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These postcards caught my attention when I was heading back to Vanier. It’s kind of interesting and intriguing that UBC chose to use such daring form of campaign to promote equity. It focuses on discriminatory and oppressive graffiti which many students drew to vent their anger or to even create an “aura of discrimination” among the student community.
Me [in the Generation Y cohort] who did not personally experience the war and who has limited knowledge about the true motives of Hitler [Except from the biased media, movies and the long forgotten history lessons in Secondary Education] thus had little to comment about the card on “Thanks Hitler”. The “middle finger” seems like a premature teenage venting his anger has little personal relevance to me too. [Sorry for having gender bias.]
I guess the majority of us would have personally experience the language discrimination that “Speak English Moron” tries to convey. We are either the one being discriminated for our poor English [or otherwise known for our excellent and unique Singlish] or us trying hard not to despise others of their weak capability in English. I remembered that when I’m here in my first marketing lesson, I asked [in fluent English or as I thought so] the lecturer if it is essential to purchase the textbook. She immediately replied that it’s ok if I choose to purchase from my home country in the language I’m comfortable with. Language I’m comfortable with? Despite knowing that I’m from Singapore, her ignorance of not knowing that Singapore’s first language is English made me feel that I’m from Tonkika Mountain [I obviously made that up]. Haha.
Alright, I admit that my “Engrish” is not that “powderful” and thus can understand her position in making that comment. I guess in the current society, English continues to be viewed as the “upper class language” or the “language towards success”. Perhaps it’s true to a certain extent. But it’s also true that other languages are increasingly gaining popularity and importance in today’s society. We all knew the importance of Mandarin and perhaps Indian language with increasing power from China and India. [FYI: “It was announced yesterday that China is looking into building commercial aircrafts in the future, competing heads on with Airbus and Boeing.”] Even though it may seem impossible to have Mandarin [or any other languages] as the first language [or as the main business language] in the future, we can’t simply discount the importance of other languages spoken in today’s society.
To conclude: Any discrimination against races, languages or in any other forms should be avoided. By doing so, the overall “happitability” [profitability in terms of happiness] and harmony in our already damaged planet earth will therefore increase.
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