferences, and he said in a whiny tone, “I don’t really like much Asian food.” Well, quite apart from the whiny tone, that was an instant black mark from my point of view right then and there. The rest of the date…well…it JUST GOT WORSE AND WORSE from that moment, I should have turned around and gone home right then… At the end – he tried to kiss me, I drew back, and he ended up slobbering on my ear. Seriously. No good at all.
Living in the good-asian-food-free zone that is the UK, I hate you both.
conrad
Verbal and the occasional physical abuse.
Where are you when this takes place? Walking down the street in broad daylight? At suburban pubs? Nightclubs? Dark back-alleys? Who are they and what do say.
Despite what I said in an earlier post as a white male I have been racially harassed. Years ago, in Paris, I was walking through the Jardin du Luxembourg. A huge black guy – Algerian I presumed – said “give me everything you’ve got white cunt, and consider it a downpayment on what you really owe me.” I was scared, but I felt no racial slight.
I was scared because he was a huge black guy, and I bought into racial stereotype going: that’s what huge black guys do. They mug, and bash you up, and sneer at you using poor vocabulary and accents that indicate very low IQs. One thing I did feel a bit was emasculated, as I know you don’t need to spend too much time being taught to defend yourself.
I’ve been called “poofta”, “fag” in my life, but not enough that I spend my life cowering in corners. Nowadays, if somebody tried to “poofta-bash” me, I would just knee them in the nuts, punch them in the throat, throw a garbage bin at them, push them over, spit on them, pick them up and drag them personally to the cop-shop! Also, nowadays, I have such a superb verbal arsenal that no putative fag-vilifier would come out of the spat with their dignity intact, UNLESS they resorted to physical violence, which has only happened one time after the Paris incident.
A (straight) mate and I were riding his pushbike (he was doubling me) at about 10 o’clock at night thru Victoria Park next to Sydney Uni. This gang of about 10 young teenagers – mostly Aborigines, probably from the local Eveleigh/Caroline Street areas – surrounded us, pushed us about, spat at us, took a couple of girlie swings. They basically just wanted money.
But then something really weird and scary happened. One said, “you’re faggots, aren’t you”? My mate wasn’t. Anyway, my mate got away and bolted the 30 metres to Parramatta Road to wave down a car. The rest grabbed me, and screamed at my mate if he didn’t come back, they were going to drown me. They dragged me down to the duck pond there and threw me in. It was only about 18 inches deep. They then ran away, and I felt like such a dork, but a live dork!
One thing you should consider is that 95% of violence committed by men 16-24 years old is on OTHER young men. Maybe, there is a bit more of you just being male, rather than it all being “racist”.
Destruction of my property.
What sort of “property”? The Daily Telegraphy you were sooooo looking forward to reading on the train home!?
Refusal of service (!). I’ve even been told to leave a pub for no reason other than ethnicity (that was a long time ago).
What did they say to you?
I have to fly right now as it is cocktail hour, but I’ll respond to the rest of your post anon.
L’eagle – #67. I sometimes think it must be a real pain the arse being a woman. A straight one. 95% of the boys are just like gorillas in board shorts only without the finesse.
I only think that sometimes. Like when I sometimes find myself on the city street after 9pm on a Friday night. There’s something about it that makes me see the good side of mass conscription and World War I.
.
DEM – Oi! Whaddaboot a curry? ‘Eh? Ye scoff it doon after a night a shouting lage lager lager lager!
Ah Gret Britun. Wot koolcha!
Nice to hear your stories JG — look, I’m personally not that fussed, I just don’t think people deserve the type of bother and general lowish level nasty shit that I, and obviously you, have got across our lives.
The reason for this is that whilst it doesn’t get to me a whole lot, it does get to other people. It’s no doubt one of the reasons young gay males have really high suicide rates, which is sad, because, as far as I can tell, they’re a fairly harmless group in general — it would be good if heterosexual young males could take a lesson from them. Indeed, the only fight I’ve ever seen in a gay bar (not that I’m frequenting them often), was a bit of a laugh really. Two really camp guys wondering how to have a fight after yelling at each other (I think one tried slapping the other and then the other started crying after being hit……). More seriously, even the less stereotyped gay people seem more open-minded to me. I run with a gay (-friendly) group occasionally when I’m in France, and I think it must be one of the few groups where white French, Arabs and the occasional black African mix happily (no doubt very happily, although I’ll leave that to your imagination).
Incidentally, I think you’re reminding me of a gay version of Cartman — I think it’s “the knee them in the nuts comment”.
“Respect my authority!”
Considering the theme of my thesis, I’ve been tempted from time to time to put this classic Cartmanism on the cover.
Oh, something very important I should add about the two muggings/bashings by black guys I described above. In the cold light day, I looked at both incidents – and still do – TOTALLY in CLASS terms, not racial terms.
If that makes sense,
Re JG@ 73. Very. It’s very sad how often the class/race thing overlaps, though one odd thing that I have observed is that if there is a dramatic move upwards in socio-economic class in a particular immigrant family, relative to their social position in the old country, it almost always happens in the first or early second generation (ie where the parents immigrate as young adults and haven’t settled in for very long before the kids arrive) – if that makes any sense at all to anyone.
I wonder if that’s just who I manage to hang out with or whether there’s an ARC Grant and a PhD in it for someone ….
JG,
working in France now and then, I’m not surprised that you think it’s class thing (I would too). I think that class is at the root of most the problems there, which is quite unlike how the English speaking media portrays it. In my books, at least in France, it’s class, race, religion (but it’s class that kicks it all off), with the English media blaming it on religion, and the French media blaming it on race. Obviously they haven’t noticed they never get bothered by middle-class north Africans, and that most of the members of the street gangs probably haven’t ever read any religious books at all.
It’s very sad how often the class/race thing overlaps
It’s often exactly the same thing. For example: 19th century Ireland – Anglican = Gentry, Presb = Industrial Bourgeoisie and Catholic = Bog Irish illiterate peasants.
.
Or the Jews. Hi guys you can be the bankers and the lawyers. That’ll make you real popular.
Actually I reckon part of the indigenous problems are as much a class thing as a race thing.
Adrien, c’mon, everyone loves a lawyer. Well, they do once they’re in trouble…until they get the bill…
My first tute at law school, first thing the guy says: don’t tell lawyer jokes. Then he tells one (what’s the difference between a sperm and a human?)
.
They should pass the mockery around of course. Real estate agents, PE teachers, bankers -Oh my God yes bankers – security guards and of course copywriters.
Ah, we well and truly deserve it. Seriously, many of us do. (Present company excepted, of course).
On lawyer jokes…. the idea just popped into my head (multitasking feedreading and spam email deletion) that there HAS to be a joke aimed at male lawyers, “longer lasting performance”, and the magic 6-minute interval, where 6 minutes 1 second is classified as 12 minutes.
As a Christian of white skin colour I am sick of being the target of other peoples racist veiws. I live down the street from a Synagogue and my family and myself have been the target of anti – christian racism for most of my life. I was not born in Australia myself, but because of my skin colour am consistently targeted by those who have a separtist agenda and who are themselves racist.