Job Discussion Forums

[Egas]

Some very polite and considered responses here to date, including my own. However after the last post a few hours ago I felt myself feeling a little dishonest about what I wrote. Then I realised what it was that was bothering me. No one here has been honest enough to state the obvious problem with labeling people "commies". It a generic label and a put down which does very little to create any understanding of the person that you are calling a "commie". It’s pretty much a term straight out of the McCarthy era. We can look back to the Salem witch hunts, Nazi concentration camps and American apartheid for examples of similar concepts. Witches, Jewish pig, homosexuals, the work shy, *beep*... you name it - all generic concepts used at various times to label those we do not accept, do not understand, or are afraid of.

The same goes for the term "commie" in modern China. It does little but create alienation, "otheration", prejudice, hostility and misunderstanding. "Commie” is a word to hide behind when we are afraid of a country, a race and a political/social system that is so very different from ours. It helps us to delude ourselves that we are superior and morally above the Chinese, an attitude that is almost pervasive amongst foreigners here (including myself at times, I have to confess). We have to be careful of the words we use when we deal with people. Our words are seminal in our relationships, in the way we conceptualize others. What hope is there in reaching out to the Chinese, to their culture, to their hearts if we use such bigoted language? It seems to me that the Chinese, by and large are hungry for understanding from foreigners. Sure, at times they are suspicious and nervous, just as we are. But if we call then "commies", and refer to their country of 5000 years heritage as Chingland, what hope have we got?

Hubei C., I ask you to respond to this with without resort to generic labeling of myself as a "commie", or as someone sprouting "Commie prop", or with put-downs, and ridicule as you have to almost all my other posts. I am putting out a challenge to you in a gentlemanly way. You might like to think of this as your first test since coming back from your short retirement. You have thus far used the term "commie" almost exclusively to label those things and people you do not understand, are scared of, or that differ from your world view. For example you responded to my posting where I referred to the knowledge gleaned from American doctors in the field (whom I spoke to directly) in Beijing as "communist prop". Can you explain what you mean by that, because it seems to me that if you want to use this term on Dave's, and call others by that term, you should at least be able to define it, if not justify it. Over to you, HC…