Richmond, B.C., considers banning Chinese-only signage

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Vancouver has not many minorities beside Chinese (for example Vancouver has a very small black population relatively speaking)

Vancouver has a huge Indian community as well. It also has a pretty large Philipino community.

There are immigrants from other places too but these three groups are far above all the others.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

I wonder what the distinctions are between Chinese immigration in Vancouver versus in Toronto and what causes these concerns in Van that don't do so in TO.

My experience with Chinese Ontarians is that while the first generation tends to be fairly separated, their children are very culturally Canadian, although obviously with Chinese influence. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any tension. In Markham you'll occasionally find restaurants with Chinese-only signage and no one seems to care.

Perhaps the difference between the two:
-A much larger proportional concentration of Chinese in Vancouver
-Less other groups in Vancouver--Toronto has large numbers of people in practically every race, Vancouver has not many minorities beside Chinese (for example Vancouver has a very small black population relatively speaking)
-Different immigrant profile--Vancouver's Chinese community may have a greater share of nouveau-riche mainlander immigrants than Toronto does.

Any thoughts?

You have not spent enough time with non-Chinese Canadians in Markham. The tensions (resentment might be a better term) are there, but have not generated a lot of media attention.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

You have not spent enough time with non-Chinese Canadians in Markham. The tensions (resentment might be a better term) are there, but have not generated a lot of media attention.

Things are not perfect either between Indo-Canadians and non-Indo-Canadians in Brampton, nor with Somalis and non-Somalis in South Ottawa, or between Hasidic Jews and French Canadians in Outremont.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Things are not perfect either between Indo-Canadians and non-Indo-Canadians in Brampton, nor with Somalis and non-Somalis in South Ottawa, or between Hasidic Jews and French Canadians in Outremont.

There are still non-Indo-Canadians in Brampton? I did not know that!

[lio45]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

The Japanese Start Farming (1924)

Notice that everyone reading this thread can know
1) Mr Yashiki's name
2) The type of business he runs
3) Its address (or at least that it's located on rural road #1, Steveston)

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Acajack

His Alpha Bits letters align with Q U E B E C in the milk every morning.

Are Quebec Alpha-Bits required to have a certain regulated percentage of little accents and cedillas? They should require Post to fish out all the W's before shipping the product into Quebec.

Moving back to the assigned topic, I wonder how long before Alpha-Bits goes Chinese in Richmond. You could compose whole short stories in your cereal, not just a few words.

[ssiguy]

Conditions between different ethnic groups has NOTHING to do with signs on billboards.

When you are in the privacy of your own home or business I don't care what you do. When, however, your sole intent is to display information in the public realm then your sign must be assessable to the public and in Canada that means English or French. If you want to add 30 different languages on your sign then knock yourself out but one of those languages must be one of our official languages.

If you don't wish to inform the public then don't put a sign in the public realm.

you always get the odd idiot who gets attention and raises the racist {or sexist or homophobic} card in order to shut people up or quell intelligent discourse but I am willing to bet that nearly every Chinese person believes that signs without English {or French in more Francophone areas} is both stupid and offensive.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It doesn't matter that you don't like the style: that was the basis for Canada's multicultural policy.

It was never about people leaving their homelands to live exactly as they had never left, but with a first world/new world level of material wealth and comforts.

We've actually had a few court cases in this country (including some for honour killings believe it or not) where some of the defence arguments have cited widely-held perceptions about Canadian multiculturalism: "my client was told that he could come to live in Canada and continue to live according to his beliefs, and raise his family that way", and so on.

I recall this happening earlier this year with a Saudi immigrant in Newfoundland, who ended up getting deported as a result of his crime.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by geotag277

All these things exist in the public realm as it pertains to commercial businesses doing and interacting and offering services to the public. It is very convenient for you to come up with arbitrary delineations about what is acceptable in some subset of the public realm for your purposes and what is not acceptable. It goes beyond into absurd territory when you try to paint advertisements of all things as some high protected class of culture that should be specially preserved.



