Are Farangs Not To Blame For Bringing Thai Problems Upon Themselves

[samsiam]

Maxme,

I think what Kerry is trying to say is that as he is unable to identify them, then no one can....

I wouldn't have put exactly but in general yes.

So we should all ask Kerry first.

Could some MOD delete all the 'Chinese' argument posts, BORING rants by a bunch of racists IMHO.

No, they are racist if you include the word 'black' apparently.

I saw a thai/chinese guy eating chop suey once.

[StreetCowboy]

Maxme,

I think what Kerry is trying to say is that as he is unable to identify them, then no one can....

I wouldn't have put exactly but in general yes.

So we should all ask Kerry first.

Could some MOD delete all the 'Chinese' argument posts, BORING rants by a bunch of racists IMHO.

No, they are racist if you include the word 'black' apparently.

I saw a thai/chinese guy eating chop suey once.

How do you know he wasn't from Oldham?

SC

[samsiam]

So we should all ask Kerry first.

Could some MOD delete all the 'Chinese' argument posts, BORING rants by a bunch of racists IMHO.

No, they are racist if you include the word 'black' apparently.

I saw a thai/chinese guy eating chop suey once.

How do you know he wasn't from Oldham?

SC

Is Oldham in China ??

[StreetCowboy]

So we should all ask Kerry first.

Could some MOD delete all the 'Chinese' argument posts, BORING rants by a bunch of racists IMHO.

No, they are racist if you include the word 'black' apparently.

I saw a thai/chinese guy eating chop suey once.

How do you know he wasn't from Oldham?

SC

Is Oldham in China ??

Close enough. The point is that you can't tell someone's nationality from looking at them, and your racial classifications are merely an arbitrary categorisation with no real basis in current genetic science. The South Africans found it difficult to racially classify a lot of people, and we are considering in this thread the possibility of a much finer distinction than they ever achieved.

Apart from the opportunities for racial prejudice, I can't see any other real benefit of racial classification

SC

[PaullyW]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

Edited July 6, 2012 by PaullyW

[samsiam]

I can usually pick a new Zealander if I look at one.

[samsiam]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

Yes but Kerry is talking about visual only....you would be cheating if you enlisted the help of audio.

[brit1984]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

For example... from your avatar, I can tell you must be from the USA

[transam]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

For example... from your avatar, I can tell you must be from the USA

Looks like Canada to me.

[McMagus]

I have come to the decision that Thailand for the Thais is probably the best way to avoid perpetual criticism of a culture I have tried but do not yet understand .... its got bugger all to do with whether I can speak the language. Some lovely people, but through the filter of our eyes, ..... they do dopey things.

[transam]

I have come to the decision that Thailand for the Thais is probably the best way to avoid perpetual criticism of a culture I have tried but do not yet understand .... its got bugger all to do with whether I can speak the language. Some lovely people, but through the filter of our eyes, ..... they do dopey things.

So do farangs, especially in LOS.

[phl]

I have come to the decision that Thailand for the Thais is probably the best way to avoid perpetual criticism of a culture I have tried but do not yet understand .... its got bugger all to do with whether I can speak the language. Some lovely people, but through the filter of our eyes, ..... they do dopey things.

So do farangs, especially in LOS.

Yes but foreigners have a good excuse, Their brain gets turned off the moment airplane enters Thai airspace.and if it has not, it gets confiscated by customs upon arrival and is held frozen until departure

[PaullyW]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

Yes but Kerry is talking about visual only....you would be cheating if you enlisted the help of audio.

OK, then fair. Yes, it would be harder (although still not impossible) for some in this scenario.

[brit1984]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

Yes but Kerry is talking about visual only....you would be cheating if you enlisted the help of audio.

OK, then fair. Yes, it would be harder (although still not impossible) for some in this scenario.

...especially if the person whose nationality you are trying to guess doesn't have their country's national flag painted on their face

Sent from iPhone; please forgive any typos or violations of forum rules

[transam]

I have come to the decision that Thailand for the Thais is probably the best way to avoid perpetual criticism of a culture I have tried but do not yet understand .... its got bugger all to do with whether I can speak the language. Some lovely people, but through the filter of our eyes, ..... they do dopey things.

So do farangs, especially in LOS.

Yes but foreigners have a good excuse, Their brain gets turned off the moment airplane enters Thai airspace.and if it has not, it gets confiscated by customs upon arrival and is held frozen until departure

Good point, hope readers take note, if not, YOU BLOODY WELL SHOULD.

