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keesan
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Intercultural Relations
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Feb 10 17:45 UTC 1998 |
Where and how have you gotten to know and understand people of different
cultural groups? By this I mean groups based on ancestry, such as nationality
or national origin, ethnicity, language, religion, eye shape or skin color.
Have you met them by travel, living abroad, as friends, neighbors, fellow
students, housemates, fellow workers, through church? How has this affected
prior stereotypes you might have had about other cultures, and has it changed
your understanding of your own culture? Do you think there are greater
differences between the average persons in different cultures, or between
individuals in a single culture?
I am entering this item, as suggested, to test interest among grexers,
including those from other countries, in a conference on cultural difference
and how different groups can learn to live together and benefit. Another
possibility is a conference on discrimination and stereotypes, and other
problems faced by cultural and all other minority groups, including the old,
the young, short, tall, thin, fat. Since there are already five other
conferences under Life Roles on a few other groups (femme, glb, homme,
disabilities, inbetween) I suggest these groups not be included, but that the
new conference be grouped under Life Roles and called something like
Minorities, or Stereotypes, or Discrimination, all of which seem a bit too
narrow. Any ideas? I had started this in Coop 34 but two grexers suggested
Agora instead, as a way to test interest. They both thought that most
grexers were members of the cultural majority here. Is that true?
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| 162 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 1 of 162:
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Feb 10 18:48 UTC 1998 |
We seem to argue a lot for being all members of a cultural majority....
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tao
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response 2 of 162:
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Feb 10 19:37 UTC 1998 |
I've learned a lot about other cultures here at work. The School
of Public Health has a lot of students, faculty, and staff who
were born and raised outside of the US.
It's funny.. whenever a news broadcast shows english subtitles
for people who speak english imperfectly, I find I don't need
the subtitles. I've learned to 'hear' english in a new way,
and to me the speakers don't need subtitles except for place
names and proper names.
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keesan
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response 3 of 162:
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Feb 11 19:52 UTC 1998 |
Well, looks like the folks in coop were right about not much interest in this
subject. I will attempt to answer my own questions.
Through age 12, I was a member of a nearly absolute majority in my Boston
neighborhood. I had one minority friend, the only Christian in my class.
She was the oldest of six, her father had moved out, and they had a color TV.
My brother was friends with the only Christian in his class, who had a
Christmas tree (I had never seen one up close) and happened to be colored.
At age 12 I started going to a school drawing students from the whole city.
Ten of us would grab a lunch table together (there were far more kids than
seat, the first one there piled booked all over a table to reserve it). As
far as I could tell from the experience, everyone was a minority: two each
Greek, Chinese, colored, Jewish, and Irish. I had never known a protestant,
I assumed they were sort of a myth, like farmland. (As far as I knew the
world consisted of city with an occasional park that we could see on our way
to visit New York). I never encountered any prejudice, but for some reason
my two colored friends took a day off to attend NAACP meetings, and then my
mother decided it was not safe to play in their neighborhood so they came to
play in mine. At age 12 I learned that I had a Christian aunt and cousin,
that we had never been told about becausse my grandfather practically
disinferited my uncle (who was also a Republican, horrors) when he married.
High school was mostly Jewish again (we moved out of the old neighborhood).
College was much more interesting. I seem to have been raised with few
prejudices, so was very surprised at my mother's objecting to my current
partner of 14 years (who is Catholic and divorced, but her main objection was,
surprisingly, that he never finished a college degree. Class snobbery?).
Did other grexers grow up in a less homogeneous environment?
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keesan
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response 4 of 162:
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Feb 11 20:19 UTC 1998 |
To comment on a possible new conference, see Coop item #34. There seems to
be a bit more interest than I thought.
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senna
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response 5 of 162:
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Feb 12 05:02 UTC 1998 |
I'm lots of cultures on my own. From different lineages, I have both Irish
and English blood, and Lebonese blood. (Pity I don't also have Jewish
ancestry... then I'd be a walking terrorist battle)
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keesan
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response 6 of 162:
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Feb 12 15:32 UTC 1998 |
Apart from your blood, do you act like an English, Irish, or Lebanese person,
or like an average (?) American?
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remmers
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response 7 of 162:
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Feb 12 17:09 UTC 1998 |
I'm of mixed German/English/French ancestry. Since I'm a white American
middle-class professional, I probably act more like an average white
American middle-class professional than anything else. This is not the
same thing as "average American".
