I will what I want, and I want what I will

This was posted up on facebook by my sister. Good on her.
And I will add my own little bit.
If I speak a different language in front of you, and you get pissed off, and tell me to go speak it somewhere else, do you get what you're subtly saying? You're basically saying 'Go back to your own country to speak your language bitch'. So next time I'm speaking Korean and someone LEGITIMATELY gets annoyed at me for speaking it, I'm going to explode and scream in your face :) Okay?.

Credit to Sunny for Being Awesome. My Eternal Sis.

So today I went to my Physics catch-up lab. For those of you who aren't in UNSW, in our Physics lab we have a 'hatch' that we go to where we hand in our student ID's in exchange for a nice, neat box of all the equipment that we need for that day's experiment. The 'hatch' is usually manned by this lady who's generally really unsmiling and seems to dislike kids, which makes me wonder why she's working at a university. 

Anyway, I finished early today and I packed all my equipment back into my box to return to the hatch to get my student ID back. As I was walking to the hatch, however, I overheard the conversation the hatch lady was having with the International (Asian) student in front of me. It seemed she had asked for his surname to find his student ID, and the student had misunderstood and given his first name. She was being kinda short with him (which is all standard for her) and told him 'You know we speak English at this university, right?'

At this I kind of stopped short and went 'whoa, no, really? Did she seriously just say that?'

Yeah. She really did. She then said 'surname is just another word for family name, they mean the same thing', and it was nice of her to explain, and the student got his ID back and everything was fine, but back. Track.

Let me tell you a thing. I really, really, really dislike the phrase 'We speak English at this university/here/there/anywhere'. It smacks of white entitlement and a false belief of ownership and it's just so damn UNNECESSARY. Putting aside its wide use by various members of the 'culturally conscious' (white) Australian public, let's have a look at why it was inappropriate in this particular situation. 

1. It was UNNECCESSARY. Of COURSE he knows that the vast majority of people speak English in Australia, and presumably in UNSW too. The purpose of Hatch Lady's statement wasn't to rectify something he had done wrong and it wasn't to inform him of something he hadn't known before. Had she wanted to do that, all she had to do was say something along the lines of 'Oh, surname is just another word for family name, now you know' and have left it at that. Why tack on such a snarky, sarcastic phrase before it?

2. It was belittling. Belittling, demeaning, making people feel stupid - take your pick of adjectives. She may not have meant it as such, but the phrase itself is what it is. It's rehashing an obvious fact in a sarcastic tone, as if the other person is too dumb to understand what it means. It reduces the other person down to their inability to speak English -- as if that was the most important thing about them. Let me tell you something. That guy is an international student, speaking two languages (most likely three, as most Asian countries have their own language and English as prerequisites (YES, PREREQUISITES -- MOST STUDENTS IN ASIA ARE FUCKING BILINGUAL) and encourage the learning of a third), doing ADVANCED PHYSICS IN HIS SECOND LANGUAGE, the contents of which most people don't even get in their first language. He KNOWS his English is bad compared to native speakers, and he's damn well stressing about it because hey, he may be good at Physics and Maths but half of the damn subject is solving word problems, so it affects his grades directly. He doesn't need you to make him feel any more shitty about it, especially not with such a damaging statement that ignores everything I just said about him and focuses solely on his lack of proficiency in English.

3. It's actually severely racist. You're telling everyone who doesn't speak English that they don't belong here. It's basically a subtler version of 'go back to your own country'. Um, newsflash: if us speaking a foreign language offends you, consider making speaking in an Indigenous Australian tongue the norm and then your irritation might make more sense. Once again, in this particular case, Hatch Lady is telling the international student to either 'speak English or go home', as if his other merits don't warrant further consideration in whether or not he's going to be an asset to Australia. And I know some of you are going to defend Hatch Lady and be all 'but that's not what she meant! You know she didn't mean it in a racist way'. Well, no, I don't know if she meant it in a racist way or not because who the fuck know what goes on in other people's heads? Internally she might be the most racist person on the planet and all she has to do is put on a facade and no-one will know. Even if she didn't mean it that way, THAT DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT IT SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SAID. People always tell me that wording doesn't matter, as long as they meant it another way-- and to that I say BULLSHIT. Why the hell do we grade essays on how proficient someone is at manipulating the English language then? Shouldn't we just mark them according to what the student MEANT?! 

Bottom line is, language exists so that we can convey what we mean in the most accurate way. You cannot say something that someone construes as offensive and then say 'I didn't mean it that way'. Obviously, someone has taken it to be meant that way, and that means you didn't make yourself clear enough. If you can't utilise your own language to clearly convey your meaning, you have no right telling other people off about it. 

I would have said all this to Hatch Lady myself but I'm a) a coward and b) having another Physics catch-up lab on Friday and I wouldn't put it past her to sabotage my equipment. I feel shitty for not saying anything, though, because nothing is going to change if people who actually speak English well aren't going to reason with people like Hatch Lady and point out why they really shouldn't say things like that.

Tl;dr, 'We speak English here' is offensive and unnecessary and I really freaking hate it. I will speak Korean in front of you if I feel like it, dammit. Wasn't Australia a country of free speech?