[phl]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

i think you may have a very hard time with me.

I look of one race, though i am not

i speak of another, of which i also am not

i behave of a 3rd and yet again i am not.

I do not even know myself what i am anymore, The only place i feel comfortable is Asia, because i am just a foreigner to most people.

In my country of birth, i did not fit in, in my country of residence i did not fit it, in my country of religion i was not accepted, so it seemed i could be an alien.

Upon my arrival to Thailand, i felt comfortable, because i was indeed identified as an alien and officially i still am

[samsiam]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

i think you may have a very hard time with me.

I look of one race, though i am not

i speak of another, of which i also am not

i behave of a 3rd and yet again i am not.

I do not even know myself what i am anymore, The only place i feel comfortable is Asia, because i am just a foreigner to most people.

In my country of birth, i did not fit in, in my country of residence i did not fit it, in my country of religion i was not accepted, so it seemed i could be an alien.

Upon my arrival to Thailand, i felt comfortable, because i was indeed identified as an alien and officially i still am

Maybe you can help out in that alien thread then.

[transam]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

i think you may have a very hard time with me.

I look of one race, though i am not

i speak of another, of which i also am not

i behave of a 3rd and yet again i am not.

I do not even know myself what i am anymore, The only place i feel comfortable is Asia, because i am just a foreigner to most people.

In my country of birth, i did not fit in, in my country of residence i did not fit it, in my country of religion i was not accepted, so it seemed i could be an alien.

Upon my arrival to Thailand, i felt comfortable, because i was indeed identified as an alien and officially i still am

Maybe you can help out in that alien thread then.

Absolutely, cos l am one too.

[maxme]

I have come to the decision that Thailand for the Thais is probably the best way to avoid perpetual criticism of a culture I have tried but do not yet understand .... its got bugger all to do with whether I can speak the language. Some lovely people, but through the filter of our eyes, ..... they do dopey things.

So do farangs, especially in LOS.

Yes but foreigners have a good excuse, Their brain gets turned off the moment airplane enters Thai airspace.and if it has not, it gets confiscated by customs upon arrival and is held frozen until departure

I thought that was called jet lag...

[kerryk]

Close enough. The point is that you can't tell someone's nationality from looking at them, and your racial classifications are merely an arbitrary categorisation with no real basis in current genetic science. The South Africans found it difficult to racially classify a lot of people, and we are considering in this thread the possibility of a much finer distinction than they ever achieved.

Apart from the opportunities for racial prejudice, I can't see any other real benefit of racial classification

SC

Absolutely a brilliant post. And beneath it are a number posts that are 100% in disagreement and never mention your post at all. You said that the only reason to identify a person by racial classification is racial prejudice. Or another words pointing out the difference between a Thai or Chinese/Thai is paramount to racial prejudice. I agree, why else would you do it? Why do Thai people think they can identify Burmese or Lao or Cambodian people? Come on tell the truth. It is because Thai people think they are superior to Burmese, Lao and Cambodian people. Yes?

So why do I get all the flack. Streetcowboy says the only benefit of racial classification is racial prejudice. So beat on him for a while.

[samsiam]

It's kinda nice to know what country other people come from.....otherwise we should just name all the countries the same name like 'earth' or something like that....

[transam]

I have come to the decision that Thailand for the Thais is probably the best way to avoid perpetual criticism of a culture I have tried but do not yet understand .... its got bugger all to do with whether I can speak the language. Some lovely people, but through the filter of our eyes, ..... they do dopey things.

So do farangs, especially in LOS.

Yes but foreigners have a good excuse, Their brain gets turned off the moment airplane enters Thai airspace.and if it has not, it gets confiscated by customs upon arrival and is held frozen until departure

I thought that was called jet lag...

Noooo, called ''lag jet''.

[kerryk]

Maybe better not to know. What if all our ancestors were criminals or something horrific like that?

[samsiam]

Maybe better not to know. What if all our ancestors were criminals or something horrific like that?

Some of mine were...shipped out to van diemens land....what of it ??