Again, signs are temporary, businesses are temporary, songs on the radio are temporary. Arbitrary rules for arbitrary things you don't approve of. Some signs say " Adega Restaurante ", a fairly permanent sign - totally acceptable. Another sign on the side of a bus might say "牙膏" - totally unacceptable. The goal posts concerning what is and what is not acceptable have been moved so many times in this thread already, maybe we should just ask Mr Government to sort it out for us.



That's too bad some thin skinned entitled citizens feel that way. I also feel that way when an ad shows a calculus equation I can't solve. Why should I be alienated as a person with substandard mathematic skills. I demand to understand and properly interpret every piece of text presented to me in the public realm without any work or effort on my part! Hell, that's my right as a citizen and if I can't do that, I feel alienated and need Mr Government to make sure I feel welcome in my own city!



Such an absurd argument. To understand the ad you would have to learn something. Seeing something you don't recognize simply requires you to learn about it. Why should calculus appear on an ad? Why should I be the one having to make a "concession" to learn something I don't understand? Why should abstract art appear on an ad? I don't want to make any concessions to learn or understand abstract art! I demand to know and understand everything presented to me with zero effort!

See? I can use rhetoric and polemic language too.



Not sure your point here. People are there because they are living there. Immigrants live in neighbourhoods, second, third, fourth generation Canadians live there. What is the point? Just because you live in a place for 20 years doesn't mean you are judge jury and executioner on all things in your neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood is not beholden to you for approval on what should and should not be the direction of said neighbourhood in the future. Neighbourhoods change, people change. There is no promise to anyone that a neighbourhood will remain the same until you decide it should change.



Again with the concession word to paint the fact you might have to learn something.



They are participating. They are using Canadian advertising services operating a Canadian business and offering their services to all Canadians in the neighbourhood and otherwise. Ironically it is you who is not participating. Also, a foreign language sign is not an indication people don't understand a language, it is an ADVERTISEMENT. This whole story you have painted about people not understanding English and not offering services to English speakers is a giant load of horse shit. You can walk into the establishment and get service just fine. They might even speak better English then you.

You have invented an entire stereotypical narrative back-story to some random people you have never met entirely based off a stupid ADVERTISEMENT on the side of a bus. It is quite absurd.



It won't be a turning for anything, except removing a potential avenue of advertising, restricting the freedoms available for said advertising, and injecting more government regulation at the behest of a bunch of close minded out of touch "get off my lawn" voices.

I sincerely hope that blanketing you in English-only advertisements fills that gaping hole of cultural experience you are currently lacking in Vancouver

This has nothing to do with an advertisement on the side of a bus. I didn't even see that example until a few minutes ago.

I also can't really participate in the "full Richmond experience" since I don't live there, or in Vancouver, or in BC. I live in Halifax.

There is a difference, to me at least, between 牙膏 and Adega Restaurante. The second could reasonably be assumed to be intelligible by someone who speaks English or French. The first is in an entirely different script, in a language that, as far as I know, shares no similarities with English, French, or any European languages, thus making it substantially harder for Anglos/Francos to learn. This is beside the point though.

Obviously neighbourhoods and cities will change constantly, but if the city's founding community places value on certain language-based things (like their ability to be aware of the meaning of conspicuous text within the public realm, without making extra efforts to do so), shouldn't they be allowed to insist that newcomers conform to this? Isn't this what the thread was about?

It's clear that we fundamentally disagree on a lot of things here. I have very little at stake here as I don't even live in BC, this is just my take on the situation based on my own experiences and what I have heard from people who live in Richmond, and having visited there once.

I'm not sure what you assume my background or political views are, or my knowledge of BC history, but for the record I speak English and French fluently, despite being of Ukrainian and Japanese heritage. My mom's side of the family settled in BC, and my grandmother was interned in the same camp as David Suzuki, incidentally. My dad's side settled in Saskatchewan and eventually drifted over to Edmonton, where my parents both grew up.

I'm not xenophobic, anti-Asian, militantly pro-English or whatever, and being a planning student a lot of my studies are focused on "what is the public realm". So again, I'm not saying my thoughts are more "right" than yours, but I feel you are dismissing my arguments as if I haven't thought them through, which I have. I simply disagree with you on a lot of fundamental (and probably semantic) points here.

