I have been bombarded with outright racism every day for the last several years and I want to know what you guys think about it.
I have concluded that most companies in the United States think that people, who immigrate to this country from Spanish Speaking nations, must be mentally disabled, retarded, or intellectually inferior to people who emigrate here from other nations.
First, I don’t know why I have to press 1 for English in a country whose laws were originated in and kept in English for the last 200+ years.
What gets me is that nobody asks you to press 3 for German, or 4 for French, or 5 for Russian or 6 for Chinese, or 7 for one of the dialects of India.
Why is this?
Are people who come from Spanish speaking countries too stupid to learn English? Since the mid to late 1800’s millions of people immigrated to this country legally and seemed to learn the language.
I cannot imagine that they had one bit of the resources to learn English that modern day immigrants have.
It seems the only advantage the early immigrants had was they had no choice but to learn English since nobody outside their small communities gave a rat?s ass how hard it would be to learn it.
[quote]orangecola wrote:
…
Are people who come from Spanish speaking countries to stupid to learn English? [/quote]
Yes. Yes they are. But it’s not their fault, see? We evil rich white males have hoarded all the money and resources for ourselves thus making it more difficult for our neighbors to the south to compete on a level playing field with us.
Thus it is our responsibility as good global citizens to use our unfairly-gained superior intellect to make things as easy as possible for everyone who wants to come here and take advantage of all those great things we’ve stolen from them.
[quote]Cunnivore wrote:
We evil rich white males have hoarded all the money and resources for ourselves thus making it more difficult for our neighbors to the south to compete on a level playing field with us.
Thus it is our responsibility as good global citizens to use our unfairly-gained superior intellect to make things as easy as possible for everyone who wants to come here and take advantage of all those great things we’ve stolen from them.[/quote]
First post from Cunnivore to actually contain a modicum of truth.
[quote]orangecola wrote:
I have been bombarded with outright racism every day for the last several years and I want to know what you guys think about it.
I have concluded that most companies in the United States think that people, who immigrate to this country from Spanish Speaking nations, must be mentally disabled, retarded, or intellectually inferior to people who emigrate here from other nations.
First, I don’t know why I have to press 1 for English in a country whose laws were originated in and kept in English for the last 200+ years.
What gets me is that nobody asks you to press 3 for German, or 4 for French, or 5 for Russian or 6 for Chinese, or 7 for one of the dialects of India.
Why is this?
Are people who come from Spanish speaking countries too stupid to learn English? Since the mid to late 1800’s millions of people immigrated to this country legally and seemed to learn the language.
I cannot imagine that they had one bit of the resources to learn English that modern day immigrants have.
It seems the only advantage the early immigrants had was they had no choice but to learn English since nobody outside their small communities gave a rat?s ass how hard it would be to learn it.
[/quote]
Better start learning arabic. That what we all will be speaking before long.
[quote]orangecola wrote:
I have been bombarded with outright racism every day for the last several years and I want to know what you guys think about it.
I have concluded that most companies in the United States think that people, who immigrate to this country from Spanish Speaking nations, must be mentally disabled, retarded, or intellectually inferior to people who emigrate here from other nations.
First, I don’t know why I have to press 1 for English in a country whose laws were originated in and kept in English for the last 200+ years.
What gets me is that nobody asks you to press 3 for German, or 4 for French, or 5 for Russian or 6 for Chinese, or 7 for one of the dialects of India.
Why is this?
Are people who come from Spanish speaking countries too stupid to learn English? Since the mid to late 1800’s millions of people immigrated to this country legally and seemed to learn the language.
I cannot imagine that they had one bit of the resources to learn English that modern day immigrants have.
It seems the only advantage the early immigrants had was they had no choice but to learn English since nobody outside their small communities gave a rat?s ass how hard it would be to learn it.
[/quote]
Bro, get a grip! Almost 50% of the population in the US is Latin or comes from countries where Spanish is the major language. So it only makes political sense to make things easier for this population.
It’s not discrimination, it’s butt kissing! Entender?
orangecola, are you from anywhere near the border? I live in San Diego and seriously, half of everything is in Spanish because there are a ton of people who can’t speak English or don’t speak it well at all and will not learn it.
[quote]pat36 wrote:
Better start learning arabic. That what we all will be speaking before long.[/quote]
Wouldn’t bet on that. Chinese seems more likely.
Orangecola, it wouldn’t hurt some tight-asses to learn other languages. And I mean on both sides of the spectrum. You might also find the following page of interest.
[quote]lixy wrote:
First post from Cunnivore to actually contain a modicum of truth.
[/quote]
Surprisingly, not the first post from lixy to actually contain a pointless ad hominem attack and apparent lack of comprehension with regards to satire.
Gee, I never thought of illegal immigrants as “insatiable”, but I guess in the sense that they may insist upon the benefits of citizenship within the U.S. without going through the process of changing their nationality and assimilating themselves into the culture in which they’ve chosen to live, I suppose I have no choice but to agree with you. Good one, licks.
Oh, wait, I forgot - the whole “rich white english-speakers rule the world and steal resources from the poor hapless brown people” argument is going to fit here again, I bet. That’s got to be the best one-size-fits-all of all time.
