Xenophobia on Facebook; film at 11
I'm a fan of The Children's Place on FB. They have a store nearby, and we've been dressing Cassie in clothes from there since she was a baby. It's also my mom's favorite store to buy her clothes.
The fan page on Facebook for The Children's Place posted a link to a Festival sponsored by them, Ford, and People en Español tonight, first in English and then in Spanish. Very quickly, the comments to the Spanish post exploded with hateful comments from people who demanded that TCP "speak English, this is America" and threatening to delete TCP from their FB feed. There are a lot of folks in there, many of Latin@ heritage, explaining that, um...the internet and even Facebook are not just USian phenomena, that learning English is hard for immigrants and takes time (seriously, do these people think people refuse English out of spite? Since everyone's born knowing English, of course). I made this argument to my mother when we had this fight 6 years ago: I have many colleagues in the Complit department whose native language is something other than English. These are, to a one, highly educated individuals who are working on advanced degrees at a foreign university in a language that is not their most comfortable...and they get it wrong sometimes. Especially when speaking; I think most of us Complit types write better in our other languages than we speak them, a lot of the time anyway.
I digress. My point was, see what all this xenophobia in the popular culture has wrought? Average people going absolutely apeshit over seeing some Spanish on their Facebook feed, and thinking it's perfectly acceptable to scream and carry on about being subjected to a foreign language OHNOES! Someone even brought up the "Ground Zero Mosque" in the comment thread, and it wasn't a supporter.
*sigh* I feel like one tiny voice trying to shout down a screaming, hungry mob a lot lately. But I posted on the thread anyway, about how I'm happy to support a company that supports diversity, and as of this writing 7 people have liked my comment. That's something. I guess.
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/162792.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.
The fan page on Facebook for The Children's Place posted a link to a Festival sponsored by them, Ford, and People en Español tonight, first in English and then in Spanish. Very quickly, the comments to the Spanish post exploded with hateful comments from people who demanded that TCP "speak English, this is America" and threatening to delete TCP from their FB feed. There are a lot of folks in there, many of Latin@ heritage, explaining that, um...the internet and even Facebook are not just USian phenomena, that learning English is hard for immigrants and takes time (seriously, do these people think people refuse English out of spite? Since everyone's born knowing English, of course). I made this argument to my mother when we had this fight 6 years ago: I have many colleagues in the Complit department whose native language is something other than English. These are, to a one, highly educated individuals who are working on advanced degrees at a foreign university in a language that is not their most comfortable...and they get it wrong sometimes. Especially when speaking; I think most of us Complit types write better in our other languages than we speak them, a lot of the time anyway.
I digress. My point was, see what all this xenophobia in the popular culture has wrought? Average people going absolutely apeshit over seeing some Spanish on their Facebook feed, and thinking it's perfectly acceptable to scream and carry on about being subjected to a foreign language OHNOES! Someone even brought up the "Ground Zero Mosque" in the comment thread, and it wasn't a supporter.
*sigh* I feel like one tiny voice trying to shout down a screaming, hungry mob a lot lately. But I posted on the thread anyway, about how I'm happy to support a company that supports diversity, and as of this writing 7 people have liked my comment. That's something. I guess.
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/162792.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.