The site in Fukuoka is only the second power plant of its type in the world, harnessing the power of osmosis to run a desalination plant in the city
The site in Fukuoka is only the second power plant of its type in the world, harnessing the power of osmosis to run a desalination plant in the city
Fuk u oka(y)?
i recognize you probably have no racist intention.
non-English speakers and bilingual English speakers, including those who speak Asian languages, often experience that type of mocking of their language. if it happened once to one person in the history of earth, it’s not racist. but the collective effect over generations and across thousands of experiences creates accumulative pressure on specific identity groups of people. the pressure and related coping/denial behaviors can manifest in unpredictable and inconsistent ways which may be why not everyone understands that racial mocking causes measurable harm.
tl;dr
it really helps if you would not do that. even more so if you could help stop others who you observe doing the same.
Wasn’t a racist comment. Words that sound different in different languages can be some of the fun of learning languages and all cultures do this. When I lived in Germany, there is the classic example of “gift” sounding like poison. In Japan good luck introducing yourself if your name is Gary - It sounds like diarrhea.
Since you are passing judgment, id say it would really help if you didn’t see everything through a racist lens. It implies a degree of projection. Its ok to take some innocent pleasure out of things like language - it works in all directions and does not involve othering unless it’s done with some malicious intent.
if you would reread my comment, you would see i said twice that i don’t think you are trying to be racist.
however, the impact of harmlessly-intentioned statements is completely determined in the mind of the listener.
if you feel i judged you, that’s an example of how my intentions are out of sync with the consequence on your feelings. i apologize. it’s also reinforces my point.
to clarify, you might originate a statement, make a comment, then it leaves your mind and your body. the affect on you is done and any meaning in the words is frozen. people, myself included, tend to think our intended meaning is more explicit (denotation vs connotation) in our words than it actually is.
like a pebble in the air, that comment can land in the ground and not touch anyone, not trigger anyone’s feelings.
for comments about a person or about culture that’s tied to people, it’s hard to argue that no one could ever have any feelings about it.
i understand you’re implying that comments about funny sounds in languages are abstract and/or unavoidable, and that it’s harmless to enjoy. I’ve also made such jokes, and I’m not immune to my own criticism. and just because this type of joke has happened for generations, that doesn’t mean it’s an unalterable process of the physical universe. if a human does it, that human can stop it, make it better, make it worse, etc.
just imagine your native language being mocked everyday, by the majority group surrounding you, it started before you were born, over time you can sense that it affects your family members, reduced their confidence, maybe they’re highly educated but for some reason they don’t achieve “success”, whatever that means for your culture. maybe they were bullied in school or at work.
you might think I’m suddenly bringing up fiction and distorting the issues. scientific research has proven that culturally related mocking is linked with bullying and has racialized effects on the targeted people. racialized effects meaning, among other things, giving them the sense that if they try to participate in certain areas of life, like employment, applying for home loans, dating, politics, showbusiness, they might be rejected. that sense has also proven to be accurate in the sense that (in USA) people who have been mocked in relation to their race definitively do get rejected in all fields and endeavors more than non-mocked (majority) people. that’s after adjusting for income level, education level, skill gaps, language barriers, etc.
again, to repeat, i know you probably didn’t make the comment thinking “hey what’s something racist i can do”
wha