Thanks for letting us know A-hole-ivore. We were under a rock for the last few decades and missed that factual bit.[/quote]
Sorry, have we already escalated from “cleverly couched insults with passing attention to the subject at hand” to “name-calling and useless derision”? I can’t keep up, so I guess you win this round.
Meanwhile, I still don’t see any legitimate cause for Americans to learn to speak another language (Spanish, Chinese, or other) for the sake of making it easier for immigrants.
If I decide that I want to live in Switzerland, you can bet that I would at least put forth some effort to learn one of their what, 4 national languages? Since none of those national languages is English, I would assume that it might be difficult for me to communicate and/or navigate, so I would take the initiative to pick up at least some functional German BEFORE going there.
Hell, I’d do that even if I was going to be a tourist! If I knew I would be there for more than a couple of weeks or getting a job, I’d undertake some serious tutoring at the very least.
[quote]Cunnivore wrote:
Meanwhile, I still don’t see any legitimate cause for Americans to learn to speak another language (Spanish, Chinese, or other) for the sake of making it easier for immigrants.[/quote]
I must have been asleep at the wheel, I seem to have missed this suggestion being offered…
[quote]
Cunnivore wrote:
Meanwhile, I still don’t see any legitimate cause for Americans to learn to speak another language (Spanish, Chinese, or other) for the sake of making it easier for immigrants.
vroom wrote:
I must have been asleep at the wheel, I seem to have missed this suggestion being offered…[/quote]
I understood it to be the most viable option after eliminating the possibility of politely suggesting that immigrants into the USA learn to speak english rather than isolate themselves from it.
[quote]orangecola wrote:
First, I don’t know why I have to press 1 for English in a country whose laws were originated in and kept in English for the last 200+ years.
[/quote]
If you go to Nederlands you can hear anything you want in 4 different languages…is that racist or accommodating? Or realistic to the fact that NO ONE speaks Dutch and its good for business?
Signs are in Spanish in the US because capitalists respect the market.
Thank you very much for the link. I found it very interesting.
Are you from Sweden?
I guess two things are chapping my ass here:
In the building I work in, one of the janitors not only refuses to speak English; he actually tries to get other people (including clients and staff) to speak only Spanish to him. Our company now hands our managers Spanish crib sheets to communicate with the maintenance staff.
I find it ass backwards that the lowest paid, least skilled guy with the least responsibility in the entire building expects everybody else to cater to him. I find this entire movement for management to learn Spanish to communicate to workers to be ass backwards. I know this is happening not only in my job but other fields too. I find it ass backwards because shouldn’t the lowest skilled guy be the one working to assimilate? I wouldn?t move to Mexico and expect everybody to learn English to communicate with me.
The other issue I have is when Europeans criticize Americans for not learning other languages (or as you state being a tight ass).
The reality is that European countries are faced with an entirely different geographical situation than Americans. You are not superior to us because you can speak more languages no more than a mechanic is superior to me because he understands my car better than I do.
You know those languages out of necessity because of your on top of one another proximity to the other nations of Europe. You know those languages not because of some overwhelming intellectual curiosity compared to us ignorant Americans; you know it because you have no other choice. If you were to travel from Maine to Florida in the United States you could easily travel the distance of 10 countries in Europe. I once stopped at a gas station in Belgium in which the gas station attendant spoke 5 languages!
Does that make him intellectually superior?
Culturally the United States is way different than Europe and even Canada. The United States was built on and has become the worlds premier power (whether you want to admit it or not) based on the idea that from many come one (it is so important that it is printed on our money). When I hear about communities in Boston wanted to erect statues of Bolivar and not Washington it sends a pretty powerful signal to me that those people don?t give a shit about assimilation. It is like the Bavarians are entering Rome all over again.
Bilingualism has not served Canada very well either. I find it kind of funny that Canadians complain that Americans are ignorant yet their French Province of Quebec has come close to leaving the country several times. Can you imagine if California or Florida tried to do that?
Racism???
What do u call a person that speaks two languages: bilingual
more than two: multilingual
one language: American
Dude 15% of this country is hispanic, thats a big chunk of change for white man to have regardless of the language of swindelling, and everybody else (whites, browns, blacks, purples) speaks English.
[quote]orangecola wrote:
Thank you very much for the link. I found it very interesting.
Are you from Sweden?
I guess two things are chapping my ass here:
…
[/quote]
I agree with you completely here.
Speaking another language isn’t as easy as you think it is. I’ve been speaking french 15 years now, and I’m still glad I always have the option to switch to english when I need it. I don’t think that makes the gas station attendant smarter than you, but I think it makes sense for corporations (that’s who’s asking you to press 1 for english, isn’t it?) to make it easy for such a large population to access them. It’s about the money, nothing more.
Finally, Quebec has never come close to separating. The few that have an interest in it make loud and frequent proclamations, but they don’t really speak for the population (a perfect example is the recent election). When people like this say Quebeckers (or Quebecois, more likely), they really mean “a few of my friends and I”.
Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I hear misinformation about “Quebec wanting to separate” all the time, and I get tired of it.