Airdawg, the group I eat lunch with and hang around at school with is about half east indian, a third asian and the rest white. It's pretty diverse, I wouldn't say we don't mix. However, there are GROUPS of asians that are etremely self-contained, and they make up a huge proportion of the school's population. It is a negative in some ways in that half the time I can't talk to someone because they hardly speak english, or they're only INTERESTED in speaking Chinese, because they think there's no reason for them to use English when most of the people thye run into speak Chinese anyways. I live in Richmond, and trust me, there is a language barrier problem. It's mostly the parents, who don't speak english themselves and make no effort to persuade their kids to think otherwise... you get these parents coming in to high school classrooms all pissed, screaming in broken english off because their kid can't pass their arts classes, and they don't get that a large part of the cause lies with them. These same kids sqeak through gr12 english, get into UBC sciences, and never have to bother again. This seems to be acceptable, too, and recognized... friends of mine have Chinese math and chem profs they can barely understand, but they still get hired, which gives you some indication of what the science dept. views as 'good prof material'. Communication is not an issue; in English, anyways. It's not exactly a good solution we've got set up in the lower mainland... Canada's supposed to be a cultural mosaic, but nobody said anything about there being brick walls between the tiles. That's bothered me for a while, because it's not like they need to give up their cultural identity to open up a bit more and adding to the community rather than displacing a bit of their home country and putting it over on this side of the pond. The former would be better for both sides... at least, I think so.
Wow, that was a rant.
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Current Reigning NS Moron: 'how comes all female tennis players have last names that end in 'ova''
-Snapjibber2008, Member # 12044