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rcurl
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response 8 of 162:
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Feb 12 18:47 UTC 1998 |
Excuse me, Keesan, but what is the difference between the blood of
English, Irish, etc? I thought the only thing different was in blood
groups (A, B, rh, etc), and otherwise all ethnic groups can be blood
donors for all other ethnic groups. [My argument is with the common
expression which is inaccurate and misleading - a careful distinction
should be made between ethnic differences that are totally cultural,
and ethnic differences that are genetic. The term "blood" is a poor one
for keeping this distinction in mind, as shown above in distinguishing
Jewish and Lebanese "blood", but not the "blood" of all the genetically
different stock that share being Jewish.]
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keesan
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response 9 of 162:
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Feb 12 19:20 UTC 1998 |
I am interested in knowing about cultural distinctions, not genetic, but there
is a frequent overlap. Senna used the word blood, so I also did. Certain
blood types are much more common among specific ethnic groups, For instance
the basques have the higheest frequency of rh negative, and it falls off as
you approach them geographically. Asians have a higher frequency of B. SO
you would have a better chance of finding a donor within an ethnic group.
I repeat my original question as to when and how grexers have come into
contact with other cultural groups and what they have learned from this. BUt
you may also talk about your own cultural group, or anything else vaguely
related. (I am doing an interesting translation on rhesus incompatibility,
from Russia, where there is a problem in producing the immunglobuloin needed
to get rid of fetal blood cells in rh-negative mothers, because they have
cured the problem of sensitized mothers by administering immunoglobulin from
previous sensitized mothers, and there are no not enough new ones, and the
other method, of injecting rh-positive blood into rh-negative volunteers, no
longer is acceptable because of AIDS). Has anyone lived abroad (Rane, that
is your cue to tell us about life in the Netherlands).
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rcurl
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response 10 of 162:
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Feb 12 19:52 UTC 1998 |
I did not give or receive blood in the Netherlands.
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keesan
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response 11 of 162:
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Feb 12 21:51 UTC 1998 |
I am not surprised,but did you learn anything about the people of the
Netherlands while living there, or about your own culture by contrast?
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cmcgee
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response 12 of 162:
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Feb 12 23:13 UTC 1998 |
Vis a vis the "blood" issue, I found out during the search for the Ann Arbor
serial racist that even with blood and tissue samples, there is no way to tell
the ethnicity of the "donor". DNA, blood typing, and any other testing cannot
indicate what ethinc or racial group you are in.
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keesan
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response 13 of 162:
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Feb 13 00:11 UTC 1998 |
DNA fingerprinting takes into account a person's ethnic group in calculating
the probability of matching, in other words, if a person is Indonesian they
calculate the probability based on the frequency of certain DNA types occuring
in all Indonesians (or possibly all Indonesians of Chinese, or of Indian,
ancestry). But it certainly cannot prove your ethnic origins. If there is
a very high probability of finding a certain DNA configuration that you have
in your ethnic group, you are much less likely to be a match.
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senna
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response 14 of 162:
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Feb 13 04:34 UTC 1998 |
I act like an outcast, but that's another story :)
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orinoco
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response 15 of 162:
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Feb 13 04:45 UTC 1998 |
[I assume you meant 'serial rapist', although I have met quite a few 'serial
racists']
Give it a rest, people - it's a figure of speech. If you can have Lebanese
roots without being a plant and Lebanese ties without rope, why can't you have
Lebanese blood without resorting to blood types in the scientific sense? It's
a more elegant term for 'Lebanese ancestry', and I don't see what the problem
is.
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rcurl
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response 16 of 162:
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Feb 13 06:01 UTC 1998 |
The problem is that I don't know what influences you are talking about.
Lebanese among themselves are of a large range of different religions,
colors, ethnic groups, national backgrounds, etc. So what does "Lebanese
blood" mean? Sounds like an attempt to imnproperly stereotype.
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md
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response 17 of 162:
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Feb 13 11:46 UTC 1998 |
Heh. I once told my son that he has "a drop of Indian blood" in him.
(The ones with bows and arrows, not the ones with towels on their
heads, to use his distinction.) He was about five at the time and
loved (still loves, in fact) the idea that he's part Native Amrerican.
But for months afterward, whenever he cut his finger or skinned his
knee, he wanted us to reassure him that none of the lost blood was
"the Indian drop."
