Your views on Racism in Taiwan

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
21
quote:
Originally posted by Mucha Man:

Also, “turned down from” is also common enough to hear (and read) from native speakers. I assume you prefer it to be “turned down by Hess” and I do to…

BTW, If you want to check on word collocations, such as ‘turned down from’, you can do a query on
Collins Cobuild Corpus Concordance Sampler
Concordances taken from a corpora of:
British books, ephemera, radio, newspapers, magazines (26m words)
American books, ephemera and radio (9m words)
British transcribed speech (10m words)

I found only two examples of “turn down from”:

Everyone is turning down from the Place de l’Opera to
a fraction of the

22

LOL, thanks Alien, but maybe if I had said, “I still got turned down BY Hess,” that might have been more appropriate, and wouldn’t have triggered this huge debate (in semantics? please advise Ironlady ).

23

My girlfriend has a bit of trouble accepting black skin as well. She has no problem seeing darker folks as people, she just thinks black skin is ugly. This is in some ways probably internalized racism for her, since she is an unusually dark Atayal and always says that her own skin is not pretty because it’s too dark. Anyway, I’m working on “black is beautiful” now. It translates nicely “hei1 ji3shi4 mei3.”

24

How many times have you heard that racism only comes from the older folks? Well, it’s just not true.

I was on the MRT after work the other day and two older high school students got on in front of me. And one of them said right in front of me “waiguoren hen chou a” and even waved his hand under his nose. So I tapped him on his shoulder and asked him to say that again. He wisely held his tongue.

When the kids are racist doesn’t that show that they’re getting it from adults? And if this stupid kid would say that standing in front of me how bad could it be for mixed children?

25

hmm…well, did you have BO? It is really hot in Taiwan…but I think that a lot of the Taiwanese people stink pretty bad too. And HOW ABOUT THOSE NIGHT MARKETS!!! YEEEECH! Its like when sewage attacks or something…

26

My old roomate was ABC born and bred in the states. Probably also the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. Anyways, he was a graduate from Duke University and has a Master’s from Harvard University (which is like University of the Gods to people in Taiwan); he still got turned down from jobs. Then again, other places would have been ecstatic to get him; just depends on the school.

27

Grizzly, tell her you like chocolate - that’s what I do…:wink:

28

Thanks for the link Alien. I can use that at work. As for using Goggle, Ironlady I am quite aware of it’s limitations. However, in the above posting we were trying to see if a native speaker would use the term “turned down from” and not whether it is considered proper English. My Google searches showed that indeed many native speakers (as determined by article source) do use the term. You may not think they are correct to do so, but they do so none the less. Ergo, we could not and should not conclude that Emua is not a native speaker because he uses less than standard English idioms.

As for his faulty parallelism, your comments are really over the top. Every college style book in the west warns against this. It is a sign of poor rhetorical skills in writing not lack of fluency in English. Come on Terry, either you live in the most over-priviledged and over-educated enclave on the eastern seaboard, or you’re just pulling our legs.

To the rest of the group, I don’t mean to hijack this forum, but I just couldn’t let Terry’s comments go unchallenged.

29

Oh, Terry, again, the above is not meant to be personal. But I do like a good fight about language usage.

30

With my amazing dialectic skills I feel I am able to discern from your language and writing style that you, Little Iron, are a Virgo Rising. You were born in Middlegrove Pennsylvania and moved to Mujha after completing a Masters in Electropetrochemical Engineering. You enjoy windsurfing, heavy metal and competitive horse dancing. You like your eggs over-medium and earn $74,000 after taxes, which isn’t bad considering you can sit at desk all day outing non-native speakers on oriented. Sorry I’m just being a jerk. No offense.

31
quote:
Originally posted by Grizzly: My girlfriend has a bit of trouble accepting black skin as well. She has no problem seeing darker folks as people, she just thinks black skin is ugly. This is in some ways probably internalized racism for her, since she is an unusually dark Atayal and always says that her own skin is not pretty because it's too dark. Anyway, I'm working on "black is beautiful" now. It translates nicely "hei1 ji3shi4 mei3."

My husband says he likes ‘dark meat’. Before I came here, I never thought about the color of my skin, but I have to admit I have thought about how my life might be easier if I was white.

Jennifer

32

OK, wtf is parallelism?! I have no idea what you guys are talking about. They NEVER taught me this in grade-high school, and certainly not at UCLA.

My apologies really. Like I stated before, my English skills are not up to par. I, like my other American peers, have been much to busy being “well-rounded.”

Blame this on a liberal education system, and I am a product of my environment…yo.

33

Emua, the following is an example of faulty parallelism:

Should the rain stop and if the roads are good enough, the hunters will drive on to Stockton in the morning.

“Should” is a verb; “if” is a conjunction. The use of the two different parts of speech falsely implies to the reader that different kinds of statements are being made.

In essence, if you wish to compose a sentence with two or more parallel thoughts, the thoughts should all use a similar grammatical structure.

This is your example above:

Having graduated from UCLA, with prior experience with children, with great references (US government, TECRO refs.), and can speak Mandarin, I still got turned down from Hess!

It should have read:

Having graduated from UCLA, with prior experience with children, with great references (US government, TECRO refs.), and the ability to speak Mandarin, I still got turned down from Hess!

Or:

Despite the fact that I graduated from UCLA, have experience with children, and can speak Mandarin, I was still turned down by Hess.

Or:

Though I am a graduate of UCLA, an experienced tutor, and a fluent mandarin speaker, I was still turned down by HESS.

Do you see what I am doing?

34

That’s a matter of style, and would jump out at you in certain contexts. In informal writing, especially the sort of off-the-cuff postings that are made here, even a fantastically well ejookated fellowe like myself cood conseevably make such a giraffe

35

While I respect Mucha Man’s grammatical analysis, I hardly find it suitable for inclusion in teaching introductory English classes at Hess.

36

Wow, thanks Mucha Man. I’ll give your post some thought. Well, we learn something new everyday right?

37

Hartzell is right. I am not even sure your “parallelism” argument holds water in the context of being a grammatical error. “Should” is a verb? Really? How do you conjugate it?
The point is that Hess, and all the other schools, would never have students that dealt with English on the level of nuance that you are suggesting.

You shoulded have knowed that…

And what does this have to do with racism?

38

By Wolfman

quote[quote]And what does this have to do with racism?[/quote]
There seems to be some cofusion between racism and descrimination in this thread. I believe descrimination is rife in Taiwan, but racism, dunno, probably, and this is opinion only, there’s not enough ethnic varieties for it to begin.

39

To respond to the Racism issue. I think that it is logical that Taiwanese/Asian people are racist. I think that those who are surprised have grown up or have lived in a multi-cultural country.

I’m sure even in North America, one has noticed that Asian “fobs” tend to stick together and Asian pride is quickly becoming more evident.

In a general sense, many of you are English teachers filling a demand for people who feel that true success can only be reached in the west. Thus, giving Asian people a sense of being second best.

A common feeling among asians is that throughout history, asian people have been seen a lower race and that the “white man” tends to push asians around. This has created bitterness towards those who are white and asians really do take this to heart.

Subway52
I think that your children will experince some hard times growing up in Taiwan being mixed. Mono-cultural soceities are extra hard and reactions to the different can be harsh. Just make sure that you pay really close attention to your children. Hope all goes well.

40

Agreed.
I was only copying what the name of this thread is.
Racism is too extreme for what goes on in Taiwan. Bald-faced bigotry and shameless discrimination and marginalization, absolutely.