The Iron Chink

Faithfulservant

Faithfulservant

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My husband's great grandfather invented this. The more I research this the more it makes me sad. He has family that is so proud of this and all I see is racism and racial hatred. The Chinese immigrants built the salmon farming industry doing work that no one else wanted to do and the slap in the face of naming this invention as a racial slur just disgusts me. I'm grateful that my husband is embarrassed by this legacy. Have we grown above this mentality in the last hundred years?

Currently our immigrants are still doing work that Americans don't want to do for minimal pay. In the building I work our janitors are two elderly Mexican Americans that do not speak very good English. I stopped the gentleman and I thanked him for how hard he works and how clean and beautiful the building is. He said to me that I was the first person that told him this. I wanted to cry. How hard is it to say thank you and that what they do is valued and appreciated.
 
Faithfulservant said:
My husband's great grandfather invented this. The more I research this the more it makes me sad. He has family that is so proud of this and all I see is racism and racial hatred. The Chinese immigrants built the salmon farming industry doing work that no one else wanted to do and the slap in the face of naming this invention as a racial slur just disgusts me. I'm grateful that my husband is embarrassed by this legacy. Have we grown above this mentality in the last hundred years?

Currently our immigrants are still doing work that Americans don't want to do for minimal pay. In the building I work our janitors are two elderly Mexican Americans that do not speak very good English. I stopped the gentleman and I thanked him for how hard he works and how clean and beautiful the building is. He said to me that I was the first person that told him this. I wanted to cry. How hard is it to say thank you and that what they do is valued and appreciated.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of two gentlemen that I interacted with in the past (one became a friend.)

The first man actually told me that he was grateful that I speak slightly slower than everyone else that he encountered at Marquette University when I attended there (he was originally from Vietnam, and he didn't learn American English until he was in his late teens/early twenties.) I actually have a speech impediment, so I tend to speak more deliberately.

The second man was my Russian Studies professor at UW-Milwaukee. I had learned a little Russian back when Ronald Reagan was president and I met this particular professor when he sat in on another instructor's ethnic studies class. He also appreciated that I speak a tad slower/more deliberately since he didn't learn English until he was thirty-five (I know where he was during the Polish union strike not long before Lech Walensa came to power: he manned a Soviet-era machine gun even though he was around my height and about as slender as a young David McCallum.)

Then there are all of my Russian/"Russian" neighbours and one of the people who helps me (he's originally from Mexico...) Helps that I'm a bit of a polyglot.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine
 
Ah...I now understand your posts.

We grow (hopefully) in compassion for our fellow travelors on this planet and the planet itself...we just get called woke today for gaining more understanding of mistakes of the past and the desire of more concern for others.

Similar battle we fight with newbies here on this site.
 
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