May 2011
46 posts
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We've come a long way? →
At 21, Lilliane Namukasa left Uganda to make a new life in Canada as a live-in caregiver for two small children.
But after working full-time for two years, she was paid just $2,100 by her Brampton employer and then fired without cause, forcing her into a homeless shelter, Namukasa says in a claim filed in Ontario Superior Court.
This is despite an employment contract that entitled Namukasa...
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How do White People Perceive Racism in 2011?
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Children of immigrants couldn't define Canadian... →
Second-generation Canadians are both optimistic and critical of the entire concept of multiculturalism in Canada, he said. They believe integrating and learning from each other could be a hugely positive experience that too often turns into immigrant communities living in “silos” side by side -and they blame their immigrant parents, not the rest of society, for that.
“One of...
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What the Hello Kitty: Would you say this is shadism at play? I admit that until recently I was trained (propagandized) to think look at skin tone too, (no) thanks to my female relatives on my Chinese side.
I love your term, shadism. It’s the Asian form of claiming one’s place in socio-economic hierarchies - the more fair you are, the more desirable because you are likely not slogging...
Pardon the translation goof-up in my previous post. Here’s clarification from Tricia Wang, author of the referenced blog:
阳光 means bright personality, not light skin color though most people prefers “light”
Okay, so “light” is the preferred shade.
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Learning to be marginal →
You are probably surprised to read that learning could close doors because the fact that education and learning are always good is such a basic article of our modern faith. However, as Morarji demonstrates with references to primary and secondary education in villages in the Aglar River Valley in Uttarakhand in northern India, where mass formal education only dates from the 1990s, education is a...
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Alas 武 military remains the same, through the ages
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China and Taiwan language gap →
A Taiwanese professor ordering coffee at a Beijing cafe was asked if he wanted a “coffee companion” - China’s way of saying cream.
The stunned academic thought they wanted him to hire a hostess to keep him company. He told the waitress: “I didn’t bring enough money.”
Taiwan and China may share the same linguistic heritage - like Britain and the United...
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How Inclusivity Can Save the American Economy →
This phenomenon does not occur because women are better managers. Improved corporate performance occurs as a result of diversity alone. As Harvard Business School professors Lakshmi Ramarajan and David Thomas explained in their 2010 working paper A Positive Approach to Studying Diversity in Organizations, the notion that minority board members bring unique information to the table that leads...
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Real Inclusion, please and thank you →
Inclusion means more than pandering for votes. It means more than treating voters and entire communities as single units lacking free will and independent thought. Inclusion means recognizing that diversity is a strength in this country.
It means doing the hard work of ensuring, over the long term, that all communities are included, so that they interact with and influence processes and...
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Language issue hobbles Habs →
Pressure to hire francophone talent leaves team ‘severely and competitively disadvantaged,’ Boivin says.
“I’m going to apologize because I’m bilingual and have as many English friends as I do French? No, goddammit. Am I going to apologize that I’m going to work for an anglophone company? No. What the hell. We live in the world here, not a ghetto.”
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dustoffvarnya asked: Thanks! I like the premise of your tumblr. And Beau Sia is always makes for a good post.
jaye-beni-motorcity asked: Your welcome and I was really moved on hearing another's input on the bamboo/glass ceiling and also the "sticky floor" which is a new term to me.
Also, have we met before?
I met Grace Lee Boggs at the 'Out of the Margins: Asian Movement Building Conference', which was located at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. She touches so many people with...
Also, have we met before?
I met Grace Lee Boggs at the 'Out of the Margins: Asian Movement Building Conference', which was located at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. She touches so many people with...
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Model Minority Myth: Sticky Floor and Bamboo...
Over the past week, there’s been so much chatter about the Model Minority Myth and the Bamboo Ceiling.
The ‘model minority’ myth owes its inception in no small part to the gaming of the University of Chicago’s 1924 Survey of Race Relations, engineered by influential members of the Chinese and Japanese immigrant communities.
While Wesley Yang brought our attention to the Bamboo Ceiling,...
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Innovative teaching method leaves textbooks behind →
The method pulls the students out of their textbooks — students have none in this class — and gets them talking.
