Could people imagine the outcry if this was done to African Americans?

LOL, yeah.

 

I totally agree. According to Daoisism (sp?), "small countries, isolated people, no interactions to each other till death". Lots of Chinese tend to care about snow in front of own doors only, never want any trouble, and never want to interven anything around, and never want to care anyone else's business. The problem is, they think they can avoid trouble that way, but they are wrong. The treatment Chinese got in Indonesia is the best example. There are both sides in our culture, which are quite conflicting. One theory is to be involved in the society and care about everythign happening around, and take that as own duty; but another theory is just to close to oneself, and take care of own business. But nowadays, with people more and more as an element in the society, if we don't want to help others, no one will help us in need either.

When I was in Europe, I had some friends from Africa. One day, one of them told me that they liked me, but they did feel that some Chinese are just racists as some white people, if not even worse. I was shocked and felt very harsh, before I got defensive, I thought of that for a while, thinking about conversations among Chinese, in media etc etc. I could only say, that people are different.

It's a shame that as a minority group, if we take any discrimination towards other minority groups easy. Because if we do that, we have nothing to complain when it's our "turn" to receive such treatment.

 

I guess the thing that bothers me the most is that some of you guys really have this idea that black people go around complaining to their employers, teachers, or whomever about racism all the time. I have never complained to anyone at a job or at school about what I perceived was racism, and believe me I think I have been discriminated because of my race before.

None of my friends have, none of my family memembers have, but because some cases get national attention, you guys have stereotyped all blacks. Discrimination against blacks will always be a hot button topic for the media because of the history of this country. do some incidents get blown out of proportion, sure. but believe me, the stereotype a lot of you guys have is so far off base it isn't even funny.

me talking about issues on this site, and what I do in my real life are two totally separate issues.

 

I don't know if I am one of those you are referring to, but I don't think black people are always playing the victim card. I think there are certain people of all races who do, including the white males who cry "reverse racism" or Republicans who whine about the media bias (even these days with Fox News). I think blacks get blamed for "playing the race card" a lot but they certainly don't have a monopoly on it. Sadly it's a big part of our society now.

 

That was not the point of my post.

 

On a complete side note.. I just want to say that its great that there can be a somewhat substantive discussion of race because it has become an issue that no one wants to talk about or even acknowledge so its great that everyone here is having a fairly civil discussion.

 

Okay, I'll edit that part of my post then.

 

Not necessary. I have no problem with misunderstandings in civil discussions.

 

That the label is coming from other Blacks, not whites. Blacks divide themselves.

I really think Black culture holds them back more then their race. It's a difficult problem, because a black person who tries to break free from that is "selling out" but assimilation is the key to success when you're entering a white-dominated world.

 

Look pgabriel I"m not here jumping on ALL African-Americans alot of my friends growing up in ALLEN PARKWAY back in the 80's were blacks and on my jr high basketball team in Aldine also. I'm just being honestly from what I see growing up and alot of my customers/employees react at my restaurants even today. Mexicans comes here everydays thru anything just to find a job that pays them $120 a week (working at restaurants, mowing lawns, building houses anything for CHEAP) Asians came here with nothing in the late 70's and look at today in Bellaire/Sugarland. I know African-Americans has it hard growing up also but ALOT not all of them choose to do NUTHING, that's y majority of them will never get out and improve.

 

I know, hence I said "turn them against each other."

The answer is in your own post. Mexicans came to this country with the purpose of working no matter how demeaning the job may be. Asians came earlier and worked on the railroad and other jobs for the purpose of bettering their lives. The black experience in America is one which includes 400 years of conditioning. Poverty is a vicious cycle which is almost impossible to break, especially with this said conditioning and other societal factors. To generalize, sufficient value on education is lacking and is necessary to break the mold.

 

Re: affirmative action, I don't think Asians have any room for complaint. I don't support slavery reparations, but I think there is something to be said that something must be done when a nation has systematically destroyed an entire racial group for over 250 years. It's not as simple as "slavery is now over, so we're all equal." Long term effects on said racial group remain when something like language is destroyed or education is denied and those effects linger on the state of the racial group in the future. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Poverty, lack of education, destruction of values are all part of vicious, never ending cycle and almost impossible to break free of.

 

Just to follow up on ThaCabbages' point I think that African-American Culture has been warbed to a certain extent by the experience of slavery and institutionalized oppression. As Asians, Latinos or other ethnic minority groups we can fall back on traditional cultures in our home countries but African-Americans have had to create their own culture. I think the anger engendered by slavery has left many Arican-Americans bitter and distrustful of things represents the value system of the White majority since in the past those values were used to wipe out any culture or values that they at one time had. THe same thing is going on with Native Americans and is why many of them don't value education since it wasn't that long ago that institutional education was used to wipe out there culture.

This is a hard thing for me as a non African-American to address but I don't think its a bad idea that we've tried to address historical racism through things like Affirmative Action. Of course there can be all sorts of opportunities but those are meaningless unless people take them and changing the culture is a whole other thing that I think its up to African Americans to address themselves.

 

So much of American Culture IS African American culture. But what I'm talking about is a bit different. It's the dressing up in a suit, the speech, ...business culture really. That's what's the issue really.

I mean if you think about it, it's a barriar for any group. Assimilating enough to be comfortable around a mainly white dominated professional workforce. Black Americans are making inroads, but at a painfully slow rate.

 

I remember at Texas A&M
black folx at at one table. . and all the other tables were pretty much all white
yet
Folx say Black SEGREGATED themselves. . . .

Why is it that Black folx have to GOTO white and not the Reverse
Why is 40K white folx sitting with only White folx NOT SEGREGATING THEMSELVES
but
less than 2K of black folx sitting together is?

as for you ASSIMILATION ARGUMENT
you are basically saying white people are incapable of accepting anything different from them . .the only way they would accept someone is if they act like them?


Rocket River

 

Look, business culture isn't white culture. It's just business culture. It's not speaking like white people. It's speaking like a business person. It's not about race, but it's perceived to be that. If you talk like a hick, you are going to have trouble advancing as much as you talk like you're from the ghetto.

Point is that a black person who adopts business culture is seen as "selling out" by other blacks. In fact, this is true of all people who become successful and assimilate. They are "sell-outs" of their original culture according to the group they originated from.

It's not about adopting to white culture. Think about how ridiculous that is. How many business people listen to country music? For god's sake man - what is white culture? Does it even exist in a country who's culture is actually mostly taken from Blacks?

 

Yes you're right and that's an important distinction.