A rose by any other name...
The whole Don Imus thing has me thinking.
Let’s forget the fact that I think “ho” is more offensive than “nappy” and that people should have gotten more upset that he joked these college women were low-level prostitutes than about the ethnically-specific quality of their hair. But squeaky wheel, squeaky wheel: Rev. Sharpton beat Gloria Steinem to the punch.
So Don Imus was led out to the slaughter for making a racially insensitive joke, the last (or most recent) of a recent spate of them. People are now screaming “freedom of speech!” when the real call should be “realities of capitalism!” Imus said something that crossed a social boundary and his career blood will wash our sins away.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly I think about the whole Don Imus firing but it does bring to focus a rather jarring difference between life in Canada and life in Mexico: the entire concept of political correctness.
Canadians are an uptight bunch for the most part, that we can all agree on. We are so fixated on rights and freedoms, we have constructed a rather constrictive set of cultural mores as to what is allowed. I wasn’t surprised that our country pushed through laws for same-sex marriage: it was almost irrelevant whether Joe Canadian thought two men getting hitched was wonderful or nauseating, we will apathetically fight to the death for a system that in theory – if not always in practice – gives everyone the same rights. As the Canadian government shovels out the compensation money for two hundred years of various institutionalized offences against human rights (eg. Japanese internment, Ukrainian persecution, Aboriginal residential schools, forced sterilization, etc.), we have created a culture where we fumble and trip over ourselves to not say or do anything that might be considered disrespectful of someone else.
(All of this, might I add, gives Canadians the international reputation for being extremely kind and tolerant. While I like this reputation and its benefits whilst traveling, I’m not convinced it’s altogether deserved – but that’s a post for a different time.)
Mexicans, on the other hand, are not so worried. They are children born of conquest, as opposed to the conquerors themselves, and regularly curse each other playfully by insinuating the other is the product of a raped mother (“chingada madre!”). They don’t carry this oppressive white guilt that characterizes so much of Canadian/British lawmaking: they never abducted Africans or colonized Asians, they never imposed themselves on existing cultures. And while a very large percentage of them languish in extreme poverty and destitution, often exacerbated by skin colour, they also do not carry around the remotest bit of hope that their government will come through for them.
As a result, Mexicans do not come across as terribly worried about political correctness. Really, who would it benefit? In an almost completely homogenous culture where almost everyone is in survival mode, who would you offend?
As a Canadian, I am regularly startled by some of the words and images that get bandied about here.
An example: A friend of mine went to Africa last year to work. On the box of her stuff in our storage locker, I noticed on Wednesday evening, she had written, “Gone to be a nigger!” and “I’m a happy nigger now!” My friend is not black – “nigger” is her affectionate term for the black people she would undoubtedly encounter in her new job. She even went so far, in her jovial no-offence-intended excitement, to photograph herself in black face paint and call herself a “niggerbaby.”
If you’re shocked, you’re not Mexican. “Nigger” is not an uncommon word here, nor is any reference to African stereotypes that would have the hounds loosed a few miles up. There is a chocolate bar called “Negrito” – “little black” – with the picture of a beaming afro’d African child with bright red lips. Those I have spoken to on this subject are aware that some of the words they use casually would be considered extremely offensive north of the border, but they defend the use on this side with, “But here it doesn’t have that meaning, it’s not derogatory.”
And it really doesn’t have that meaning here, it’s true, but that’s not something that I can wrap my Canadian brain around with any degree of satisfaction. When my highly educated, impressively open-minded (she thinks nothing of my living with men, which is a cultural question mark here) student described her new Chinese boss as “opening his tiny eyes wide” at a comment she had made, I flinched. “Be careful with remarks like those when you’re dealing with non-Mexicans,” I cautioned. “But I didn’t mean… They have…” she said. “Nonetheless,” I replied.
I do make a point in my classes, which tend to be with executives who need the language in order to do business with the United States, Canada and the UK, to explain to them that what flies here might cause a political firestorm elsewhere, but otherwise I do try not to get up on my high horse about everything. Moving to a new culture requires constantly checking your own cultural biases and patterns so as to recognize your filters and not impose them on others.
But I’m sensitive to it, and it’s not a cultural quirk I’m showing any signs of acclimatizing to. The common use of the word “Paki” was one of my least favourite things about living in Britain, and much of my problem with hiphop music is the persistent and unapologetic use of words that would make Don Imus blush. And while I have been known to throw around the dreaded c-word occasionally as part of an effort to defuse its negative connotation, I’m still not convinced that words without meaning are less damaging than the same words with. Wouldn’t it be better if we all stopped thinking it was funny (Imus), acceptable (hiphop) or insignificant (Mexico) to use words based on truly vile concepts and histories?
But there I go being all Canadian again. I’m quite fortunate, at least, in that the vast majority of my social network here are either too well-traveled to use language like that flippantly.
