UserFriendly.Org [Illiad] OPINIONATED NEWS ITEM: HOLDING MULTICULTURALISM HOSTAGE Posted:Thu Apr 17 14:07:39 2008
NOT MULTICULTURALISM, BUT COVERT COLONIALISM: As a resident of the Greater Vancouver area, I'm both grateful and proud of the cultural diversity that surrounds me. By virtue of my parents and their jobs, I travelled a lot when I was just a kid, and grew up in non-Western environments. This gave me a marked appreciation for cultures other than the one I now call home here in Canada.
Canada has long been an advocate of multiculturalism, a policy which encourages its immigrants to bring their culture with them to their new country, although there is a clear understanding that they will be subject to the laws and customs of this land and not their country of origin. And that's all good because I'm a huge fan of food from around the world! Indian curries, Vietnamese noodles, Mongolian khuushuur...the mouth waters. The greater the variety, the better. Dining is an excellent excuse for socializing and making new friends, and even an introvert like myself opens up to strangers when seated at a table and introduced to new culinary marvels.
I live in a suburb of Vancouver called Richmond. Although Vancouver has a Chinatown, Richmond has become the de facto centre of Asian Everything in Vancouver. The city is peppered with really excellent Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese restaurants, and there is a large section of Chinese malls. Within one of the malls is where I discovered an egregious example of "reverse colonialism."
I occasionally go to the Asian malls because they sell products you just won't find in the regular malls. One day I had a hankering for a Chinese confectionery known as "Haw Flakes." I walked into a new convenience store in the mall and asked the proprietor if he carried any. He gave me a blank stare and didn't reply. I asked again, and he just shook his head and went back to what he was doing.
I looked over his shoulder and sure enough, on a shelf, was a box of the flakes. So I pointed at them and asked him for a bag of them. He grumpily took them off the shelf and gestured at them, so I took a bag and put them on the counter. He rung it up and told me the total, in Cantonese.
As it happens I speak Cantonese, but his grumpy attitude annoyed me. So I pointedly looked at the cash register display and counted out the money and left. I could tell he was relieved that I was no longer in his shop.
It was abundantly clear that the shopowner either didn't speak a word of English or simply refused to. I was sorely tempted to go back and explain to him, in Cantonese, that Canada has two official languages, and he had better start learning at least one of them. I'm glad I didn't though, because the problem is a lot bigger than just one convenience store owner.
After this incident I began to pay attention to the attitudes of the merchants in Richmond. Anecdotally, I'd say about half of the retailers in the Asian malls have zero interest in learning or speaking English. If you need help buying something and you don't speak their chosen dialect --it's usually Cantonese, but Mandarin is really starting to take over-- you have about a fifty-fifty chance of being ignored. In English-speaking Canada.
I have always been of the mind that when you visit a foreign country you're the one that should make the effort to communicate with the locals. Speaking your birth tongue slower and louder doesn't make yourself any more understandable, it just makes you look like a jackass. The onus to learn the local language is even heavier if you're an immigrant. After all, you're the one asking for the privilege of becoming a part of someone else's community. That means you can bloody well learn the language; you don't even have to succeed, you just have to show that you're willing to try.
And trying is the attitude that counts! I recognize that a lot of older folks immigrate to Canada, and it's a little tough for an 80-year old Mongolian granddad to become even quasi-fluent in English. But if he smiles and can say "hello" and "goodbye" and "thank-you" at least I'll know that he cares about his adoptive community enough to make the effort, which is what I expect from an immigrant.
Hopefully a day will come when my wife and I can buy property in the Dominican Republic. They speak Spanish there, and as a result I will learn Spanish! The first phrase I learned was Lo siento, no comprende. Habla ingles? Most of the time the local will say no, but will happily work with me to figure out a way to communicate with each other. He knows I want to try, and that his language is the one that rightfully takes precedence in his country.
Those immigrants who refuse to learn the local language are in effect attempting to carve out an enclave, or colony, for themselves in their new country, an enclave where they can ignore all of the locals and in fact reject the community in which they live. I abhor this behaviour, as it serves only to erect walls within the community, and in this age of globalization that can't possibly end well. Make no mistake, if you're an immigrant to a nation that speaks a language other than your own, and you're so arrogant as to refuse to try to learn the local tongue, you should turn around and go home. We don't want you here, wherever "here" may be. And you can take your colonial arrogance home with you.
