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Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

nytimes.com

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Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#71

Post by tlarkworthy »

fastball wrote: post #64
jxramos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you were possibly exaggerating. There really is such an ad. Pretty horrible. I never heard of this news almost 3 years after the fact. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-racist-d...

You didn't hear about it because the majority of the West is too busy directing their moral outrage at the most ethnically diverse country on Earth, which, surprisingly, has problems with racism. My pet theory is that this is because Americans are one of the few groups of people who are willing to accept the fact that they have problems with racism. Every other country mostly just denies the existence of any racism t…

If you think that country is US you are hilariously mistaken https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-ethnically-diverse-...

Africa and India are more diverse than US

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#72

Post by veddox »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #10

I think I posted this before but my old university buddy who's from Zambia, jokes with me that the Chinese are colonization 2.0 The Chinese government have no scruples which is why they are out-competing Western companies and governments in Africa, who are tied behind political and moral restrictions. Also the Chinese have a major resource in man power which they can deploy anywhere for cheap.

> my old university buddy who's from Zambia, jokes with me that the Chinese are colonization 2.0

Lived there myself, can confirm.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#73

Post by iguy »

gpm wrote: post #45
Kliment wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About "French book" etc, I don't think this is particularly different in other languages - we have phrases like "french kiss" or "dutch oven" or "it's all greek to me" in English that have nothing to do with the country involved and everything to do with some historical stereotype or linguistic accident.

There is a vast difference between randomly labeling some things with a nationality, and labeling everything about a nationality the same way. If I say 'French car' I don't mean 'sexy car', if I say 'that French dude with brown hair' it doesn't have any connotations about sex or something.

True. But I think "French" in particular was used this way for lots of things in English, maybe 100 years ago. "French letter", advertising "French lessons", etc. I guess it faded as the place became less exotic.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#74

Post by denzil_correa »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #71
fastball wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't hear about it because the majority of the West is too busy directing their moral outrage at the most ethnically diverse country on Earth, which, surprisingly, has problems with racism. My pet theory is that this is because Americans are one of the few groups of people who are willing to accept the fact that they have problems with racism. Every other country mostly just denies the existence of any racism t…

If you think that country is US you are hilariously mistaken https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-ethnically-diverse-... Africa and India are more diverse than US

Africa is a continent while India is a country. India is indeed much diverse than almost other countries.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#75

Post by iguy »

Can anyone knowledgeable comment on the depth of Kenya's internal divisions?

From the NYT's perspective clearly Kenya is racially uniform, but I know that there was significant political violence at recent elections, to do with which tribe or language group candidates or parties represented. Do such distinctions matter only at voting time, or do they matter in everyday life too... like whether X landlords will be happy to rent to Y people, or employ Z? Can such distinctions be perceived immediately on the street (e.g. from accent) or only once you know someone's surname, or something?

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#76

Post by mrighele »

jxramos wrote: post #6
m3nu wrote: post #3

With China being very homogeneous in terms of race, they never worked through those issues. I don't blame them. My grand parents, who lived in the countryside all their life would react in a similar way. Small anecdote: I attended an English class at a Chinese business university. The teacher (young girl, never left China in her life) told us that everything "French" means "sex/porn/etc", i.e. "french book", "french…

I thought you were possibly exaggerating. There really is such an ad. Pretty horrible. I never heard of this news almost 3 years after the fact. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/28/china-racist-d...

This advertisement "takes inspiration" from an advertisement aired in Italy a few years before [1]. Even the music is the same. In that case though nobody complained since the person changes from white to black so it was more self-irony than racism.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-TsQIpK1Zk

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#77

Post by iguy »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #71
fastball wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't hear about it because the majority of the West is too busy directing their moral outrage at the most ethnically diverse country on Earth, which, surprisingly, has problems with racism. My pet theory is that this is because Americans are one of the few groups of people who are willing to accept the fact that they have problems with racism. Every other country mostly just denies the existence of any racism t…

If you think that country is US you are hilariously mistaken https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-ethnically-diverse-... Africa and India are more diverse than US

Well it's going to depend on your definitions. By American categories, India is 100% asian, and almost every sub-saharan country is 100% black. Of course local definitions vary.

But that aside, GP has a point that contemporary American culture spends a lot of energy worrying about this. The energy expended is a poor measure of the size of the problem.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#78

Post by moorhosj »

denzil_correa wrote: post #74
tlarkworthy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that country is US you are hilariously mistaken https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-ethnically-diverse-... Africa and India are more diverse than US

Africa is a continent while India is a country. India is indeed much diverse than almost other countries.

The World Atlas link shows 16 African countries more ethnically diverse than India.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#79

Post by PakG1 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #51
reversengineer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With the exception of Guangdong and Hong Kong, you aren’t going to find many TV stations or newspapers that are carrying content in non-Mandarin Chinese. Just a quick clarification: Mandarin is a spoken form of Chinese, and therefore cannot be "printed" in a newspaper. In Guangdong, the newspapers are printed in simplified Chinese characters. In Hong Kong, the newspapers are printed in traditional Chinese characters…

Mandarin is 普通话, the common speech, standard Chinese. It is based to a very large extent on what the people of the Northern Plain speak, more specifically those of Beijing. The written form of it, which absolutely is also Mandarin is the form of Chinese which took over from Classical Chinese during the Republic of China. Traditional and Simplified Charcters are only barely relevant to this. The only spoken varieties…

It may be true that Mandarin is based to a very large extent on what the people of the Northern Plain speak, more specifically those of Beijing. I have no idea, but I've heard it said so many times that I'm willing to consider the possibility while waiting for an explanation to my question.

My question is: if this is true, why the heck is the pronunciation for standard Mandarin so different from the standard Beijing and northern accents? Seriously, especially with all the "er"s at the end of various characters. It does not sound similar to what is taught in standard Mandarin classes, and I speak as one who learned standard Mandarin for a number of years (in Canada and in China) and also lived in Beijing for a bit. I'd really like this explained to me, because the ear test tells me this is not true. But again, I've heard it said so many times that I am willing to consider it's possible.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#80

Post by moorhosj »

iguy wrote: post #77
tlarkworthy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that country is US you are hilariously mistaken https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-ethnically-diverse-... Africa and India are more diverse than US

Well it's going to depend on your definitions. By American categories, India is 100% asian, and almost every sub-saharan country is 100% black. Of course local definitions vary. But that aside, GP has a point that contemporary American culture spends a lot of energy worrying about this. The energy expended is a poor measure of the size of the problem.

==By American categories, India is 100% asian, and almost every sub-saharan country is 100% black. Of course local definitions vary.==

But the claim was about "ethnicities", not races. People frequently refer to their ethnicity as Irish, Sicilian, Catalan, etc. Rarely have I heard someone say their ethnicity is white.

==The energy expended is a poor measure of the size of the problem.==

Who gets to be the judge of the size of the problem? If a certain race or ethnicity is spending a lot of energy on this, maybe it is incumbent on everyone else to re-assess the true size of the problem.

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