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cyklone
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response 18 of 162:
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Feb 13 13:53 UTC 1998 |
Fee Fie Foe Fum, I smell the blood . . . oh never mind. Anyway, I was
quite fortunate to have a de facto foster family that was black (I'm
white). I'd met these guy in my high school jazz band, and when they
decided to form their own band they asked me to join (I played bass).
During that time, things were very tense with my mother and I sought a
foster family (to no avail). Instead, I ended up spending a lot of time
at the house where we practiced. When not there, I hung out with
relatives of theirs. Even thought they never had a lot of money, I was
often invited to dinner, and one of my best memories was going to a family
reunion with them and being the only white person out of about 40-50
people. My friend told me that his older relatives didn't much care for
white people but the younger ones were cool. Eventually, even the older
relatives at least seemed OK with me. Later, after I graduated HS and my
mother kicked me out (after a really stupid argument) I moved into the
practice house full time. My friend's parents were planning on retiring,
so I stayed on the couch until that happened. Then I moved into one of the
rooms and paid rent (my old room is now a recording studio!). My friend is
now married (to a white woman, not that that matters) and he and other
family members continue to reach out to people of all races. The world
needs more people like them. I feel very fortunate to know his family.
And while they certainly didn't fit the American stereotype of the
"typical" black family, I think that is one of the reasons I learned to
look beyond stereotypes and color.
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keesan
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response 19 of 162:
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Feb 13 16:59 UTC 1998 |
Thanks for sharing your experience. We are also being treated as sort of
family by the black neighbors next door. We have Thanksgiving dinner with
them and discuss our problems. It's good to hear that younger people of any
race are becoming more tolerant.
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scg
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response 20 of 162:
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Feb 14 00:15 UTC 1998 |
If race is genetic, it should show up in DNA if people know what gene to look
for, right?
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keesan
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response 21 of 162:
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Feb 14 00:55 UTC 1998 |
I have never run across a good definition of race. Have you?
Webster offers: a division of mankind possessing traits that are
transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human
type. Unfortunately most traits are based on a combination of several genes.
The human genome mapping project should yield exciting answers. Does anyone
know about the results so far? Since we are all descended from the same
stock, and there has been a great deal of interbreeding among groups that had
previously split up, I don't see how races can be classified except
statistically, i. e., Africans are much more likely to have dark skin (but
their are albino Africans) and frizzy hair (but my aunt had frizzy red hair).
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senna
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response 22 of 162:
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Feb 14 02:36 UTC 1998 |
I'm not culturally lebanese at all. But I still have a lot of genetic
ancestry (to the best of my knowledge, at least half of my ancestry exists
because an ancestor was fleeing lebanese oppression of roman catholocism).
Culturally, I've been raises American. Lingually, I'm a three-way cross
between American, Canadian, and British (which has nothing to do with ancestry
at all). Mentally, I'm a cross between a schizophrenic and a large tree
(nothing ancestral there, either). Physically, I'm lebanese.
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keesan
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response 23 of 162:
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Feb 14 04:03 UTC 1998 |
An oak, a maple, a pine, an elm....? I would like to know more about your
language background, senna. Did you live in all three countries, or did your
parents come from different countries?
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other
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response 24 of 162:
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Feb 14 05:03 UTC 1998 |
race is an arbitrary distinction, nothing more. there is no specific,
universal definition by which any and all persons can be divided into one race
category or another.
there exist specific genes which determine specific physical traits, many of
which are *characteristic* of certain races, so there is some viable genetic
distinction between races, but it is limited, and certainly impractical.
I'm 300% in total: 100% American, 50% Polish, 25% Russian, 25% Hungarian,
and 100% Palestinian, but only if you back to before the hebrew diaspora.
And that's only the parts i *know* about. Nobody, to my knowledge has traced
my family history back further than 1800, but being jewish, i can fairly
safely assume the palestinian "origin." Of course if you back further than
that, i'm something else entirely. the point is that there is no point.
these distinctions are all political at their base. there is some genetic
reinforcement due to selective breeding, chosen by virtue of those political
distinctions, and by geography.
humans are driven (in part) by a need to establish an individual identity.
often part of this identity is an association with a group of other people
who share a similar identity. in order to forge that identity, we have to
*make* distinctions between those who are "us" and those who are "them."
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