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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8534928" data-attributes="member: 22779">Again, totally.  I don't know about all-pervasive, but, certainly does make an appearance in all sides.  Now, as far as how to tell if something is racist or not, let me share an example from class today.I was teaching fifth grade English in Japan.  The reader for today's lesson was talking about sharks.  Fine, cool.  It's a good reader.  But, it talks about how a whale shark is as large as a school bus.  But, there's a problem here.  Japanese (and Korean and many other countries too) have zero idea what a school bus is.  They don't have them here.  Everyone lives within walking distance of their school or takes public transportation if they don't.So, is that racist or not?  Is it culturally insensitive?  Well, it's expecting the students to have knowledge of American schools.  And, it causes confusion in my class as I then have to explain what a school bus is, then explain how big it is, then answer questions about why we have school buses and don't just walk to school. And isn't that weird?  So on and so forth.Instead the writers could just say that a whale shark is really big.  Or, it's as big as a delivery truck if they insist on using a comparison.  There are a hundred different things they could say that aren't tied to specific cultures.Is it racist?  No, let's be honest here.  No one is possibly going to be offended by this.  But, it is a kind of cultural imperialism.  It's the sort of thing that ESL text writers have to be aware of because lack of awareness makes communication more difficult.  The same sort of thing is being talked about here.  No one is saying that we can't have orcs or drow or Oriental Adventures or samurai or any other thing like that.  There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these ideas.  It's just that we need to be mindful of how these concepts are being presented so that they don't have negative consequences.</blockquote>

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