| White = English? | |||||||||||||||||
| by Jared Madsen | |||||||||||||||||
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A Russian classmate and I were walking to the cafeteria here on campus when we were stopped by a Korean student of a different year. She said to us in Chinese, "Oh, you two speak Chinese together, well, why don�t you speak English." Right as that excessively ignorant phrase flew from her lips and landed in my ear, my bright sunshiny day all of a sudden had a dark cloud. I attend a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) college in Beijing. There are many foreign students here, with Koreans occupying over ninety percent, while non-Asians combined do not surpass four. Adding in the Chinese students, whole are obviously the majority of the whole student body population, this school is predominantly Asian. Obviously not a surprise in China. I am the only American, north or south, and my classmate is the only Russian. Aside from a one month after school course I took in fifth grade, I have no other Russian language experience. My Russia classmate only has the few mandatory years of English taken in Russian high school. We both are well versed in Chinese though, spending several years in China each, and we attend courses in Chinese at a Chinese college. Except for my pathetic "da" and "niet," and his extremely limited English vocabulary, the only common language between the two of us is Chinese. Why am I surprised and a little insulted at the statement made by the Korean girl? Well, if you have not figured it out already, it is because she is under the impression that just because someone is white, they have the intrinsic ability to speak the English language. I do not want to go into excess on how ignorant this is. What I do want to say is, though I realize there are many ignorant, and I go so far as to use the word "racist," people in this world, students that study abroad are supposedly more open minded, especially about cultural differences. Hearing a statement like that is like a smack in the face, especially in a group that is considered to be more worldly. I wonder what other thoughts she has floating around in that narrow mind of hers that she does not even dare to say. What troubles me more, is that this is not a one time occurrence. In fact, with that same Russian classmate, we have heard the same, or similar, comments on several occasions. All the way from teachers and people in the foreign students office, to other students and classmates. Each one carrying the tone, if not coming right out and saying, "you two are white, why don�t you speak in English?" I am not saying that I think Asians are ignorant, that is equally stupid and racist. The point of this article is to bring into light the fact that just because people may have a similar physical feature, does not mean they share a common culture or language. As ridiculously elementary as that statement may seem, according to my experiences there are still people out there that do not realize this. | |||||||||||||||||
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