Maybe it's just me, but I assumed OTM and gg1965 are actually on the same side of this discussion, ie both resent Chinese being painted in an unkind manner because of the actions of one landlady (who most of us think hasn't done much wrong anyway).
I thought OTM was confusing gg1965 with Lou:
on the move said:
I am glad you are moving too.
This is definitely talking about Lou.
on the move said:
A frustrated academic is exactly right, same as our now infamous prof Keen. You claim you have a taiwanese wife (like some of my best friends are ...... ) , I doubt very much. I sensed there is a racial bias in your thread, as are some of the other replies.
Without sounding like he's changing who he's talking to, OTM is now definitely referring to gg1965. I thought OTM got upset because he thought somebody who claimed to have a Taiwanese wife (gg1965) was making disparaging comments about the Chinese (Lou), and this was where things got confused for OTM.
OTM, I confess that gg1965's comments seemed highly accurate to me, too, as somebody who lives with a Vietnamese family and has had many Chinese as tenants and employees. I don't think gg1965 was
criticising the culture, he was
describing it. If you judge that description to be negative, that sounds like your issue, not gg1965's. And if you're more familiar with Chinese culture than gg1965 and wish to dispute his characterisation, then please state what you think was inaccurate.
I can't remotely agree that an individual's behaviour is not influenced by the culture in which they were raised; it's as widely accepted as the Earth circling the Sun.
There's a huge difference between
equality and
uniformity. We do live in a global village, and we should weigh every individual as equally valuable. (This is one of my core beliefs and has been discussed on the forum many times.) But that doesn't mean that we're all the same.
I think what you were saying is that we shouldn't judge people based on the culture they're from, but as we find them (ie as an individual). Nor should we judge a culture, based on the actions of individuals from that culture. But actually, to be really fair, you
do have to know something about the person's culture and take that into consideration, because a person's motives are more important than their behaviour, in terms of judging their character. (Obviously not in terms of the impact on others.)
Let's say in culture A it's disrespectful to wear shoes inside the house. In culture B, they have a belief that feet are dirty, revolting things to see, and should always remain covered. If a person from culture B comes into your home with their shoes on, they're trying to be polite based on their cultural beliefs. Yet a person from culture A might assume that they're being very disrespectful! You have to take a person's cultural beliefs into account in order to know why they're behaving in a certain way. Some things - eg murdering people for material gain - are pretty universally condemned, but very few things are universally accepted as cultural norms.