At the end of the day, the signs/advertisements/whatever are more than just "tools to make the targeted audience aware of goods and services". In this case, the medium is the message (probably unintentionally), and it seems like i'st more about what the signs/ads represent to many; ie. that the city has a large and growing segment of people who would prefer to not have to deal with the established culture, but do want to keep moving there for whatever reason. The idea that this group might become the dominant culture is troubling to people who settled there with a resonable expectation that mainstream Canadian cultural norms would prevail. Is it fair to say that these people should either "get over it", learn Mandarin, or leave? I would guess that most people living in Richmond do not share your very academic thought process, and even if they did, I'm not sure they would end up with the same results.

I also never said that the calculus ad is somehow better. But is Calculus anyone's first language? Are there neighbourhoods in Canada where all the signs are "in calculus"? I don't think it's a direct equivalent to the topic at hand. It also seems like an obvious marketing gimmick and not something that would become a widespread "thing".

[Hali87]

@Geotag, I sense that I may have offended you somehow? I'm genuinely sorry if I did. All this is just my opinion and it's not like I'm the one writing the laws here. I don't even live in BC and wouldn't be able to vote on this. It's just my perspective. That said, I'd prefer you didn't refer to my perspective as "horse shit". Thanks bro.

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by lio45

Notice that everyone reading this thread can know
1) Mr Yashiki's name
2) The type of business he runs
3) Its address (or at least that it's located on rural road #1, Steveston)

Yes, and nobody forced Yashiki one way or the other.

Originally Posted by Hali87

At the end of the day, the signs/advertisements/whatever are more than just "tools to make the targeted audience aware of goods and services". In this case, the medium is the message (probably unintentionally), and it seems like i'st more about what the signs/ads represent to many; ie. that the city has a large and growing segment of people who would prefer to not have to deal with the established culture, but do want to keep moving there for whatever reason. The idea that this group might become the dominant culture is troubling to people who settled there with a resonable expectation that mainstream Canadian cultural norms would prevail. Is it fair to say that these people should either "get over it", learn Mandarin, or leave? I would guess that most people living in Richmond do not share your very academic thought process, and even if they did, I'm not sure they would end up with the same results.

2 Questions for the sake of discussion:

1) Hypothetically, do you think it would have been morally fair/right for French and English immigrants to learn Aboriginal languages over the first 500 years of colonization? Certainly, many early settlers learned Aboriginal Languages, but this declined over time as more and more Europeans arrived.

2) 500 years from now, when Canada has far more people of Asian heritage, would it be fair/right for Canada to remain officially French and English? (assuming Canada exists in 500 years)

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

2 Questions for the sake of discussion:

1) Hypothetically, do you think it would have been morally fair/right for French and English immigrants to learn Aboriginal languages over the first 500 years of colonization? Certainly, many early settlers learned Aboriginal Languages, but this declined over time as more and more Europeans arrived.

Regardless of whether it would have been fair, it would not have been pragmatic. Thousands of aboriginal languages were spoken across Canada, and the boundaries for where one might transition from one to another constantly shifted and were hard to gauge.

2) 500 years from now, when Canada has far more people of Asian heritage, would it be fair/right for Canada to remain officially French and English? (assuming Canada exists in 500 years)

Has there ever been a nation state in history that has completely abandoned its former official (or de facto) languages for entirely new ones while remaining the same political entity?

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

Y

2 Questions for the sake of discussion:

1) Hypothetically, do you think it would have been morally fair/right for French and English immigrants to learn Aboriginal languages over the first 500 years of colonization? Certainly, many early settlers learned Aboriginal Languages, but this declined over time as more and more Europeans arrived.

2) 500 years from now, when Canada has far more people of Asian heritage, would it be fair/right for Canada to remain officially French and English? (assuming Canada exists in 500 years)

I'm gonna go ahead and answer these even though they weren't directed at me, just for fun.

