psychoceramics: Great Han Chauvinism and language teaching

[David Fleck <k--@n--.com>]

The latest from one of my personal favorite usenet posters, New Zealand's
own Peter Zohrab.  My wife & I were in NZ a few months ago, and one of our
fondest hopes for the trip was that maybe Peter would cross our path;
alas, it was not to be.
Mixed in with Peter's usual hateful spew are some verging-on-loony
discussions of the Chinese conspiracy to.. to... do something, I'm not
sure what.  And all, apparently, because some store clerk looked at him
funny.  Apologies for the length.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject:      Great Han Chauvinism and language teaching
From:         "Peter Zohrab" <z--@i--.co.nz>
Date:         1998/04/17
Message-ID:   <8--@d-->
Newsgroups: 
nz.general,nz.politics,nz.soc,soc.culture.new-zealand,talk.politics, 
talk.politics.china,soc.rights.human,sci.lang,sci.edu

Race Relations Conciliator's Office,
P.O. Box 6163,
Wellesley Street,
Auckland 1.

Re: Great Han Chauvinism in New Zealand

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am publicising this letter as an open letter.  This is because I have
little confidence that the matters I raise will be dealt with fairly, and
because these are issues that need to be discussed openly, in order to lift
the veil of secrecy and hypocrisy which enables distortions, unfairness and
oppression to flourish.

The Race Relations Conciliator is Asian (South Asian), and I therefore
consider him to be biased against Maoris and (to a lesser extent) against
Whites, as well as biased in favour of Asians.  Anyone who knows anything
about the racial situation of the Pacific knows that the so-called
"indigenous" people get on with Asians even worse than they do with Whites.
This is born out by the recent high-profile race-relations office operations
in favour of Whites against Maoris and in favour of Asians against Whites.
I have never heard of a single race relations case against Asians, in favour
of Maoris or Whites.

I have two specific complaints (one new and one old).  But I will start with
my more general complaint about the state of Chinese language teaching in
New Zealand.

The Term "Great Han Chauvinism" (similar to what I have seen referred to on
the Internet as "Chinese Supremacism") was used by Red Guards in the
Cultural Revolution in China to attack what they saw as oppression of ethnic
minorities there.  Nowadays, you only hear about the bad side of the
Cultural Revolution. China now has a much- enhanced status on the world
stage, and its leaders talk about the Three Gorges Dam project as
demonstrating the superiority of the Chinese race.

I am a teacher of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language, and I was told
(indirectly, of course) by my boss, early on in my teaching of Chinese, that
I would have to be subservient to Chinese people, or I would have to leave
New Zealand.  My family has been in New Zealand for 140-odd years, but there
are lots of people in New Zealand who see the job of a teacher of Chinese as
sucking up to the Chinese community, because of the economic clout that the
Chinese community are very happy to use.

The Newsletter of the New Zealand-Chinese Friendship Association once said
that I was in charge of the Chinese course at the Correspondence School.  I
never told anyone that, so it must have been my Chinese colleague at the
time who told the Chinese Secretary that.  I wrote to the Association asking
them to correct that error, but my letter was totally ignored.  My
impression is that you can only be White and "in charge of" a Chinese course
if all the important decisions are made by your Chinese "subordinates".    I
have taught English as a Foreign Language in two overseas countries, and I
never saw this sort of racist need to control the teaching of English by the
English-speaking community there.

Such people would be quite happy for me to be forced out of the country if I
don't have the approval of recent immigrants, based on their race.  My White
colleagues teaching Chinese are apparently quite happy to grovel -- "none of
us is safe," as one of them told me many years ago.  One colleague, who
knows Mandarin Chinese, got together with one of my Chinese colleages to put
pressure on me to be more subservient -- with the implied threat that he
could take my job if I wasn't.

Ethnic groups are quite happy to capture foreign language teaching and turn
it into community language teaching,  given a chance.  Scumbags in the
business community are quite happy to encourage them, because they are not
so much interested in getting languages taught as in keeping ethnic groups
happy so that tourism and trade will prosper.  And members of the teaching
"profession" are quite happy to follow the line of least resistance and do
whatever the business community and government see as the most pragmatic
course in this area -- giving in to the most powerful ethnic group or
groups.

