Why must a Chinese take a harder course than non-Chinese students?

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<p>Uh, I’m Chinese by ethnicity. I’ve never been to China, and I grew up speaking English and Singlish in the United States and Singapore respectively. As a matter of fact I have an immense dislike for PRC nationals in general, just because they tend to self-segregate too much and their politics tends to be stupid. (On average – I try to curb my prejudice.) On the other hand I do like people who come from the Republic of China a lot. As you can see nationality is an entirely different beast from ethnicity. </p>

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<p>Oh the requirements are worse. If you have experience in a “dialect”… maybe the department needs to be updated of new developments in linguistics (since 1950) … but the dialects are not technically dialects. They are often whole separate languages. That’s like saying that because you have experience in a Germanic language (English) you should be tracked into the “heritage” stream when learning German for the first time. Often that’s how the so-called dialects (a derogatory term – linguists call them “Chinese languages”) are related to Mandarin.</p>

<p>“It has also been noted that many US residents see race and ethnicity as the same concept.”</p>

<p>so? Ethnic and racial discrimination are similar, then.</p>

<p>^^
Why are you arguring semantics anyway? Saying ALL AMERICANS ARE FAT is not better/worse than saying ALL WHITES ARE FAT.</p>

<p>That was in response to the OP who was the actual one who cannot read Wikipedia. Then again, based on most of his postings here it’s probably a miracle he can read at all.</p>

<p>No, it’s immaterial. But Purdue is apparently too uncouth to see a difference between nationality and race. I don’t identify with the PRC at all. Neither do I identify with crappy “heritage” courses. But I do identify with other aspects of the Chinese diaspora, which is ethnic-culturally-bound.</p>

<p>^
Read post #39 and tell me why Wikipedia doesn’t say Chinese is a race.</p>

<p>“It has also been noted that many US residents see race and ethnicity as the same concept.”</p>

<p>The following definitions apply to the 2000 census only.[9]</p>

<pre><code>* “White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as “White” or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.”[9]
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<p>See also: White people and White American</p>

<pre><code>* “Black or African American. A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as ‘Black, African Am., or Negro,’ or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.”[9]

  • “American Indian and Alaska Native. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment.”[9]

  • “Asian. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. It includes ‘Asian Indian’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Filipino’, ‘Korean’, ‘Japanese’, ‘Vietnamese’, and ‘Other Asian’.”[9]

  • 'Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. It includes people who indicate their race as ‘Native Hawaiian’, ‘Guamanian or Chamorro’, ‘Samoan’, and ‘Other Pacific Islander’."[9]
    </code></pre>

<p>See also: Pacific Islander</p>

<pre><code>* “Some other race. Includes all other responses not included in the ‘White’, ‘Black or African American’, ‘American Indian and Alaska Native’, ‘Asian’ and ‘Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander’ race categories described above. Respondents providing write-in entries such as multiracial, mixed, interracial, Wesort, or a Hispanic/Latino group (for example, Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban) in the ‘Some other race’ category are included here.”[9]

  • “Two or more races. People may have chosen to provide two or more races either by checking two or more race response check boxes, by providing multiple write-in responses, or by some combination of check boxes and write-in responses.”[9]
    </code></pre>

<p>It’s true that Han Chinese is a very genetically diverse group and probably is more culturally-bound than genetically-bound. It’s also a very young ethnicity – less than 5000 years old, maybe, if not 2000-3000. The Han Chinese group is probably a fusion of many ethnic groups that existed before Qin Shihuang. There are also some interesting geographical gradients you can note in genetics/appearance; people who trace their genetics to the south of China often have markedly different features who trace their genetics to the north.</p>

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<p>Ethnic origins. </p>

<p>My nationality is Singaporean, and my precise ethnic group would be Singaporean Chinese, which is a subset of the “Chinese” ethnic group, which does trace origins to China, just as many whites can be genetically traced to an ethnic group which once existed near the Black Sea. (As well as some upper-caste Indians, especially in the north.)</p>

<p>Who cares about if Chinese is a race? The point is Japanese/Korean/other language students don’t have to take “heritage” courses.</p>

<p>Therefore its discrimination</p>

<p>Let me guess - you’re the first to claim you’re an “underprivileged” or “underrepresented” minority when it is beneficial for you to do so but when it might incur some extra work it’s racism and discrimination. Sound about right? (that was a rhetorical question BTW)</p>

<p>I can’t believe this battle of egos has gone on for this long but I have to fully agree with purdueEE… (at least with what was discussed on the first 1.5 pages, I have a life, I cant read this whole thread)</p>

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<p>On the contrary, I always desired to integrate. My ethnicity has never benefited me (except personally through my own enjoyment, but no one cares about that). Why the hell should it be allowed to cause additional work for me? </p>

<p>White people should stop complaining about how it’s unfair to be in the same class as native speakers. Maybe their parents should have actually DONE the work and bothered to expose their children to a multilingual environment. Now they should pay the price. Don’t make people who have already done the work in their childhood pay the price for you. Bilingual children’s brains had to work twice as hard, and their parents were responsible enough to make sure they were adequately exposed to both languages.</p>

<p>Or you could take any language besides Chinese, since then you’d be on an equal footing with all the white kids.</p>

<p>Yes. </p>

<p>I want to be in a class with native speakers of French. I want to be immersed in an environment of native speakers.</p>

<p>**** the lazy kids who keep marring their pronunciations. It’s amazing how many people in their fifth year of study can still mar their pronunciation of “la culture”.</p>

<p>(Also, I’m no longer a natively-fluent speaker of Chinese, or even Singlish, the creole I grew up speaking though I have a working bilingualism in it.)</p>

<p>He doesn’t want to be on equal footing, he wants an advantage. When he can’t have the advantage and the playing field is equalized he cries foul and pulls the race card. Convenient how that works.</p>

<p>You don’t get it. </p>

<p>Native speakers don’t have any “advantage”. They do better because they already have the background. They already did the mental work. SAT 2400 kids shouldn’t be made to take harder classes just because they would mess up the curve for kids who scored 1500. </p>

<p>I don’t desire an advantage. If I don’t want to go further in a course, I should be allowed to slack and take an easier course. That’s not having an advantage – it’s just taking a course in something I’m good at. </p>

<p>Also, the heritage requirement doesn’t “equalize the playing field” – it favours the kids who didn’t pull their weight when they were young. Rather than making them do the work in compensation for their childhood laziness, you unfairly let them have it easy.</p>

<p>I myself don’t desire to slack off – I am particularly ambitious. But if I want to, I should be allowed to. Just like you shouldn’t /make/ premed students take advanced courses in quantum mechanics, even if they happen to be particularly brilliant.</p>

<p>Analogy: there is a high school gym class centered around basketball. The teacher separates the black students from the whites (but only if the blacks are from the hood!), based on the assumption that the black kids are already skilled at playing the game.</p>

<p>If some of these kids complained, PurdueEE, would you be angry at them for “pulling the race card”?</p>

<p>Except that is a terrible analogy. A better analogy would be separating the students who played basketball on a team in middle school and those that did not. Obviously you missed the part where the heritage label is not just applied to anyone, but rather to those who are likely to exhibit some proficiency.</p>