Business guide full of cultural stereotypes, Chinese group says
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This is an interesting article from CBC on a recent government-funded booklet called The Chinese Cultural Guide for Employers.
The way this article presents it, I completely agree with the intention behind the pamphlet, and the content they showed. As I’ve said before, “stereotyping” is not bad if it’s a generalization on facts made in good faith. The current politically-correct environment makes it impossible to discuss differing cultural behaviors in a rational and comprehensive way.
Last Updated: Friday, May 30, 2008 | 9:23 AM ET
A Chinese community group is raising concerns about a government-funded booklet concerning the work ethic of Chinese employees, which was produced for small businesses in York Region.
The Chinese Cultural Guide for Employers is full of stereotypes, according to Karen Sun of Toronto’s Chinese Canadian National Council.
“I think it’s well intentioned, but I think it misses the mark, and I think it may do more harm than good. It seems to just perpetuate a lot of racial stereotypes,” Sun told CBC News.
The Richmond Hill Chamber of Commerce, which helped produce the 56-page guide, says it doesn’t agree with Sun’s characterization of the book.
“I wouldn’t call it a stereotype, I would call it a generalization. But if you read the book, you’ll understand it’s not meant to hurt, it’s meant to help, any of the generalizations are not negative,” said CEO Leslie Walker.
Walker said 9,000 copies of the guidebook have been printed and sent to small businesses in Markham and Richmond Hill.
Some of the controversial statements in the book include:
- During team discussions, a Chinese employee may remain quiet and have minimal input.
- Completing tasks at work can take precedence over their personal interests.
- Chinese employees frequently do not have firm handshakes.
- Sun said that kind of stereotyping will have a detrimental effect.
“What happens when it comes to promoting people? If you see your Chinese workers as being subservient, then you may think it would be best to keep them in entry-level, administrative-type positions where you can order them around. Well, this is clearly problematic,” she said.
Walker defends the book. “This is very basic, and it’s to help that small employer understand that a different cultural group may interview differently and may need to be integrated into their workplace differently.”
Another cultural guide for employers is in the works, this time about South Asian employees.
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jaehwan
12:37 pm | May 30, 2008I agree with the pamphlet and content too. It would be like saying, “Chinese generally remove their shoes before walking around their house.” Most of the stuff they mention simply acknowledges differences in culture.
SamuraiJack
4:14 pm | May 30, 2008Yeah I read this article this morning, was going to post it in the forum later. I think it has it’s positives and negatives. The guide hopefully has some suggestions for employers to acclimate Chinese employees to Western customs to improve their professional success here. I can see some employers afraid of promoting a Chinese person in a public-facing position if they think they will exhibit these behaviours.
evil_FUX
4:57 pm | May 30, 2008I still find it a bit weird that it’s all formalized in a writing because it raises issues of how many observations were made or how many were enough. But, I can kind of see how it’d be fairly beneficial to have an employer that has never employed Chinese people, use the pamphlet as their framework instead of formulating their own that may have some seriously bad ones; at least regarding work.
Dialectic
5:26 pm | May 30, 2008Anything that’s accurate and fact-based can only be helpful in situations like these, because it minimizes the possibility of misinterpretations of thoughts, feelnigs, motivations. It’s not so different from having a cultural guidebook for when you visit other countries. And obviously, most employers would know that the more integrated/assimilated someone is, the less they’ll act in a culturally foreign manner.
Akrypti
2:20 am | May 31, 2008This reminds me of those “Doing Business in Japan” how-to books that go at length about bowing and offering business cards and such.
What does bother me is how the news is reported. It sounds like the mainstream white publishers are defending the text for the sole purpose of helping out Asian Americans while we ungrateful little Asians are yelping and accusing them of stereotyping. I have a strong feeling that is NOT the case and there is an equally large number of Asian Americans in that community if not larger who have no problems at all with the pamphlet. Why are we again clumped together under one monolithic political opinion?
Dialectic
2:38 am | May 31, 2008Well, I don’t think I’d go so far as to ascribe some single malicious intention to the CBC or the media in general; the thing is, people who don’t have a problem with it would generally be “regular” people, and there wouldn’t be a political organization saying “we think this is ok.” The only organized voice which would exist would be the hyper-(in my opinion)sensitive P.C. types who form things like the Chinese Canadian National Council. I think a lot of our advocate groups have been infected with this P.C. “post-modern” hyper-sensitivity, and it’s hurting the discourse by making minority/ disadvantaged groups sound like whiny retards.
blockthebox
6:21 pm | Jun 11, 2008Wow, only in Canada. The issue of stereotypes is probably the only thing I’ve ever disagreed with D on (while I agree that stereotypes, in an ideal world can be helpful, most people are too lazy and stupid to use them properly), but I have to say I’m kind of impressed that the government thought to fund something like this. The examples of stereotypes in this booklet seem to be, in the scheme of things, harmless and probably more of less true. Eh, pick and choose your battles, you know.