Of course, there's no doubt that racism is alive and well here in the Under States as well.
A similar issue comes up here with annoying frequency, and that is the tired old debate about making English the "chosen language." Every town, county and state that yanks on that chain always has the "if they want to come here, they should learn English" argument, and it's so obviously race-based that you hardly know where to start to argue it. The people who use the anti-tax argument as an excuse for this attitude point out that having ESL classes in schools gets expensive, which of course is hard to deny. In the classroom, I try to head this one off at the pass by pointing out how well bilingual children do as far as some basic Piagetian tasks like understanding symbolism, since in their world, they're accustomed at a young age to the idea that if there are two different words for the same thing, then the word must be a symbol. It does help to distract from that knee-jerk response about "them," and steers it into a more productive area. I recommend it. Beth Benoit Granite State College (and now!) Plymouth State University New Hampshire ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 11:21 AM Subject: [tips] Herouxville and what's in a name (was: Progressive Canadians) Rick Stevens said: >Once again, we Americans can look to the Great White North and aspire to > their free and progressive social policies. > OTTAWA (Reuters) - Immigrants wishing to live in the small Canadian town of Herouxville, Quebec, must not stone women to death in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them... http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070131/od_nm/stoning1_dc_1 While the list has had some fun with this item, everyone was too polite to point out that what it really indicated was that racism is alive and well in small-town Quebec. The more sensational of the items prohibited by this town council declaration are, of course, already criminal offenses in Canada and their frequency of occurrence here approaches zero. In addition, there is little danger that any Moslems are likely to want to move to this small, White, Catholic community in the middle of nowhere. I seriously doubt whether any Herouxvillians have ever even met a Moslem. The point of their declaration was clearly to point out how much better they are than those funny foreigners whom, they fear, threaten their way of life. Here's another example that lack of sensitivity to minority groups in Quebec is not entirely absent. http://tinyurl.com/2y9fun Route 143 runs right through Lennoxville and crosses the river in question just a few km south of here. In defense of the locals, I have to say they they have always used a more respectful term. It was those horse's as*es up in Quebec City (site of the provincial legislature and the committee in charge of place names) who insisted that the name revert to what they claimed was its historically correct version. This is old news, BTW. I'm happy tto say that common sense prevailed and the name is now gone. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 0C8 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