The course materials I have been involved in writing are inaccurate, where
my Chinese colleagues wanted to try to cover up Chinese racism.  The wrong
word for "big/high nose" is taught in our course, because my Chinese
colleagues didn't want our students to recognise one of the most common
Chinese racial slurs against Whites if they heard it.  One of my Chinese
colleagues talked to me about this point recently, and she was obviously
shocked to learn that I knew about this racist expression.  Since then, she
got the work-flow rearranged behind my back, when I was away, so that she
could always have the last check on new course materials, in order to make
sure that too much truth and accuracy of that sort didn't slip into the
course.

By the way, some Chinese are so confident of the master-slave relationship
they have with New Zealanders that I even heard a Chinese diplomatic
official lose his temper and burst out with a reference to the "High Noses"
(in English)  from the top table of a conference on economic relations with
Asia that my employers sent me to, in an effort to make me understand that
the point of teaching Chinese was economic, and not educational.  I think
this was the same (Cantonese) diplomat who told me at the Chinese Embassy
one evening that I ought to learn Cantonese.  I am a teacher of Mandarin
Chinese, the thinking goes, and therefore I am the slave of the Chinese
community, and many in the Chinese community don't know Mandarin -- in fact,
they don't like Mandarin -- but, because I am a slave of the Chinese
community, I should learn Cantonese, which is the language of those people.

The basic issue is the myth that "minorities" are powerless victims who
never oppress members of the "majority" (whoever that may be).  I most often
come up against this myth in its most ferocious form: Feminism, but it is
also a racial issue for me in my capacity as a language teacher.  I get it
both ways -- from the naive or hypocritical people who take the line that
Chinese are always "victims" because they are a minority, so I am morally
wrong if  I ever disagree with a Chinese person.  And from the White or
Chinese pure hypocrites, who threaten me with unemployment, a beating,
death, or exile if I'm not subservient enough to people on the basis of
their race. Of course, they are not going to admit that, and there is quite
an industry at my workplace in debriefing people I may have complaints
against, ,and then creating incidents that could be used in court to fudge
the issue subsequently. As my father told me, passing on a message from my
bosses, "you get points for being Chinese."

For example, I once emailed three relevant people and said I wanted a male
Appraiser (for Performance Appraisal), because of certain "vicious and
ruthless" women, whom I didn't name.  Soon afterwards, I saw the only person
I have ever heard speak of "corruption" in tones of loving fondness (one of
the people I had emailed) having a one- to-one conversation with one of my
Chinese colleagues.  He used to be one of the main people who pressured me
to have a subservient relationship to my Chinese colleagues.  He normally
has nothing to do with her, but he probably has an "innocent" explanation
for the meeting.  Soon after that, I found weird things happening to
recordings on tapes I had to check -- things that could conceivably be
twisted later into tales about my racially harassing my Chinese colleagues.

 The individual is as dust in a toilet-bowl, as far as the Politically
Correct  are concerned.  The legislation that set your office up deals in
groups.  In effect, it sets up "good groups" (the minorites) and "bad
groups" (everyone else).  At work and elsewhere, people are constantly
trying to put me into some group or other.  I have been pigeonholed as
"Scottish", "Jewish", "Armenian", "English", "Irish", "Celtic", "Russian",
and "French" at various times by various people.  Politically correct
racists can't cope with individuals.  A  lawyer I went to see on March 18th
apparently thought he had achieved some sort of victory when he maneouvered
me into admitting I was "White".  In politically correct ideology, it is
good to be proud that you're Black, it is good to be proud that you're
Yellow, it is good to be proud that you're Brown -- but it is racist to even
think of yourself as White, let alone be proud of it !

The racism of some members of the Cantonese community has been quite
extraordinary, in my experience.  Not only is Cantonese a radically
different language/dialect from the Mandarin which I teach -- but Cantonese
people are racially distinct from the northern Chinese who are
native-speakers of Mandarin -- as is obvious to the naked eye of anyone who
takes an interest in Asia.  My employers and my family  expected me to be
the slave of every Cantonese vegetable-seller, and come running to my father
and give my side of the story whenever (yet again) I suspected that some
Cantonese racist was fabricating some complaint against me.

