Super Moderator TheRedneckProfessor Posted March 16, 2014 Super Moderator Posted March 16, 2014 A couple of years ago, we had a problem with some stray dogs running around our neighborhood. When they got through the fence into our backyard, my wife, fearing for the safety of our son, and for the rabbits we kept in hutches in the backyard, called the police. They told her it was not their problem and she should call animal control. Mrs. Redneck dutifully called City Animal Control and was informed that she would have to speak to County Animal Control instead. Upon reaching County, Mrs. Redneck was told that City had misinformed her and that, because we live in the city, City Animal Control had jurisdiction. Frustrated, my wife again called the police, who held to the original statement that it was not their problem. This happened three more times over the next few weeks, despite my efforts to shore up the breaches in our fence. That summer, Mrs. Redneck and I went travelling around Europe for a few weeks and upon our return home, our neighbor, who had been looking after our rabbits for us, had the sad duty of informing us that the strays had again gotten through the fence and that this time they had knocked one of our hutches over and killed the rabbit inside. Mrs. Redneck informed the police, and both City and County Animal Control, all of whom offered to do nothing about it. After that, we saw neither hide nor hair of those dogs for about six months, until early one morning I was awakened by the sound of their barking at the hutches in our backyard again. Angered, I called the police and reported the presence of the strays again. Within 10 minutes, there were 3 squad cars and a half-dozen police officers chasing the dogs around the neighborhood. Why was my one phone call so successful when my wife only ever got the run-around from these people? It’s simple; my wife speaks with an accent. My wife is Russian, or to be more precise, she is an ethnic Ukrainian who speaks Russian as her first language. Despite doing the best she can to assimilate to American life and the English language, she still has a heavy accent and is prone to mispronounce words and sometimes use them incorrectly. The response of the police and both branches of our local animal control toward her phone calls is, sadly, not an uncommon one. She deals with such behavior on a constant basis. Often, people just hear her speaking and automatically decide it’s not worth their time to deal with her. I have watched, sometimes in silent anger, at the faces of other people immediately change in response to hearing her and my son speaking to one another in Russian. Even some of my family members have made comments about them speaking their weird gobbledygook with each other. This is a form of discrimination, to which my wife is continuously subjected. Normally, discrimination is thought of in terms of skin color or in response to radically different manners of dress and personal appearance (such as a person feeling uncomfortable whenever a man enters the room wearing a robe and a turban). But my wife is discriminated against based upon nothing more than the language she speaks and the difficulty she has expressing herself in the language of America. Fortunately, we have several international markets in the area where we can do most of our grocery shopping in an environment in which most of the employees and customers are not native English speakers. And I know that my wife’s favorite day of the week is Saturday, when we take our son to the Russian school and she can finally have opportunities to express herself in her native tongue. But the anger and frustration that we both feel whenever people blow her off on account of her accent is sometimes overwhelming. I have seen people patronize her, condescend to her, and sometimes just blatantly ignore her and I get pissed. This is a country of immigrants; why do people recoil from her? Now, I’m sure most of you are wondering where I am going with this and why I am even posting it. The reason is because it is god’s fault that Mrs. Redneck is treated in such a cavalier manner by people in her adopted country. 1Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. Genesis chapter 11* There was a time when everyone spoke the same language. This commonality among humanity caused the people to want to work together and cooperate with each other. Their cooperation led them to want to form civilizations to further enhance their lives, productivity, and mutual benefit. So they set to work and built themselves a city; and in that city they built a tower. Then the lord came down to see what people were up to. As it turns out, the lord wasn’t very happy about people cooperating with each other. He was afraid that if humanity continued to work together, then they would be able to achieve anything they set their minds to. Behind this fear was the sound knowledge that if “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”, then eventually, humanity would have no need for god. god’s pride would not allow for that, oh no. So, the lord decided to confuse their languages in order to stop them from being able to work together for their own common good. god wanted them divided, separated, and scattered over the face of the earth. It is interesting to note that the text does not tell us whether god made sure that the members of individual families all ended up with the same language so that at least they could stay together. But since he is the kind of god who always thinks his plans through, I’m sure he must have done. It is also interesting to note that the text says nothing about changing anybody’s skin color, by which one would assume that not only did the people have language in common, but they also shared a common pigmentation. Thus, discrimination based on complexion must have originated some time later. However, linguistic based discrimination is still prevalent today, as Mr. and Mrs. Redneck can both attest. And god is clearly to blame for creating it when he confused the languages. Far from being a loving creator, far from being a heavenly father, god is a cruel tyrant who desires to drive wedges between people. He cannot abide the thought of people working together and getting along. He wants to see his “children” scattered around the face of the earth. He will stop at nothing to keep us from achieving all that we dream, all that we desire, and all that our potential as humans holds. And just to prove it, he cursed our languages so that we would not be able to communicate with one another. god is the architect of discrimination. *Text pulled from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11:1-9
sdelsolray Posted March 16, 2014 Posted March 16, 2014 (snip) … god is the architect of discrimination. … Why infect your story (which is based in reality) with fiction? Assume, for the moment, that this "god" you mention does not exist. A nonexistent thing cannot be the cause of discrimination. Rather, only something that actually exists could be the cause of discrimination. Some suggest that the original cause of discrimination was biological evolution when the cell wall became a dominant feature in carbon based life on Earth. Assuming linguistic discrimination exists, which is your premise, is not a practical solution in your situation simply involve you being the one that reports such things to the authorities, instead of your wife? Granted, that does not address the concerns and anger you have about the discrimination, but it does solve it on a case by case basis. Of course, there's always Judge Judy. Submit your case to her, get yourselves on the TV and she will likely side with you and your wife. (The previous sentence was written in an attempt to inject some humor into the situation).
Super Moderator TheRedneckProfessor Posted March 16, 2014 Author Super Moderator Posted March 16, 2014 (snip) … god is the architect of discrimination. … Why infect your story (which is based in reality) with fiction? Assume, for the moment, that this "god" you mention does not exist. A nonexistent thing cannot be the cause of discrimination. Rather, only something that actually exists could be the cause of discrimination. Some suggest that the original cause of discrimination was biological evolution when the cell wall became a dominant feature in carbon based life on Earth. Assuming linguistic discrimination exists, which is your premise, is not a practical solution in your situation simply involve you being the one that reports such things to the authorities, instead of your wife? Granted, that does not address the concerns and anger you have about the discrimination, but it does solve it on a case by case basis. Of course, there's always Judge Judy. Submit your case to her, get yourselves on the TV and she will likely side with you and your wife. (The previous sentence was written in an attempt to inject some humor into the situation). To begin with, I do not believe that a god exists. I wrote this on the premise that the god of the bible exists and that the story of Babel is true in order to show yet another horrific attribute of the god of the bible. I believe that both discrimination and linguistic differences were features that evolved in humans (tribe or herd mentality). In case it's not clear, the story of Babel is yet another myth in the bible. Secondly, I do often make such calls on my wife's behalf. The reason I did not do so in the episode discussed above was that the dogs had a nagging talent for showing up when I was at work.
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