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Julian Sanchez | August 17, 2005

Jeff Taylor praises a little judicious cultural imperialism.

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|8.17.05 @ 9:39AM|#

...then it seems rather counterproductive to bend over backward to help those visitors cocoon themselves in their native cultures while in America.

Heh, that reminds me of the scene in Better Off Dead when the mother cooks all those "French" foods for Monique. Frawnche bread anyone?

I'm not sure multiculturalism necessarily degenerates into thinking your own culture is worse. Doesn't that mean that you no longer believe in multiculturalism? I don't think that most people who believe in "multiculturalism" ever believe that all cultures are morally equal, just that a given culture isn't immoral simply because it's different. That's why it often leads to a denegration of one's own culture, because it doesn't actually presuppose that all value judgements are wrong, just that one variable should be discounted.

|8.17.05 @ 9:49AM|#

Off-Topic: Has anyone seen this from yesterday?

But the evidence given to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) by police officers and eyewitnesses and leaked to ITV News shows that far from leaping a ticket barrier and fleeing from police, as was initially reported, he was filmed on CCTV calmly entering the station and picking up a free newspaper before boarding the train.

It has now emerged that Mr de Menezes:

� was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;

� was unaware he was being followed;

� was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;

� never ran from the police;

� and did not jump the ticket barrier.

But the revelation that will prove most uncomfortable for Scotland Yard was that the 27-year-old electrician had already been restrained by a surveillance officer before being shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

The documents reveal that a member of the surveillance team, who sat nearby, grabbed Mr de Menezes before he was shot: "I heard shouting which included the word 'police' and turned to face the male in the denim jacket.

"He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the CO19 [firearms squad] officers ... I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side. I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been previously sitting ... I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away on to the floor of the carriage."

The leaked documents and pictures showed the failures in the police operation from the time Mr de Menezes left home.

A surveillance officer admitted in a witness statement that he was unable to positively identify Mr de Menezes as a suspect because the officer had been relieving himself when the Brazilian left the block of flats where he lived.

It's looking more and more like the British equivalent of Driving While Black: Looking Like A Paki

|8.17.05 @ 10:22AM|#

I couldn't agree more. It's bad enough that Saudi dictator kings rule this way in their own countries--I certainly don't see why we need to let them dictate how we will operate here. VTech missed a giant opportunity to stand up for universal rights.

And calling the segregation voluntary is laughable. Who would really believe that any one of those Saudi women could voluntarily join the men's class without severe repercussions once she leaves American soil?

Amy Phillips|8.17.05 @ 10:24AM|#

My question is whether the Saudi visitors would have cancelled the trip had they been pressed to attend co-ed classes in violation of their social and religious norms against gender mixing. I suspect that a fair number of them, especially the women, would have declined to attend or been pressured or forced to cancel the trip. At that point, it's not a choice between cowtowing to their cultural sexism and enlightening them with our egalitarian ways. It's a choice between bending to their cultural requirements and having them cancel the trip. Unless the visitors spent all of their non-class time cloistered in single-gender groups, they likely got to see a much higher degree than they would see at home of gender equality, unfettered pop culture, freedom of expression, and all those great American values that most of us think other people should agree with. If it means they get a little exposure to what a nonsectarian world looks like, and that Americans get a little exposure to their culture, I'd certainly choose segregating the classes over cancelling the trip.

drf|8.17.05 @ 11:00AM|#

"That sounds awful lot like apologizing for Blacksburg not being Jeddah"

[insert joke here]

|8.17.05 @ 11:08AM|#

Amy, your point is well made and logical, but the situation still grates, hard. We don't know that that would be the case. I would prefer to not bend to their medieval requirements, and to tell them in no uncertain terms why, and if they went elsewhere, so be it.

Otherwise, we (or, in this case, V Tech) are complicit in their virtual enslavement of women.

|8.17.05 @ 11:39AM|#

I find it funny that only western culture has the opinion that all cultures are equally valid. Speak to a middle eastern or a Japanese person and they will tell you that their cultures are superior.

At least that was the way all of my wife's foreign exchange students saw the world.

|8.17.05 @ 11:58AM|#

Wait, are freedom, democracy, and human rights uniquely western ideas, or are they universals?

|8.17.05 @ 12:07PM|#

joe,

It probably depends on whether you consider Ancient Greece part of the West. Before then, society was pretty rigid in its structure.

|8.17.05 @ 12:16PM|#

I have to applaud the UVA academics for allowing the Saudis to be Saudis. In this way, american students got a good look at these people without having to go to Saudi Arabia. American students got to see the ridigity and intolerance of the Saudis firsthand. That's educational!

|8.17.05 @ 1:55PM|#

Good points made in the article. I�ve taught ESL for seven years and at one point had to draw the line on the whole �bending over backwards to please the small percentage of Saudis� who made up the student body when I was told to respect their culture by not addressing the Saudi women with direct questions in conversation class of all places. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting on a plane and coming to the U.S. to learn English and not be allowed to converse in conversation class. The questions were rerouted and translated by their male relatives and husbands into Arabic and then the process reversed in hushed tones. At the end I would get a snippet, from the said related male, of the attempt to answer my question translated back into English�if and only if it wasn�t personal question�and try to figure out whether the targeted student had grasped the day�s language structure and understood how to use it in context. I refuse to teach that way today and have had no trouble dealing with the many reasonable Saudis--group who makes up that moderate core of muslims without whose support we have no chance of marginalizing terrorists enough to defeat them. I think that the argument that such a no-bullshit American teaching approach drives away potential students is off the mark. I think far more students are drawn by the prospect of immersing themselves in another culture�or maybe I�m being too optimistic after all.

Jason Pappas|8.17.05 @ 9:46PM|#

Wait, are freedom, democracy, and human rights uniquely western ideas, or are they universals?

There's no contradiction between the two. Is the Law of Gravity part of Western Science or is it universal? Both: identified by men of the scientific tradition and methodology of the West, it applies to every object.

Thus, individual rights, arising from nature is universal and applicable to every human being. As a distinctive part of Western tradition, its identification was first fully understood in our culture.

I think this is what is missing from the debate. It is nature - not convention - that's the key. Getting that across makes it seems silly for a developing culture to deny itself the benefit of our recognition of rights just as it is silly for it to deny itself the knowledge of calculus, physics, etc.

What do others think?

|8.18.05 @ 9:47AM|#

Jason,

I think that teaching Japanese and African students about gravity has nothing to do with westernizing them, and that any attempt to impute rah rah Christendom cheerleading into physics lessons would not only drive off people from other cultures, but would saddle the truth with enormous amounts of unnecessary, even counterproductive baggage.

I think that the only reason anyone would suggest such a thing would be if they valued boosterism over the transmission of the truth.