I stopped doing this one day when I rushed into a City Council office on
some personal business, with my mouth full of some chewy confectionary.  I
laughed at the receptionist, pointing to my gummed-up mouth -- indicating
that I couldn't speak.  I was still laughing when I went into the office I
had come to do my business in.  Unfortunately, the only other customer (as I
recall) was an exceptionally short Chinese (probably Cantonese) man, and he
looked super-pompous, so I expected he had decided I was laughing at him.
But I wasn't going to run off to my father yet again and explain this
incident, so that he could pass on my explanation to the relevant person.  I
had had enough !

The background to this is that, when my first child was still a toddler, our
family was more sociable than it now is, and we were surrounded by bitches
who were quite obviously hanging on my every word, in order to spread some
malicious gossip about me.  These bitches may have been Thai bitches, or
Chinese bitches, or Philippina bitches, or  Pakeha bitches -- statistically
speaking, there were likely to have been Thai bitches, but I can't remember
at the moment.

Anyway, I decided that, as a proud father, I couldn't express pride in my
son's intelligence, because all my life I have been the target of the
jealousy of thick-shits,  so I decided I would comment on his tallness, when
forced by circumstances to do my Proud Father bit.  Once I had done that, of
course, these bitches spread the word that I looked down on people who were
"vertically challenged", and I was sure that the Cantonese community would
use this in gossip against me.

One of my Chinese colleagues in the teaching of Mandarin once remarked to me
that teaching languages was difficult -- in a way that made it clear that
she meant that you were "owned" by the local ethnic community.    If you are
an ethnic Chinese teacher of Chinese, then you don't have to prove anything
(or not so much-- there are divisions within the Chinese Community, which
I'm sure do cause native-speaker Chinese teachers some problems, as well).
But if you are of another ethnic background, you are expected to show that
you are trying hard to be as "Chinese" as possible.  The person who I think
was probably the most racist of all teachers of Chinese in New Zealand once
complimented me on my being "bicultural" -- the highest praise for a
non-Chinese that she was able to give, I expect.  She also denied that there
were any Chinese Triad gangs operating in New Zealand -- but the Police have
since officially stated that there are some here.

It is true that the local Asian community is consumed by its hatred of
Maoris, and Maoris have established a virtual monopoly of the teaching of
Maori language -- on the grounds that they don't want the Europeans to "take
over" their language.  In the context of this rivalry, it is quite natural
for Asian communities to want to have control over "their" languages, and
the Cantonese are frustrated that the New Zealand Government chose Mandarin,
rather than Cantonese, as the dialect that they would encourage as a subject
in state schools.

For years on end, my only power as a non-Chinese teacher of Mandarin was via
Maori teachers who witnessed Chinese teachers of Mandarin bossing my
superior about.  My impression was that, when this happened, they would use
their clout with top management to reduce the amount of humiliation I was
subjected to.  In other words, White teachers of Chinese were pawns in the
racial hatred between Chinese and Maoris.  China seems to make a big deal
about the humiliation that western colonial powers forced on China in the
past.  However, human nature is such that Chinese people are not always
averse to imposing their own humiliation on others.  There's no point
pretending that this was somehow the result of what the European powers did,
because it is quite clear that China enjoyed humiliating other peoples
before that, and will continue to enjoy doing it in the future.

The new specific incident I want to complain about relates to the Oriental
Goods importing and retail firm of Davis Trading, of Petone, Lower Hutt, for
their treatment of me when I last shopped there on August 9th 1997, which I
consider was racially discriminatory in nature.  I would like to claim that
these people behaved in that way because of attitudes (involving a racial
double standard) which are allowed to flourish by your office -- as
evidenced by your treatment of a related complaint I raised with you some
months ago.  I have waited a long time before making my complaint, because I
have been busy, and I am still subject to pressure and oppression of the
type that I am complaining about in this letter -- which makes it difficult
for me to get all my thoughts on these matters down on paper.