[StreetCowboy]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

I think you'll find black is a colour. Darkies come in all sorts of "races" and a Fijian is just as black as your blackest negro, but a completely different race. In any fairly restricted population - Japanese, Fijians, individual tribes, people from the other side of the river, there will be "typical" characteristics that are handed down from generation to generation; but there is no single "negro" gene, and one half cast might have wiry hair, another dark hair and so forth. and when we come to the Thai Chinese, my point is that there are people who range in Thai Chinese from one chinese ancester thousands of years ago to long-term in-breeders with only a fraction of aboriginal blood in them - though of course I am led to believe that the Thai people migrated from China in an case, so really we are talking about Chinese - other Chinese mixes.

Trying to differentiate shades of grey is splitting hairs that don't exist, for the sake of establishing prejudice

I can usually pick a new Zealander if I look at one.

How do you know ET is a catholic?

Because he looks like one.

Are there any catholics in this car?

No, of course not.

Sorry, mate, its just they look more and more like us all the time.

Some academic research into prejudice in Northern Ireland offered up a set of photographs to a sample of protestants and a sample of catholics.

Both samples consistently chose the same photos as 'looking catholic' or protestant. Two different samples were asked to classify the photographs in terms of trustworthy or untrustworthy. Again, the classifications were consistent across the groups. And were correlated with the classifications in the first test. (EDIT:by the way, this is an entirely honest recollection of reported research, and not one of my allegedly witty anecdotes)

Sometimes we are not aware of our prejudices, and the effect that they have on our opinions and our behaviour.

I suppose we are lucky that we are able to parade our stupidity on these fora, that others can point out the errors of our ways, where we are ourselves blinded to those errors

SC

Edited July 6, 2012 by StreetCowboy

[phl]

I have come to the decision that Thailand for the Thais is probably the best way to avoid perpetual criticism of a culture I have tried but do not yet understand .... its got bugger all to do with whether I can speak the language. Some lovely people, but through the filter of our eyes, ..... they do dopey things.

So do farangs, especially in LOS.

Yes but foreigners have a good excuse, Their brain gets turned off the moment airplane enters Thai airspace.and if it has not, it gets confiscated by customs upon arrival and is held frozen until departure

I thought that was called jet lag...

I guess you thought wrong, unless of course you also think that Jet Lag lasts for the entire duration of their stay in the country

[kerryk]

Maybe better not to know. What if all our ancestors were criminals or something horrific like that?

Some of mine were...shipped out to van diemens land....what of it ??

Not as bad as living in Pattaya I guess. That would be a stigma hard to cover.

[PaullyW]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

i think you may have a very hard time with me.

I look of one race, though i am not

i speak of another, of which i also am not

i behave of a 3rd and yet again i am not.

I do not even know myself what i am anymore, The only place i feel comfortable is Asia, because i am just a foreigner to most people.

In my country of birth, i did not fit in, in my country of residence i did not fit it, in my country of religion i was not accepted, so it seemed i could be an alien.

Upon my arrival to Thailand, i felt comfortable, because i was indeed identified as an alien and officially i still am

I agreed already that it's harder to tell just by looking. The truth, however, is that there are a host of other things that CAN give it away. Dress, mannerisms, certainly speech (even when speaking a non-native language), walk, etc. My point is that it IS quite possible to tell without someone telling you.

[kerryk]

I understand the point you guys are trying to make, but you must understand that not everyone has equal difficulty identifying people of a certain race. It's ridiculous to think that people cannot usually or often be identified as Black, White, Asian - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Cambodian, etc. I have been VERY good at being able to identify and distinguish between the various races (easy) and countries (harder, but not impossible).

There are all kinds of cues visual, auditory and otherwise that give people away.

i think you may have a very hard time with me.

I look of one race, though i am not

i speak of another, of which i also am not

i behave of a 3rd and yet again i am not.

I do not even know myself what i am anymore, The only place i feel comfortable is Asia, because i am just a foreigner to most people.

In my country of birth, i did not fit in, in my country of residence i did not fit it, in my country of religion i was not accepted, so it seemed i could be an alien.

Upon my arrival to Thailand, i felt comfortable, because i was indeed identified as an alien and officially i still am

I agreed already that it's harder to tell just by looking. The truth, however, is that there are a host of other things that CAN give it away. Dress, mannerisms, certainly speech (even when speaking a non-native language), walk, etc. My point is that it IS quite possible to tell without someone telling you.

Tell what? If you are from Ontario. You do realize that most people think you are a loon?

[samsiam]

You do realize that most people think you are a loon?

Did you practice that in the mirror ??