Monday, April 21, 2008
Is it Racism?
I had the pleasure of attending a meeting this morning that decides on the applications of international students. One of our Chinese faculty in the meeting made the statement, "No offense to you (pointing to the Indian faculty member) but I don't ever want to hire an Indian student. It's been my experience that they are not hard working." This statement was accepted as no big deal, whereas; I was appalled. How dare he make a blanket judgement statement against an entire culture of students based on an experience he had with two, many years ago. Racism is not defined as a single duragatory remark against one individual, but rather reducing an entire culture or people group to its lowest common denominator. For him to judge an entire culture on the work ethic of two students he had a long time ago really rubbed me the wrong way. It would be, hands down, accepted as racist if said by the white, American faculty member who was also present. Can racism really be defined differently depending on who is making the comments?
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3 comments:
Are you sure the man who stated this was actually Chinese - or was he Asian ;)
I completely agree with your assessment of this situation. Racism comes in many forms, and to begin a statement with "no offense to you" while pointing out someone of a different nationality just smacks of prejudice and racism.
Doesn't matter what nationality the person making the comment was, it was inappropriate. And yes, there is a double standard when it comes to minorities making comments like this. If a white (or Caucasian) person were to make a comment like this it would be immediately labeled racist. To accept it from anyone else is simply wrong. Racism is racism, no mater who is doing the stereotyping and being prejudiced.
You should have called them out on it.
Yeah.. not exactly sure how in our pc world that is even accepted. Even in a non-pc world (which I would much prefer), such a thing should not be. I'm really shocked that there weren't at least raised eyebrows, or disapproving looks or something. You don't necessarily yell and scream every time someone does something wrong, or we'd all be hoarse, but it should not have passed unnoticed.
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