The behaviour at Davis Trading (of which I was a regular customer) involved
all of the few people who were there at the time.  The staff there were not
the regular staff I had seen there previously, and the few customers there
were also unknown to me.  They glared at me for no apparent reason, and the
Chinese boy  (in his late teens or early twenties) at the till stamping my
check-book records-page completely at right angles to the desired line.  All
this was done in an unfriendly manner.  The customers and staff there at the
time were all Chinese and South Asian.  There was another, possibly related,
incident that occurred after I left Davis Trading which I will not mention
at present, because it might seem a bit fanciful.

It is relevant to point out that I have been educated in seven countries, I
have lived in ten countries (including Third-World ones) for at least five
months each, I have visited about sixteen countries in addition to those
ten, I have, at one time or another, studied about 20 languages, I am of
varied ethnic descent, and I have been twice married to people of totally
different ethnic background to myself.  I am also highly interested in
political matters, and I would say confidently that I am better qualified to
talk about these issues than about 99.9% of people in New Zealand, the
Internet, or the World at large.

I should also point out that I was the Secretary of the University of York
(UK) branch of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding in the 1970's,
and was subsequently a member of the New Zealand-China Friendship Society
both in Auckland and Wellington for many years.

The matter I raised with your office earlier was the publication by
"Learning Media" (a government organisation) of the book "Among Ghosts:
Memories and Thoughts of a New Zealand-Chinese Family".  As I said in my
original complaint, the book explains that the word "ghosts" refers, in
part, to Europeans, who are seen as "pale, seemingly 'unreal' people."  I
knew this already, of course, as I have had a long association with East and
Southeast Asia.  Not only is this racist, but its publication by an official
government body is merely one visible symptom of the subservience of the
public sector towards all things Chinese which has oppressed me, as an
individual with human rights, to various degrees ever since I started
teaching Mandarin Chinese in New Zealand.

I want to mention here that I often used to meet with a particulary
ethnocentric Southeast Asian of Chinese descent, who was so racist that he
had a puppet of a white ghost hanging in a public area when he invited White
and Asian guests to his home.  And I was told by a Southeast Asian employee
of a Southesast Asian embassy, whom I knew well, that I didn't look like a
teacher of Chinese.  She was reprimanded by her White husband for this
racist utterance.  Both these Asians are exceptionally proud of their own
language and/or culture, and I would suggest that this attitude -- much
fawned upon by Politically Correct liberals -- is prima facie evidence of
ethnocentrism and racism, because they seem to go hand-in-hand.

Your office replied that it was indeed offensive, but that it did not fall
within the scope of your governing Act, because it was unlikely to lead to
racial hatred -- or words to that effect.  I suppose I have to be grateful
that you aknowledged that I had a right to feel offended -- but I expect
that is only because your office is headed by a South Asian, my surname has
a South Asian ring to it, and the influence of Maoris in your office is
bound to be much greater than the influence of ethnic Chinese activists.
Maoris have been in the complaining game for a long time, whereas ethnic
Chinese groups are only just starting down that road.  The behaviour of the
people at Davis Trading shows that your attitude on this issue is
ill-judged, racist and that you operate a double standard -- being unable to
judge anti-White racism by the same yardstick that you judge White racism.

I applaud your well-publicised treatment of the White who launched a
"Dob-a-Wog" campaign, but I would like you to act just as strongly against
Asian racism.  According to newspaper articles, you obviously don't have the
slightest clue as to how racism arises and spreads.  It arises as a natural
part of human nature, and it spreads when unfairness and double standards --
such as yours -- are allowed to flourish.  So your own racist double
standard is the cause of increasing racism.  It allows ethnic minorities to
think, speak and behave in racist ways, because you and the Politically
Correct philosophy you operate under are colour-blind to it.  In the past,
your office only fully perceived White racism, though I am glad to see in
recent news that Whites can successfully take complaints against Maoris to
your office.  Whites perceive this double standard and this increases and
spreads the racism of the White community.

