Multiculturalism, and thoughts on Nepali-Burmese.

[Note from 10-25-09: For some reason, this site gets a great deal of hits. Which is kind of a shame as it really is not indicative of most of the things I post on this site. Nothing quite makes your day like finding yourself in the middle of other people's family problems and discovering that you've been helping people who are making the lives of others miserable and lying to you at the same time. I've considered taking it down, but it sort of connects different threads and makes the blog hang together. Oh well. I hope people will take time to check out other, more deeply thought out blogs after they finish with this one.]

I'm feeling burned out at the moment. Classic case of having spent a great deal of time helping some people who, in hindsight, were not very nice people as well as finding myself involved in a domestic violence situation, something that also leaves me drained. And, yes, the two incidents are linked. Alas!

Which brings me to several asides.

First, to borrow a distinction that I first heard made by the esteemed philosopher, Marc "Animal" MacYoung, I am not a racist, I am, instead, a culturalist. In other words, I believe all races are equal, but, quite frankly, some cultures are much better than others, particularly when removed from their original environment. Those who believe that all cultures are equally good at all things, either are trying to achieve nothing or else they just don't get the very idea of what multi-culturalism means. Multi-culturalism means that different cultures do things in different ways and if you think that every possible way of doing something is just as good as any other then, well, let's just say I don't want you to be trying to fix my car's brakes or doing anything else that could possibly be important.

Which brings me to the topic of the Nepali-Burmese, the so-called "Ghorkakali" people as they are referred to in Burmese. Sometime ago, the British took over Burma and soon began using persons from South Asia to better exploit and utilize this new territory. Although not numerically significant, these included Nepalis although it is important to note that a sizeable portion of Nepalis live outside of Nepal spread throughout India, Bhutan and elsewhere. One purpose in bringing South Asians to Burma was to establish a capitalist framework in this pre-capitalist nation in the nineteenth century (Chinese were also used for this purpose.)

At this time there are a small number of Nepali-Burmese in the Capital District. (I count nine adults but have only met eight of them. The ninth one seems to have opted to keep to herself for reasons that will probably become clear shortly. Of course, there may be more.) Now out of these eight adults we have allegations of three counts of serious tax fraud, two confirmed cases of domestic violence, three people who have driven regularly without a license after failing their road test, multiple cases of working off the books while receiving as many benefits as possible, one guy who thinks it's cool to walk up to women at the bus stop and tell them how big his penis is, and multiple cases of child neglect such as leaving small children unattended, not to mention the guy who claims to be a marathon runner and yet who has never ever been seen jogging much less running. Quite frankly, this is quite a record for eight people.

People sometimes ask if when I help out refugees if they take advantage of me. So far, the only people who I feel have done this are Nepali-Burmese.

But then again, eight people is not much of a sample to generalize from and it's just possible that they are merely eight dysfunctional people. In any case, my opinion is that it's probably best to leave them alone, should one meet them.

Which brings me to the topic of domestic violence. As near as I can figure out, Nepali-Burmese consider it completely appropriate to verbally and physically abuse one's wife. At least when confronted or even arrested over this they act confused and cannot understand why anyone is objecting. They also seem to consider anyone they are lucky enough to get pregnant as their wife and do not seem to realize that in most decent societies it is expected that should one get a woman pregnant you will help take care of her instead of just stealing her money and mooching off of her like some sort of low-aspiration pimp.

Fortunately, all of the Nepali-Burmese in this area are small and wimpy and most American women could easily beat them up so the only people who need worry about this fact are those women pathetic enough to date Nepali-Burmese, in other words, other Nepali-Burmese.

Q: "Hey! What do you call a dozen Nepali-Burmese running down a hill?"

A: "A mud-slide."

Comments

  1. You are indeed very rude and racist person. what do you you are ? pig???

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  2. You know what's so funny about this? Just about two hours before I recieved this comment, I learned that one of the (merely) eight local Nepali-Burmese had moved out on his room-mate leaving the guy in a lurch and suddenly in need of finding someone to help h im pay with the rent. Same guy still owes his last roommates 100$ for his share of the power bill and is making zero effort to pay it. And I'd actually considered posting something about it on this blog and then just said, "Why? That would be childish." And, now, someone calls attention to this. The minute these clowns, these eight troublemaking scum, start cleaning up their act then I will take this down!

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  3. BD,
    Peter Huston, I'm very offended with your racist comment about Burmese-Nepalis.
    Who are you to discriminate Burmese-Nepalese as being inferior or fraud??Just because you helping some Burmese refugees?(by the way what i mean by "help" is u r basically doing what you get paid for)What soever the case is,u are not qualified to make such comment.
    And I'm very shocked to see your ignorant logic about generalizing the whole group by having a bad personal experiences with 8 people.let me tell u Burmese-Nepalese represent more than 300000 people since ur numb skull doesn't seems to have knowledge about it.Even if it was a proper scientific research you would need more than 8 people of sample size to make such kind of foolish statement.

