From: olmstead@sail.uwaterloo.ca ()
Subject: RE: Dictating the Third World...RACISM
Originator: olmstead@sail.uwaterloo.ca
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 18:39:29 GMT

RE: DICTATING TO THE THIRD WORLD

Given the e-mail support from Thai netters who don't want to
get into the fray I'll add my two cents again.    

>There was a seminar two years ago in my school, one of the several questions
>in one of the topics was
>"How can we dictate the third world?"  DICTATE from the Oxford American
 
I am assuming that you are speaking about the University of Waterloo.  I
would like to know when and where this seminar was held.  Which
department was this in?  Who was the speaker?

>Dictionary means to order with the force of authority.  I was stunned to 
>learn what attitude of the people in this part of world was toward the third
>world countries.  Every student in this session had been in the third world 
>before.  Some of them stayed there for 2, 5, 6 months while some stayed longer >such as one or two years.             

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT WE HAVE RACISM IN CANADA, however there is no gd
way that you can say that this is the attitude of people in this part of
the world.  If you choose to generalize people like this you are a
racist.  Sorry but I intentionally jerk my knees whenever people are put
into categories or described in general terms.  

>One of my friends was called an expert in third world country because she
>used to work in some particular country for 2 years. I asked her why the people>in this part of world like to call themselves as expert in such as Thailand or >Indonesia or Kenya while you were there only short time.  You can't speak the
>language.  You don't understand the culture or their way of life or thinking.
>Whatever you saw you always had cultural shocks. 

You go on and on about how little these people know about foreign
countries yet you yourself are an expert at the work habits and
attitudes of the farang.   

>deleted stuff

A while ago at a campus party a foreign farang student (Aussie) came in
and began talking about something that is cool to say.  He went on about
how terrible Americans are.  Now I know I am supposed to be kind to guests
from another country but I told him to ---- off.  You see it doesn't
matter who you are: a middle class American, a South African black or a
Thai farmer, you are still a person and deserve to be treated as one.

Farang who are being paid more in Thailand because they are white should
be fired and sent home in shame.  I'll go out on a limb though and
say that if they fired every farang worker in Thailand the working
and living conditions of those souls who claim to be so affected by them
would not improve at all. After that they will need to look for someone
else.  Eventually they will look for each other. 

There are no simple solutions to war and hunger but you can bet that one
evil spirit that hovers nearby is racism.
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Mike Olmstead		| 	olmstead@sail.uwaterloo.ca            
Civ Eng 93              |     fmolmstead@civil.watstar.uwaterloo.ca
University of Waterloo	|----------------------------------------------
Waterloo, Ontario	| "God knows if we didn't have this bridge we'd   
CANADA			| give them something else to do"
                        | from the Bridge on the River Kwai 
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