The mutual racism of many sections of the Maori and Asian communities in New
Zealand is very obvious.  And you can divide the White community roughly
into those who like Asians and those who like Maoris -- the way some people
divide the British into those who like the French and those who like the
Germans, and so on (I guess) for every nation and ethnic group on the globe.
Well-off Whites generally like Asians, because they seem to embody virtues
such as hard work, a low social profile, and low crime and
welfare-dependency rates.  Poor Whites tend to prefer Maoris to Asians,
because Maoris are generally poor and have the virtue of being "victims."
That is, of course, a very sweeping generalisation.

This means that ACT and National are the natural parties of the Asians, and
the Alliance and Labour the natural parties of the Maoris.  New Zealand
First seems, to some extent, to be a party for the well-off section of the
Maori population.  While they are in the Governement, enforced kowtowing
towards Chinese people will be at a minimum -- but Heaven help us if we see
a coalition of ACT and National in the future !

Instead of thinking in Politically Correct cliches about the oppression of
minorities, we need to look at a wider context than just individual
countries.  In the context of the Global Village, and of the deregulated
economy of a New Zealand that is outside of ANZUS, and dependent on foreign
trade and tourism for a large part of its standard of living, the 3 million
people in New Zealand are definitely a minority, in comparison with the 1200
million people of China, for example.  Just as Thailand and the Philippines
got rid of their US military bases, so New Zealand left ANZUS.  All three
countries see China as being at least as important in their futures as the
United States.

In fact, thinking back, I can now understand why a Southeast Asian person I
once knew extremely well said that he/she liked French people in France, but
he/she didn't like French people in his/her home country.  Citizens of
countries which are economically dependent on tourism often behave in
ingratiating ways towards foreigners, including putting up with culturally
offensive behaviour, and this can often lead to a backlash, which is usually
kept under the surface.

There have been anti-Chinese riots of varying severity in Indonesia,
Malaysia and Thailand, and it is simplistic to see the Chinese simply as
innocent victims (as indeed I myself used to do) in all these situations.
It takes two to tango, and the jealousy of one of the parties has its
counterpart in the arrogance of the other party.  This is also true, I'm
sure, of the genocides of the Jews by Nazi Germans, of the Armenians (from
whom I am partly descended) by the Turks, and of the Tutsis by the Hutus in
Rwanda.  In 1987 I described myself to a friend as a "Chinese Jew".  I would
not do that now.  Having experienced the clout that a tiny, affluent ethnic
minority can wield in the workplace and in the community, I have now come to
the conclusion that to see all these minorities simply as innocent victims
of majority genocides is to grossly oversimplify the historical events.

I know well a Southeast Asian (him/herself partly of Chinese descent) who
used to hate the Chinese in his/her home country.  In New Zealand, however,
he/she identifies with the Chinese as being fellow "black-haired" people,
and now he/she hates the Maoris and (to some extent) the Europeans.  He/she
was once uncharaceristically frank and honest, and said, "You know what the
Chinese are like."  That was long time ago, and he/she has never let slip
anything like that again.  At the time, I didn't understand "what the
Chinese are like," but now I think I understand.

There is apparently a Chinese proverb about "smelling a foreigner's fart and
calling it sweet" -- but this sort of attitude has not been a facet of New
Zealand life until fairly recently.  The problem is that a so-called
"foreigner" may in fact be a New Zealand resident or citizen, so they may in
fact form part of an ethnic minority here.  In addition to the bowing and
scraping they attract for economic and strategic reasons, they also get the
benefit of "oppressed minority" status as far as the Politically Correct are
concerned !

In addition, there are lots of people in Australia and New Zealand who
apparently believe very strongly in the "Yellow Peril".  In the past, this
fear apparently expressed itself in discouraging Asian immigration and
racial discrimination of various kinds.  But China, Indonesia, and Japan are
now so powerful economically -- and in terms of military potential --
relative to the 3 million inhabitants of New Zealand -- that the fear of the
"Yellow Peril" now takes the form of exaggerated subservience to anyone
Asian.

So it is not surprising that some Asian people in New Zealand find that
other New Zealanders are very friendly to their faces, but express
apparently racist sentiments in the public arena.  The New Zealanders who
believe in the "Yellow Peril" set such high standards of subservience
towards Asians, that Asians here come to see it as the norm, and other New
Zealanders resent having to meet such high standards of bowing and scraping.