    I think it would be better if we don't talk anything about culture since u seems to have no knowledge about cultures at all,(therefore I'm attributing it ur lack of respect to cultures)I'm guessing that u have never been to Burma, even if u have been for 1 or 2 years or have lived in the border doesn't make u expert in Burma, I have seen many people like you claiming that "they know everything about Burma"please know that we all are aware of many of the so called "Humanitarian or whatever groups" who receives way more money than what is actually given out to the refugees(please feel free to ask me if u need the source,i hope you are not one of them.
    I have no problem/interest with ur day to day boring life but as a Burmese-Nepali I'm very much offended with ur ignorant statement,therefore i would sincerely like to request you to delete this post.than you!!

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  4. First of all, I freely admit that this post is probably one of the stupidest things I have ever written. It was written in a moment of great frustration. I've considered taking it down many times because it doesn't make me look good.
    However as it both shows my mood at the time and does include some important lessons about dealing with refugees (it's frustrating at times and some refugees are dishonest and manipulative. People who want to work with refugees should understand these things.) I've left it so others might see it.
    As for Nepali-Burmese, all I can say is that whenever I've dealt with the local ones I ultimately found it to be a frustrating experience that I've regretted. I'm sure there are good Nepali-Burmese out there. I've just never met them.
    As for your claims on myself, even when I worked at the refugee center I worked many unpaid hours and am no longer paid to assist refugees although I do not do it as much as I used to do to geography. I do not claim to know everything about Burma nor do I think it's possible. I know more than many people and try to share what I know.
    Thanks for reading and all the best.

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  5. I am sorry to hear about the bad experiences u had dealing with people from very difficult life experiences and background.I can imagine it would not be easy at all.However,i still do not believe that justifying all the bad behaviors of a few people to their entire race and culture is acceptable.
    I am confident that u would change ur opinion about Burmese-Nepalese people if you had met with majority of us.We are considered as one of the most peaceful and honest minorities in Myanmar.Actually it is quite unusual for a Burmese-Nepali to be in the United States as a refugee as it is not easy to do so.Part of it is because most of the Burmese-Nepalese do not have their National Identity card and knowledge about becoming a refugee.(i know it's very sad after all the battles that Gurkha fought for Burma.)Therefore, I am assuming that the people u had bad experiences are very few of us because one has to be a really good hustler just to get here as a refugee in the United States.
    I hope it helped you overcoming the misunderstandings(at least in a small degree) that u had with the whole Burmese-Nepalese community.

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  6. BD, (and others)

    You know the more I think about this the more irritated I get. Thanks to you and your friends sharing links and recommendations to check out this site and read insults about yourselves made by a person who you not only have never met but claim to have no respect for, this silly rant is getting a surprising number of hits.

    In the meanwhile nothing is being done to help refugees, Nepali-Burmese or otherwise. And nothing is being done to encourage these eight dipsh*ts to behave like decent civilized people. Instead you clowns just look at this and go "Oh my! Someone wrote bad things about us. Let's tell all our friends."

    Why don't you go find some of these Nepali-Burmese and teach them how to be better people? Or would you rather, in some odd Una Hardester-esque style, prefer to waste my time and your eyes on some silly blog while eight scumbags run around Albany behaving like lazy, dirty animals?

    And you people, invented the trench raid? Ya know, I am beginning to think that without some spoiled Brit rich-boy to point you in the right direction and give you and order you guys don't know what to do.

    So here's an order. "Stop whining about my blog. Instead go up to Albany and slap these eight people into line and make them behave."

    When that happens then I'll take this down in a minute and the blogosphere will be pure of anti-Nepali-Burmese diatribes.

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  7. I totally agree with your opinions and facts that you described.This has nothing to do with racism but with different cultural outlooks and behaviors.How many people that posted opposing comments here have actually interacted with Nepali-Burmese?I have and I am dating .And he just pointed an accurate point of view of these people.Thanks Peter

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  8. Well thanks. I'm sorry to hear about your dating problems. In fairness to Nepali Burmese, although it's not PC and not widely discussed, it is not uncommon for people who have problems dating in their own culture to seek dates outside of their culture and therefore sometimes it is the "misfits" who tend to seek dates with outsiders. Therefore it is quite possible that the person you dated is not a typical Nepali-Burmese and that the other Nepali-Burmese don't like him or her either. I've been told by local Burmese refugees that the fact is that while there are many, many good Nepali-Burmese people out there, the eight people (who only come from two families) I refer to here are indeed scum.

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  9. Well let me give you a short glimpse in to my situation.I have known this Nepali-Burmese for over a year now and she is working in Thailand now.I myself is of Punjabi origin born in Singapore.She can be said as one of the better looking girls.All seems fine when I met her in person in Thailand but when I am back to my own country she will be saying that her family is disagreeing to our relationship and only Nepali -Burmese can marry Nepali-Burmese and can not marry Indians,etc.This is going on in a repetitive cycles for about three times.During my visit all is fine and her family is agreeable to our relationship but when I returned to my country she will be saying things like: that her sister do not like our relationship and so on.I have asked other Nepali-Burmese guys that works in Thailand and they can't figure this one out too.
    So I think that there are many Nepali-Burmese "misfits" of both sexes in Thailand.
    What I don't appreciate is that honesty is not one of the main criteria of some of the Nepali-Burmese working in Thailand.

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  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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