1) To try and answer it simply, yes. Obviously that's not how it works when the plan is quite literally to colonize the land and make it yours. But if we pretend for a moment that the Europeans had no intentions of expanding their empire and simply wanted to settle here, then yes they should have had to learn the Native languages. Colonization isn't exactly a moral act to begin with, so I don't think that learning the language is something that worried the explorers much.

I didn't want to say this before because I thought it would cause too much of an uproar, but since you asked...to me it almost feels like the Chinese are colonizing Richmond, just like the English colonized Canada. Now I admit that that's a gross exaggeration, but hear me out. Obviously there aren't any Chinese people going around killing and raping defenseless Canadians. But it still feels like a "peaceful colonization," if such a thing existed before this. What I mean to say is that like the English acted towards the Natives, there seems to be little regard for those that were already here. I know it's really not a big deal, but things like signage seem to suggest that Chinese immigrants come here without so much as a thought about locals, and it seems like they're trying to recreate their home over here without realizing that's there already a well established sense of place and that they were accepted into this area as new citizens, not conquerors.

I've been called a hypocrite for this opinion before because "We did the same thing to Natives, how can you be upset that this is now happening to us?" While this may be true, I highly doubt that the Natives just went along with their new fate, and just accepted that they were going to live a European life now. They tried to fight it, and they failed. Same principle applies here: I believe that we have a right to try and protect our culture, but if we fail, well that's just how the world works. The important thing to remember is that there is nothing wrong with trying.

I just want to add another disclaimer because I don't want to offend anybody. I know that the situation with the Chinese is way, WAY smaller in scale and horror than what the Natives had to go through, but unfortunately this was the best analogy I could come up with.

2) I think it would be both fair and right that Canada keeps English and French as the only official languages. This is contestable, but I would argue that language is the number one differential between different nations (hence why Quebec has such a nationalist sentiment.) So if Canada became a majority Chinese speaking country, would it really still be Canada? Furthermore, like I mentioned above, we take in immigrants to become citizens of Canada, not so that they can try and change Canada to be more like their home. It should be common sense that no matter how inclusive and accepting a place is, when you immigrate to another country, you have to adapt to their language, at the very least. That's not to say you can't still speak your native language at home, I still do after almost 14 years here, but there shouldn't be attempts to simply create alternate worlds within one city running in different languages, as is happening in Richmond.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You've got things backwards. A melting pot is a very integrative societal model. Newcomers are expected to check their old identities at the door and merge into the new country's.

And Canada does not even espouse the melting pot anyway. It's meant to be multicultural mosaic. Which is in fact a ''melting pot lite'', and somewhat less coercitive with respect to integrative expectations. But integration is expected as well.

Melting pot is more reality than policy. People mix and a new cultural equilibrium emerges.

[RyLucky]

Glass, fascinating points and an interesting comparison (with colonialism) in my opinion. I had never thought of it like that.

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Has there ever been a nation state in history that has completely abandoned its former official (or de facto) languages for entirely new ones while remaining the same political entity?

I can't think of any complete abandonings, but there are plenty of examples of languages once prevalent that are dying out while the country still remains the same "country". If Mandarin became more common, it might (in theory) be similar to the phenomenon of English over the past 20 years. Language change is not something that would happen over night, but over hundreds of years.

-There are tons of indigenous languages that are in jeopardy. You could argue that the country today is not the same as pre-colonialism, but the identities of those people, though fluid, are still in tact.
-the EU changed from French to English
-many EU countries now speak English, at least as a second language
-English has gradually become more prevalent in around the world

Could the same thing not happen to Chinese? I know this might be veering off path. Perhaps expats/colonization/immigration/education are being sloppily interchanged, but this is just food for thought.

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Has there ever been a nation state in history that has completely abandoned its former official (or de facto) languages for entirely new ones while remaining the same political entity?

That's kind of like saying, "Has there ever been a species that completely abandoned on physical adaptation for another while remaining the same species?"

Of course it happens, but is it really the same "species"?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Hali87

This has nothing to do with an advertisement on the side of a bus. I didn't even see that example until a few minutes ago.