“My job is to use these gestures to prompt them to speak,” Slabodnik said.
The idea is to target the part of the brain that can assimilate and retain foreign language most easily. Students learn based on gestures rather than English so they can think and communicate...
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“Mention ‘diversity,’ and you often get an eye-roll.
Companies that don’t...”
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I am truly touched and humbled by the response from you, the tumblr community, on the “…from Seattle” post. Kudos to Stephanie Santiano who published the original article in Glimpse.
To borrow a phrase: Power to the People.
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But where are you really from?
Here’s one of my favourite “Where are you really from?” stories. The gal is of Korean ethnicity, third-generation “born in Russia” (that’s fourth-generation Russian). She came to North America as a teenager, speaks fluent Russian and American English but no Korean. She wrote about the “But where are you really from?” scene at a bus stop where she was questioned by a stranger...
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No, Really, I’m From Seattle →
“Konichiwa! ” he snickers.
I turn to them with a raised eyebrow. They look at me with those smug grins still plastered onto their faces. I’m not even Japanese. If they’re going to make fun of me, they should at least get the right ethnicity.
“Ich komme aus Amerika,” I sneer, and I walk into a different car.
I’m Asian and nobody wants me to forget it. If the wannabe-gangster walking past me...
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Supermarket speaks language of halal →
What is really amazing is that the supermarket is the brainchild of Canadian entrepreneurs of Chinese ancestry, who have no linguistic or intrinsic cultural ties to the distinct communities they aim to serve.
“We can speak your language!”
It lists 10 (Urdu, Punjabi, Turkish, Russian, Bengali, English, Pashto, German, Arabic and Parsi) that staff can speak, though there are certainly more,...
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Find coherence in diversity →
How many immigrant families do not speak French by the second generation here? Most children and grandchildren of non-francophone or non-anglophone immigrants become trilingual: they learn French in school, English from the Internet and American television, and their ancestral language at home.
Today you don’t have to be Irish to participate in the St Patrick’s Day parade. Or...
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“How can we expect others to respect our languages when we don’t respect...”
– Lwando Norman, Joburg
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Re: "What is in a name?" May 1 & 5
Grace: Thank you for sharing your stories and thoughts! I was surprised to read your grandfather’s story. That reminded me of my grandparents’ generation. That was a hard, toilsome era, in which the birth rate was high but survival rate was low. While the medical knowledge and practice was not so advanced, that a baby could be borne healthy, survive, and grow up was not something...
blameitonthetetons91 asked: Of course, I love languages. I would like to master more. You can see the same mountains?! That is awesome. Stumbling across people relatively close to me on the internet makes me feel happy.
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Rogers sponsors Fairchild TV's "idol" contest
If you’re “Too Asian for Macleans,” is it okay to audition for the New Talent Singing Awards 新秀歌唱大賽 at Fairchild TV, sponsored by Rogers?
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Speak Spanish? At Your Own Risk: Minority... →
…speaking Spanish is not a crime, but it is slowly becoming stigmatized as one…characterize minority language speakers as divisive and un-American. The message is clear: real Americans speak English. The question is: will you deliver it?
Source: Multilingual Mania
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What is in a name? part II
…at some point they start to exchange their Chinese names. This action implies that “now I know you in person,” no matter which name they would prefer calling each other afterwards. Asking and giving our birth given names symbolises a further level of the personal relationship. It is as if one’s real identity has been revealed and is suggestive of the potential for longer and deeper...
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Have Canadians moved beyond "English or French"? →
Language Politics in Canada
One can only imagine that he [Duceppe], like many others, was stunned by the result in the Québec riding of Berthier–Maskinongé, where the NDP ran a young woman, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who lives 400km from the riding, went to Las Vegas for a vacation at the peak of the campaign, and for practical purposes does not speak French. She won, with a margin of 10 percentage...
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What is in a name?
Thanks Grace Chu-Lin Chang for inspiring me to write my story behind the name. Interesting you mentioned that English aliases have become a mask behind which we can hide. I have always rejected my English alias that was arbitrarily assigned to me on the day I came to this continent with my parents. Based on their limited acquaintance with English names at the time, they selected the name of a...
