Open thread

9 Responses to Open thread

1. Melanie says:

   May 21, 2009 at 11:58 am

   I corrected one of my white co-workers who said, “He sounded Oriental.”

   I said, “You mean Asian. Oriental is what you call a rug.”

   I’m not sure if she appreciated it because she acted a little weird to me after that. It might have been my own perception though but I was still proud of myself for speaking up.

   (I didn’t even touch the fact that she thought someone could “sound” a certain ethnicity.)
2. sallyjrw says:

   May 21, 2009 at 6:34 pm

   That sounds a little confrontational. I’ve corrected co-workers on that same issue, but I say, “The P.C. term is now Asian.” more as like a statement.

   One thing I’ve learned is to try and avoid “you” statements.
3. irshlas says:

   May 21, 2009 at 10:18 pm

   I am currently attending a conference on intellectual and developmental disabilities. One of the breakout sessions was on customer service. (The focus was on how the individuals we serve are ‘customers’ of the service we assist them to obtain.) During the corresponding slide presentation was a slide on which the following phrase was listed: “Out Japanese Them.” I was dumbfounded. When I asked the presenter to explain what that meant, she explained it meant providers needed to have a good work ethic, like the Japanese carmakers have. The Japanese have a “very strong customer-focused work ethic” that we should “emulate in our offices.” When I tried to explain how, regardless of the intent, such a phrase / statement was racist and inappropriate, no one in attendance could understand my being offended. I was told I was missing the “bigger picture.” I remain astounded and cannot find the words to complain to the conference organizers.
4. Andrea says:

   May 22, 2009 at 9:56 am

   I’d have found that comment a little rude, actually. You had a co-worker who used an outdated term, apparently without any maliciousness, to describe a distinctive accent he associates with somewhere in Asia. You knew exactly what he meant. The Orient is still a term in use to describe couuntries in the Far East and Oriental is not an outrageous term to use for a person from that region if your co-worker didn’t know what country he was actually from. If the tone was derogatory, I might have reacted more strongly. As described, the most I might have said was “I’d probably call it Asian, but what country do you think he was from?” I might also have asked the person’s name because I find the differences in names from different countries interesting and I might be able to guess whether the person was Thai or Korean or Vietnamese or Chinese from the first name or the surname. All you did here was make your c0-worker uncomfortable and may have made him dislike you. I doubt you changed the way he refers to other groups.
5. Andrea says:

   May 22, 2009 at 10:05 am

   Oops. I see that this person was a woman. Aside from that, of course you can “sound” a certain ethnicity, particularly if you’re directly from a foreign country or a first or second generation member of a family from that country. There are indeed accents that sound Asian. If you’re around a fair number of people from those groups you can probably distinguish between Vietnamese and Chinese and Korean and Hmong accents the way that I can usually tell the difference between someone whose first language is Russian or who grew up in Ireland or can tell within 10 seconds if someone sounds typically black or grew up on one of the area Indian reservations. Something in the voice pattern, intonation is distinctive. They’ve even done studies that prove people can identify ethnicity based on accent on the phone and labeled racism based on it as “talking while black.” You might not be black or Asian or American Indian or white if you talk in a certain way, but odds are that you are a member of a particular group if most of the rest of the people who talk that way are. If you aren’t around a lot of Asians, your co-worker probably still can tell that it’s an accent from somewhere that’s a country in Asia.
6. deesha says:

   May 22, 2009 at 10:34 am

   Sally, I unerstand your point, however, “P.C.” is such an unwelcomed phrase in some quarters, that I don’t know if using it would be effective in achieving the understanding that Melanie was aiming for. Nowadays, when I read/hear someone mentioning “P.C.” terminology, it is a derisive and/or dismissive fashion. I think we are living in the post-P.C. era, for better or for worse. I say “for better” because I believe that one accurate criticism of political correctness was the potential for shallowness and surfacey-playing nice without real depth of understanding or real commitment to, say, anti-racism.

   In Melanie’s scenario, I might have said, “‘Oriental’ is actually a term applied to objects/geography, while ‘Asian’ is the accurate way to describe people groups.”

   But even this is considered problematic on some levels: http://www.hodder.org/occident.pdf
7. shirky says:

   May 22, 2009 at 2:18 pm

   I have been watching many neighbors, as spring turns to summer, putting their condos up for sale and moving to outer towns as their children turn 5, in anticipation of starting school. My city’s school district demographics are about 35%black, 35% white, 15%Asian, and smaller percentages of other groups. Towns outside the city–the ones with these supposedly great schools–are more like 4% black, 90% white. At first I dismissed the pre-kindergarten exodus as just snobbery or yearning for backyards and basements and second bathrooms (my city is very dense and urban, housing units are small) but I do have to admit that the schools in my city are….iffy. There are some K-8 schools here where 0% of students meet the state’s standards in grade 3 for math or reading. Even if I don’t put all my stock in testing, that’s a lousy stat. So I’m forced to confront the fact that at some point I may have to choose between mediocre academics or zero diversity in my kid’s school. It’s bumming me out on many levels. I don’t think we can afford the tony private schools around here at 25K per year, ha ha.
8. Montclair Mommy says:

   May 22, 2009 at 8:52 pm

   Right on, Melanie. I’m glad you said that, even if it is “confrontational.” Not that its your responsibility to be educating the public, BUT if someone is ignorant about the offensive use of the word “Oriental” in reference to people, they should appreciate being told the correct word to use. My mother actually was on the receiving end of this criticism (she is white) and it DID impact her (enough to tell me about it). She lives in Hawai’i and the first year she lived there she said, “Oh, Sarah! She is the tall Oriental woman, right?” And her friend corrected her with pretty much the exact same words you used. Although she was embarrassed, she told me she was so glad that someone told her. She hasn’t it said it since then, so it made a difference. Good for you!
9. karen says:

   May 22, 2009 at 8:54 pm

   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/work/right-rsum-wrong-name/article1145212/

   “Right résumé, wrong name. Those with English names are 40 per cent more likely to land a job interview than people with the same education and job experience with Indian, Chinese or Pakistani names.” – based on a Canadian study. The numbers for a similar US study for African-American versus white names are just barely worse.