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posted by
LaminatorX
on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:30AM
from the Xenophobia:-the-Universal-Language dept.
from the Xenophobia:-the-Universal-Language dept.
fx_68 writes:
"A sharp rise in the foreign population has ratcheted up racial tensions. Does Singapore have a problem with xenophobia? It seems that barely a month goes by these days without news reports highlighting friction between Singaporeans and foreign workers in the tiny multi-ethnic city-state."
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You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.
-- Ayn Rand
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AnythingGoes on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:37AM
Go to Hong Kong and ask about mainland China migration..
Go to New Zealand and ask about Pacific Islander migration
Go to UK and ask about Eastern European migration.
Go to Japan and ask about other nationalities migration
Go to San Francisco and ask about Google and Apple employees :)
The natives in every country are always resentful of anyone who comes into their country and takes away jobs, housing and introduces change into their environment.
(Score: 1) by rmdingler on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:57AM
But realistically, the influx of population due to immigration has worked splendidly well for the Americans.
Zero population growth in the Western nations exterminates economic expansion.
(Score: 1) by compro01 on Thursday February 27 2014, @04:04AM
Sure, but the USA still had the Know Nothings and their unfortunately more successful modern decedents.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2014, @04:30AM
Economies built and designed with the requirement of an ever-growing population are failed economies.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:15AM
Put more simply, any society that bases its foundation on unsustainable principles and methods will fail.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday February 27 2014, @12:37PM
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
I think I should just make that line my
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:58AM
The natives in every country are always resentful of anyone who comes into their country and takes away jobs
Well, except for sub-minimum wage janitorial, agricultural, and housekeeping jobs.
Of course in Canada they have a booming expansion on that idea: bring in cheap Chinese miners instead of training and hiring "expensive" Canadian ones. Or, even better, bring in cheap Filipino workers to work the drive through windows at Tim Horton's coffee shops.
Seven percent unemployment, and steadily falling average wages, and we're supposed to believe that there's no-one in the country who would do these jobs?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:21AM
They're right though. Nobody will do those jobs precisely because they don't pay living wages. They literally can't do the jobs because it's not a sustainable way of life.
The immigrants *can* do it precisely because their way of life and standards of living are dramatically lower and similar to their countries of origin. Combine that with a culture that allows entire families jammed into small housing, or multi-family inside barely single-family, and cultures that are more "cooperative" and you have a recipe whereby they *can* make do with less. It's a skillset they possess in abundance, and I don't demean them in any way for it. Western civilization has seem to have lost the whole idea of community and family.
The corporations argument is perfect and correct. They can get it done cheaper, and they are paying what the job is worth.
Real tragedy is the long term effects on society by operating that way which will only create a race inevitably towards the bottom in which people are not getting paid anymore, unemployment actually increases, and those greedy people at the top making the decisions find their way of life finally impacted. Just far too late for them to change it back.
They leave the country and escape to another with money.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sigterm on Thursday February 27 2014, @04:00AM
I beg to differ. Try being a Filipino in the U.S. vs. being an American in the Philippines ("hey, Joe!"). Both the level of national pride and the extent to which national identity is tied to race or ethnicity varies a lot across the globe. Furthermore, nationalism or even racism does not necessarily lead to violence. Japan is an interesting example; their society is widely known for its xenophobia, but as far as I know, violence against immigrants is almost unheard of.
As the article states (yes, I read it, but then I'm new here), Singapore has long been known as a society where race is a major issue. It also turns out that currently, an astounding 38% of the population are immigrants. I'd say that's a pretty unique combination, and one that is likely to cause conflicts.
(Score: 1) by rts008 on Thursday February 27 2014, @04:57AM
Yeah, anytime you introduce that many immigrants in that short amount of time, there are going to be conflicts.
Adding fuel to that fire was the plans to increase immigration even more, to the point of immigrants making up half of the total population.
All of this going on in a confined area(a city-state) with a high population density: 7,540/km2 or 19,562/sq mi (3rd highest by nations)...sounds like a powder keg to me.
Hopefully it will somehow be defused before it explodes...'Singapore Spring' sounds more like a tropical cocktail that should be served with one of those little paper umbrellas, than an uprising. ;-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday February 27 2014, @04:22AM
Very true.