I also can't really participate in the "full Richmond experience" since I don't live there, or in Vancouver, or in BC. I live in Halifax.

There is a difference, to me at least, between 牙膏 and Adega Restaurante. The second could reasonably be assumed to be intelligible by someone who speaks English or French. The first is in an entirely different script, in a language that, as far as I know, shares no similarities with English, French, or any European languages, thus making it substantially harder for Anglos/Francos to learn. This is beside the point though.

Obviously neighbourhoods and cities will change constantly, but if the city's founding community places value on certain language-based things (like their ability to be aware of the meaning of conspicuous text within the public realm, without making extra efforts to do so), shouldn't they be allowed to insist that newcomers conform to this? Isn't this what the thread was about?

It's clear that we fundamentally disagree on a lot of things here. I have very little at stake here as I don't even live in BC, this is just my take on the situation based on my own experiences and what I have heard from people who live in Richmond, and having visited there once.

I'm not sure what you assume my background or political views are, or my knowledge of BC history, but for the record I speak English and French fluently, despite being of Ukrainian and Japanese heritage. My mom's side of the family settled in BC, and my grandmother was interned in the same camp as David Suzuki, incidentally. My dad's side settled in Saskatchewan and eventually drifted over to Edmonton, where my parents both grew up.

I'm not xenophobic, anti-Asian, militantly pro-English or whatever, and being a planning student a lot of my studies are focused on "what is the public realm". So again, I'm not saying my thoughts are more "right" than yours, but I feel you are dismissing my arguments as if I haven't thought them through, which I have. I simply disagree with you on a lot of fundamental (and probably semantic) points here.

At the end of the day, the signs/advertisements/whatever are more than just "tools to make the targeted audience aware of goods and services". In this case, the medium is the message (probably unintentionally), and it seems like i'st more about what the signs/ads represent to many; ie. that the city has a large and growing segment of people who would prefer to not have to deal with the established culture, but do want to keep moving there for whatever reason. The idea that this group might become the dominant culture is troubling to people who settled there with a resonable expectation that mainstream Canadian cultural norms would prevail. Is it fair to say that these people should either "get over it", learn Mandarin, or leave? I would guess that most people living in Richmond do not share your very academic thought process, and even if they did, I'm not sure they would end up with the same results.

I also never said that the calculus ad is somehow better. But is Calculus anyone's first language? Are there neighbourhoods in Canada where all the signs are "in calculus"? I don't think it's a direct equivalent to the topic at hand. It also seems like an obvious marketing gimmick and not something that would become a widespread "thing".

Excellent post!

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

I can't think of any complete abandonings, but there are plenty of examples of languages once prevalent that are dying out while the country still remains the same "country". If Mandarin became more common, it might (in theory) be similar to the phenomenon of English over the past 20 years. Language change is not something that would happen over night, but over hundreds of years.

-There are tons of indigenous languages that are in jeopardy. You could argue that the country today is not the same as pre-colonialism, but the identities of those people, though fluid, are still in tact.
-the EU changed from French to English
-many EU countries now speak English, at least as a second language
-English has gradually become more prevalent in around the world

Could the same thing not happen to Chinese? I know this might be veering off path. Perhaps expats/colonization/immigration/education are being sloppily interchanged, but this is just food for thought.

While it's true that the country today is not what it was pre-colonization, it also wasn't "Canada" before then. "Canada" is an idea forced upon the Natives by Europeans that didn't exist prior to their arrival. So I would argue that Canada has maintained is linguistically the same as it was in 1867.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

1) Hypothetically, do you think it would have been morally fair/right for French and English immigrants to learn Aboriginal languages over the first 500 years of colonization? Certainly, many early settlers learned Aboriginal Languages, but this declined over time as more and more Europeans arrived.

)

I think that would have been the fair thing to do but that's not how it turned out. Just because that's what happened then does not mean it should happen again. There are plenty of things in place now like immigration controls that did not exist back then. Should we abolish immigration controls today simply because the floodgates were wide open for European during the period of great new world colonization? All of this is a very specious argument.