I have seen Asian people on television saying that New Zealand is not as
violent as the USA and not as racist as Australia.  Some New Zealanders in
the business and government sectors have leapt upon this reputation and have
been trying hard to cash in on it as an exploitable asset.  The competition
between Australia and New Zealand for the Asian tourism, investment, and
export market has been so obvious that I have experienced Chinese people
using the hint that they might move to Australia as a lever to get more
concessions in public sector workplaces.  I have also seen a government
document that outlines the strategy of using Education to improve links
between New Zealand and China for the sake of the economic and political
benefits that this would bring.

The more nationalistic elements among the Cantonese community, in
particular, love to harp on the theme of how important it is for New Zealand
to get tourists/investment/trade from Chinese-inhabited countries.  This is
no doubt a reaction to the apparent racism with which their ancestors were
treated when they arrived as poor goldminers in New Zealand.  Ethnic groups
in Western countries are quite often happy to accuse other groups (usually
the White majority) of racism -- and no doubt a lot of what they say is
correct.  But showing that someone else is racist does not prove that you
yourself are not racist.  Racism is a universal human phenomenon: most of
the world's social problems arise from the mutual antagonisms of racial and
religious groups.  What Political correctness does is to turn mutual
antagonism into a Hollywood-style Good- Guy/Bad-Guy scenario -- allowing one
set of groups to express their racism/sexism, while stigmatising and
penalising the same behaviour in the opposing groups.

I don't see why I should let myself be interminably bullied by a bunch of
hypocrites -- whether they be from particular ethnic groups, from the
commercial sector, or from the government sector -- just because they want
to redefine my occupation of language teacher and make it into a branch of
the Treasury, or of the Ministries of Immigration, Tourism, and Foreign
Relations and Trade -- or of the industry that makes money from teaching
English as a Foreign Language.  I have found White teachers of English as a
Second/Foreign Language to be particularly oppressive.  All they care about
is having enough students, and this is partly dependent on their institution
or country having a positive image among non-English-speaking countries and
minorities in New Zealand.

When I first started teaching Chinese, and China and India had strained
relations, I found myself achieving unexpected popularity with the local
South Asian Community on the occasions that I was having differences of
opinion with my Chinese colleagues (I worked in the same building as the
Indian High Commission).  Now that China and India have patched up their
relationship, I find that this is no longer the case.

Similarly, as I was about to start teaching Chinese, some years ago, a
senior New Zealand government official expressed to me the feeling that the
Chinese were very racist.  Now, although I of course knew, in theory, that
members of all ethnic groups can be racist -- I had not experienced anything
myself that I had categorised as racist behaviour at the hands of Chinese
people.

What seems to have led this official to make this statement was his
treatment by a/some Chinese person/people when he was accompanied by someone
with Russian connections.  My assumption is that the Russian connection was
what caused the Chinese hostility -- because that incident occurred before
China and Russia improved their relationship.  I myself was born in Russia
(of New Zealand parents), and I have experienced indications that members of
the Chinese community held this against me.

This is background information provided for the benefit of naive people (of
whom there are vast numbers in New Zealand) and hypocrites (of whom there
are smaller numbers, but they are more powerful in the Establishment).  As
an example of the naive type, there was this twerp of a teacher,who had just
acquired some Taiwanese friends.  He obviously knew next to nothing about
the Chinese world, and believed as Gospel whatever they said to him.

I expect they told him that I was insufficiently subservient (though they
would have put it differently), because he kept harassing me by making funny
mock-Chinese noises.  He only stopped doing that on the day that a
television programme on the Three Gorges project in China was screened.  The
programme happened to mention that the project was promoted in China as
evidence of Chinese racial superiority.  This twerp of a teacher came up to
me that day, mumbled something about not having realised something, and
never bothered me in that way again!

This is not the sum total of the incidents I want to complain about -- this
is just a sample.

Sincerely,


Peter D. Zohrab


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
To unsubscribe from the psychoceramics mailing list, send mail to
m--@z--.net, reading "unsubscribe psychoceramics".