The only place I've been called Honkie was by an ethnic Eskimo in Pt Barrow Alaska.
And no mater what your Hawaiian friends tell you Haole is a racial invective.
And the term Gentrification is pure unadulterated Black Racism (also used by stupid whites thinking they are oh so liberated).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Thursday February 27 2014, @04:31AM
And no mater what your Hawaiian friends tell you Haole is a racial invective.
Born and raised haole here.
Yes it can be a slur. But context is everything. "Fucking haole!" is an invective. But "haole" by itself is descriptive, not pejorative. Just like popolo, kepani, pake, kolea, etc are also descriptive but can be pejorative if used that way. Hawaii does not a single majority ethnic group therefore racism doesn't really work the same way there as most other places.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 27 2014, @02:46PM
And the term Gentrification is pure unadulterated Black Racism (also used by stupid whites thinking they are oh so liberated).
I'm sorry, I don't see how "gentrification" is racist at all. It's a term that describes a process whereby a run-down urban (usually downtown) area (frequently called a "ghetto") is transformed when richer people start moving in and cleaning the place up, building nice buildings, and driving the prices for everything up. Pretty quickly, all the poor people who used to live there are forced out, because they can't afford the rapidly-rising rents.
It's not racist, and it doesn't even have a bias as far as I can tell, it's just a term to describe a process or phenomenon. Gentrification does indeed suck for the original (poor) residents, but what can you do? Since they're usually renters, not owners, their rent is controlled by landlords, who will rent at the market price. When the place is more in-demand, the rents go up, so poor people are forced out, as richer people move in. You could halt the process by not letting the richer people move in, but then the place stays run-down and people complain how awful it is that all these poor people have to live in such a slum. Move in a bunch of rich people and the prices rise, and now people complain how it's awful the poor people can't afford it any more. Some places try to mitigate this with rent-control laws, but it's mainly a band-aid, leading to fancy and expensive high-rise condos next to run-down older buildings with rent-controlled apartments; the rich people live in the fancy building and the poor people in the run-down building. The run-down building's landlord eventually figures out how to sell his building off (because the land is so valuable now), the people are thrown out, it's demolished, and a new fancy building is built in its place, with high rents.
We can bemoan the problems here all we want, but regardless of your feelings, the phenomenon is real, and it needs a term to label it, for efficiency's sake (the same reason we make up words to describe anything else, like "hurricane", 'continent", "subduction", etc). "Gentrification" is the term most people have adopted for it.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:59PM
That may be how you interpret it, but when an angry black man uses the term
he does not mean what you think he means. He means "white gentrification" and he's being
as polite as he can stomach when he leaves of the "white" part.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014 /02/27/spike-lee-gentrification-expletives/5859995 / [usatoday.com]i nflux-will-erase-West-Oakland-history-4874291.php [sfgate.com]
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fear-white-
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 27 2014, @09:09PM
Um, I think it's somewhat obvious, given the demographics in this country, that gentrification is frequently going to result in poor minorities getting pushed out and richer (usually) white people moving in.
Spike Lee's rant basically echoes the complaints natives have when immigrants move in in large numbers. "They don't respect the culture" (which is true), they're changing things too much, etc. In the case of gentrification, it's even worse, because the "natives" end up getting pushed out because they can't afford the jacked-up rents that result from higher demand.
Personally, I don't have an answer for it. This is what happens when a bunch of people move into a new area and start asserting themselves around the natives. The natives' culture is cast aside or ignored, things are changed, since the newcomers have voting rights, they change the local government and laws more to their liking, etc. The only way to stop it is to not allow new people to move into a certain area, or to place limits on how many new people can move in, or limits on what kind of people can move in. But when you do these things, you're usually labeled a "xenophobe", "racist", etc. So is Spike Lee a racist xenophobe? Or are his concerns for the preservation of the local (black) culture valid? Usually, this argument is about (mostly white) culture vs. immigrants (either Latin American, in the US, or Muslim, in Europe), and the natives are always called "xenophobic" and "racist". So are the black people complaining about gentrification also xenophobic racists?
(Score: 1) by morgauxo on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:22PM
Natives in SanFransisco? Which tribe? Or are they mexican?