Hot take ma ho notato qualcosa che non mi va bene.
Sono dello Sri Lanka, nato e cresciuto nel Regno Unito e recentemente ho visitato la Lettonia per l’addio al celibato di un amico. In brevissimo tempo fui chiamato con la parola N e più volte etichettato come indiano.
Ho la sensazione che in Lettonia ci sia spesso la tendenza a trattare le persone in modo diverso in base al colore della pelle e a raggruppare tutte le persone dalla pelle scura nella stessa categoria “indiana”. Ad esempio, gli abitanti dello Sri Lanka o altri provenienti da culture completamente diverse e dai paesi dell’Asia meridionale vengono etichettati come indiani solo perché sembrano simili.
La cosa più frustrante è che quando provo a spiegare la differenza la risposta che spesso ricevo è “è lo stesso, sei indiano, qual è la differenza?”
Questa mentalità è esattamente il problema.
E onestamente anche questa ipotesi non ha senso. Nemmeno tutti gli indiani sono uguali. L’India è un paese enorme con centinaia di lingue, regioni e culture. Le persone lì possono essere completamente diverse l’una dall’altra in termini di tradizioni, lingua alimentare e identità. Quindi raggruppare insieme paesi e culture completamente diversi solo per il colore della pelle è ancora più sbagliato.
Voglio anche dirlo chiaramente: apprezzo sinceramente la cultura e la lingua lettone. Il lettone è una lingua bellissima che ha conservato tratti indoeuropei molto antichi con somiglianze con lingue antiche come il sanscrito. Questa unicità è qualcosa da rispettare e apprezzare.
Fondamentalmente è come chiamare russo un lettone solo perché è bianco. La maggior parte dei lettoni lo troverebbe frustrante o offensivo perché l’identità, la lingua e la cultura contano. Allora perché è accettabile il contrario?
Il colore della pelle non definisce la cultura e le culture non sono intercambiabili solo perché qualcuno si assomiglia.
Grazie! 🙂
https://i.redd.it/nvapdkb3j0qg1.png
di saycheesekraft
12 commenti
Why do you assume that all Latvians assume something?
Crazy assumption from you…
Sorry you experienced a really dumb crowd. It really depends, there certainly are ppl like that (in every country) and I also feel like I personally don’t know or at least am not in contact with anyone who would hold such views
Well, it’s kinda easy to guess – look at the population numbers of India – and then compare to Sri Lanka, lol. Also, you guessed it – westerners, at least Americans, tend to see us as Russians.
In any case, we as a nation have had the privilege to not be exposed to this multi kulti bs, so naturally overwhelming majority isn’t particularly knowledgable on this topic nor does care. When we had Indian [I guess, lol] living in our village, one of my colleagues were referring to him with word “nēģeris” [“black”] – I had to explain to him that what he sees isn’t actually black, lol.
Are they different than roma?
I am more puzzled, why for most part when I watch India media, cinema or news, almost all the actors or news presenters seem to look like light skinned from Northern India, but when it comes to Indian migrants here they look mostly like from Southern India or from Penjab. It all could just assumption, don’t take it as offence.
One word: ignorance
Latvians don’t know much about people outside of Europe so it comes with racist stereotypes. Anti-Indian sentiment is very popular right now, so the “average” Latvian will just parrot that without thinking.
Unfortunately we still have a long way to go to become less racist, which is extra hard in today’s media landscape.
>I’m Sri Lankan born and raised in the UK and I recently visited Latvia for a friend’s bachelor party. In a really short time there I got called the N word and was repeatedly labeled as Indian.
First of all, if that’s your only point of reference, you should be bringing up this topic with the people who called you that. I wasn’t at that party, nor do I label all non-fair-skin-tone people as Indians.
In general though I agree that there definitely people in Latvia that generalise ethnicity based on skin color to offensive levels. But that’s not unique to us, and mostly has to do with lack of education and / or experience in that matter. Taking your example of “calling a Latvian person Russian”, I can recall a Scottish person hearing I’m from Latvia and saying “*wow you must be fluent in Russian right*”, and a German saying “*Latvia, that’s an island in Russia, right?*” In both cases I write it down to them just being ignorant and dumb, and there is no shortage of such people everywhere in the world, including Latvia.
Well, Sri Lanka is near the Indian ocean, so if Im guessing that you are Indian, then it’s not that bad guess.
But if you tell you are actually not Indian, but Sri Lankian, and someone keeps telling that you are Indian, then he is just dumb. And that is not “Latvian thing” but general dumbness. There are people who think we are Russian but I don’t generalize what nationality they are – that does not really matter because dump people are in all nationalities.
Because Latvians up until now were not exposed to different ethnic groups from that region as well as Schools don’t go in any of the details about it.
LoL, pls. It ain’t just Latvians, but most of the world.
Nope, he is not Indian.
Then again Koreans are bitching about being lumped in with Chinese or Japanese.