But that little chocolate bar does continue to bother me.
Let’s forget the fact that I think “ho” is more offensive than “nappy” and that people should have gotten more upset that he joked these college women were low-level prostitutes than about the ethnically-specific quality of their hair. But squeaky wheel, squeaky wheel: Rev. Sharpton beat Gloria Steinem to the punch.
So Don Imus was led out to the slaughter for making a racially insensitive joke, the last (or most recent) of a recent spate of them. People are now screaming “freedom of speech!” when the real call should be “realities of capitalism!” Imus said something that crossed a social boundary and his career blood will wash our sins away.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly I think about the whole Don Imus firing but it does bring to focus a rather jarring difference between life in Canada and life in Mexico: the entire concept of political correctness.
Canadians are an uptight bunch for the most part, that we can all agree on. We are so fixated on rights and freedoms, we have constructed a rather constrictive set of cultural mores as to what is allowed. I wasn’t surprised that our country pushed through laws for same-sex marriage: it was almost irrelevant whether Joe Canadian thought two men getting hitched was wonderful or nauseating, we will apathetically fight to the death for a system that in theory – if not always in practice – gives everyone the same rights. As the Canadian government shovels out the compensation money for two hundred years of various institutionalized offences against human rights (eg. Japanese internment, Ukrainian persecution, Aboriginal residential schools, forced sterilization, etc.), we have created a culture where we fumble and trip over ourselves to not say or do anything that might be considered disrespectful of someone else.
(All of this, might I add, gives Canadians the international reputation for being extremely kind and tolerant. While I like this reputation and its benefits whilst traveling, I’m not convinced it’s altogether deserved – but that’s a post for a different time.)
Mexicans, on the other hand, are not so worried. They are children born of conquest, as opposed to the conquerors themselves, and regularly curse each other playfully by insinuating the other is the product of a raped mother (“chingada madre!”). They don’t carry this oppressive white guilt that characterizes so much of Canadian/British lawmaking: they never abducted Africans or colonized Asians, they never imposed themselves on existing cultures. And while a very large percentage of them languish in extreme poverty and destitution, often exacerbated by skin colour, they also do not carry around the remotest bit of hope that their government will come through for them.
As a result, Mexicans do not come across as terribly worried about political correctness. Really, who would it benefit? In an almost completely homogenous culture where almost everyone is in survival mode, who would you offend?
As a Canadian, I am regularly startled by some of the words and images that get bandied about here.
An example: A friend of mine went to Africa last year to work. On the box of her stuff in our storage locker, I noticed on Wednesday evening, she had written, “Gone to be a nigger!” and “I’m a happy nigger now!” My friend is not black – “nigger” is her affectionate term for the black people she would undoubtedly encounter in her new job. She even went so far, in her jovial no-offence-intended excitement, to photograph herself in black face paint and call herself a “niggerbaby.”
If you’re shocked, you’re not Mexican. “Nigger” is not an uncommon word here, nor is any reference to African stereotypes that would have the hounds loosed a few miles up. There is a chocolate bar called “Negrito” – “little black” – with the picture of a beaming afro’d African child with bright red lips. Those I have spoken to on this subject are aware that some of the words they use casually would be considered extremely offensive north of the border, but they defend the use on this side with, “But here it doesn’t have that meaning, it’s not derogatory.”
And it really doesn’t have that meaning here, it’s true, but that’s not something that I can wrap my Canadian brain around with any degree of satisfaction. When my highly educated, impressively open-minded (she thinks nothing of my living with men, which is a cultural question mark here) student described her new Chinese boss as “opening his tiny eyes wide” at a comment she had made, I flinched. “Be careful with remarks like those when you’re dealing with non-Mexicans,” I cautioned. “But I didn’t mean… They have…” she said. “Nonetheless,” I replied.
I do make a point in my classes, which tend to be with executives who need the language in order to do business with the United States, Canada and the UK, to explain to them that what flies here might cause a political firestorm elsewhere, but otherwise I do try not to get up on my high horse about everything. Moving to a new culture requires constantly checking your own cultural biases and patterns so as to recognize your filters and not impose them on others.
But I’m sensitive to it, and it’s not a cultural quirk I’m showing any signs of acclimatizing to. The common use of the word “Paki” was one of my least favourite things about living in Britain, and much of my problem with hiphop music is the persistent and unapologetic use of words that would make Don Imus blush. And while I have been known to throw around the dreaded c-word occasionally as part of an effort to defuse its negative connotation, I’m still not convinced that words without meaning are less damaging than the same words with. Wouldn’t it be better if we all stopped thinking it was funny (Imus), acceptable (hiphop) or insignificant (Mexico) to use words based on truly vile concepts and histories?
But there I go being all Canadian again. I’m quite fortunate, at least, in that the vast majority of my social network here are either too well-traveled to use language like that flippantly.
But that little chocolate bar does continue to bother me.
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