5 ms·

How could someone "see" the citizenships of the non-white students? And that's not racist?

graycat 14y ago
Easy: The culture of a country, as far as I can tell, any country, takes a lot of time, years, mostly decades, and effort to learn. In any country, someone who recently arrived, to natives, obviously has not been there very long. It's easy enough in the US to spot people recently from Canada, Mexico, England, France, Italy, Germany, and Australia; spotting people recently from India and Taiwan is much easier. So, when the people clearly have not been in the US long enough to become US citizens, then that is easy to tell. Does that answer your question?
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  Yes, but not in the way you think it does. It mostly tells me you haven't been around a wide variety of people. Live in any major US city and you'll meet thousands of citizens with heavy accents and atypical fashion sense (ever been to Brooklyn, or most of LA)? And there are lots of non-citizens that have lived in the US for years and blend in perfectly - many of the folks in my office are not US citizens, but as a natural-born American I'd be hard pressed to say which just by looking at them. If you could do better than 50% success - random guessing - in looking at my workplace or college class, I'd be surprised.
  - graycat 14y ago
    Interesting, but I'm still correct: Again, if a person A who has been in the US for a long time and has gotten good with US 'culture' sees an adult B who has not been in the US long enough to qualify for US citizenship, then person A will detect person B as an immigrant and non-US citizen easily. Your point is that this detection can also be made by some non-US citizens who have been in the US for a long time. True but does not conflict with what I wrote. You are straining to find something wrong with what I wrote. Sorry, I wrote nothing wrong.
    - tomkarlo 14y ago
      I don't need to strain: what you're saying - that you can look a bunch of people, and based on their faces and clothing, decide they're not American - is racist. In fact, it's pretty close to the canonical example of racist. What I'm trying to explain is that there are lots of people who are US citizens that your test would fail with. They're native-born, but they don't happen to be white and/or they don't happen to dress like you. Just because someone isn't white and/or completely culturally assimilated doesn't mean they're less American or even second or third generation - we've been making that mistake for a few hundred years, be it with the Irish, Italians, Chinese, etc... I say that as someone who knows lots of third or later generation Americans who still get asked "what country they're from" by folks making the same mistake.
      - graycat 14y ago
        "I don't need to strain: what you're saying - that you can look a bunch of people, and based on their faces and clothing, decide they're not American - is racist." No I didn't. In your straining, you are claiming a stronger statement than I made. Again, yet again, one more time, this time just for you, and read carefully, I said that if some person X has been in the US for a time too short to become a US citizen, then a US citizen can easily detect that person X is an immigrant. In particular, there were years where a US citizen could walk into a STEM class and on the first day conclude that the majority of the class was recent immigrants, conclude that he didn't 'fit in', turn, and walk out. Why could a US citizen do this? Because the class had a lot of immigrants only recently here. If the students in the class had all been in the US for a long time, then a US citizen could not accurately detect that they were immigrants. Or, if you are a medical doctor working in an emergency room and a person comes in bleeding profusely, then you can detect right away that he has a serious medical problem. But this does not mean that you can detect everyone with a serious medical problem right away; indeed, the ER and the hospital are packed with diagnostic means for detecting who has a medical problem. That is, being able to detect an obvious medical problem is not the same as being able to detect all medical problems. You mentioned that some people in the US for a long time and non-US citizens can make the same detection. True. I did not say that a US citizen could detect all immigrants. It's a simple matter of a logical statement and has nothing to do with racism. You are not reading the logic correctly. Uh, try to avoid courses in advanced mathematics based on theorems and proofs.

Easy: The culture of a country, as far as I can tell, any country, takes a lot of time, years, mostly decades, and effort to learn. In any country, someone who recently arrived, to natives, obviously has not been there very long. It's easy enough in the US to spot people recently from Canada, Mexico, England, France, Italy, Germany, and Australia; spotting people recently from India and Taiwan is much easier. So, when the people clearly have not been in the US long enough to become US citizens, then that is easy to tell. Does that answer your question?

tomkarlo 14y ago
Yes, but not in the way you think it does. It mostly tells me you haven't been around a wide variety of people. Live in any major US city and you'll meet thousands of citizens with heavy accents and atypical fashion sense (ever been to Brooklyn, or most of LA)? And there are lots of non-citizens that have lived in the US for years and blend in perfectly - many of the folks in my office are not US citizens, but as a natural-born American I'd be hard pressed to say which just by looking at them. If you could do better than 50% success - random guessing - in looking at my workplace or college class, I'd be surprised.
- graycat 14y ago
  Interesting, but I'm still correct: Again, if a person A who has been in the US for a long time and has gotten good with US 'culture' sees an adult B who has not been in the US long enough to qualify for US citizenship, then person A will detect person B as an immigrant and non-US citizen easily. Your point is that this detection can also be made by some non-US citizens who have been in the US for a long time. True but does not conflict with what I wrote. You are straining to find something wrong with what I wrote. Sorry, I wrote nothing wrong.
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    I don't need to strain: what you're saying - that you can look a bunch of people, and based on their faces and clothing, decide they're not American - is racist. In fact, it's pretty close to the canonical example of racist. What I'm trying to explain is that there are lots of people who are US citizens that your test would fail with. They're native-born, but they don't happen to be white and/or they don't happen to dress like you. Just because someone isn't white and/or completely culturally assimilated doesn't mean they're less American or even second or third generation - we've been making that mistake for a few hundred years, be it with the Irish, Italians, Chinese, etc... I say that as someone who knows lots of third or later generation Americans who still get asked "what country they're from" by folks making the same mistake.
    - graycat 14y ago
      "I don't need to strain: what you're saying - that you can look a bunch of people, and based on their faces and clothing, decide they're not American - is racist." No I didn't. In your straining, you are claiming a stronger statement than I made. Again, yet again, one more time, this time just for you, and read carefully, I said that if some person X has been in the US for a time too short to become a US citizen, then a US citizen can easily detect that person X is an immigrant. In particular, there were years where a US citizen could walk into a STEM class and on the first day conclude that the majority of the class was recent immigrants, conclude that he didn't 'fit in', turn, and walk out. Why could a US citizen do this? Because the class had a lot of immigrants only recently here. If the students in the class had all been in the US for a long time, then a US citizen could not accurately detect that they were immigrants. Or, if you are a medical doctor working in an emergency room and a person comes in bleeding profusely, then you can detect right away that he has a serious medical problem. But this does not mean that you can detect everyone with a serious medical problem right away; indeed, the ER and the hospital are packed with diagnostic means for detecting who has a medical problem. That is, being able to detect an obvious medical problem is not the same as being able to detect all medical problems. You mentioned that some people in the US for a long time and non-US citizens can make the same detection. True. I did not say that a US citizen could detect all immigrants. It's a simple matter of a logical statement and has nothing to do with racism. You are not reading the logic correctly. Uh, try to avoid courses in advanced mathematics based on theorems and proofs.