Hello, welcome to America under the microscope advanced level. Today we're gonna be continuing our talk about demographics in America.
And I believe that we're going to explore some of the heavier topics like illegal immigration and stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination.
Yes, all the easy things.
So last time we learned the basics about the population, how they identify themselves, the racial makeup percentage rise? the religion and also the language they speak. So last time we left off with talking about illegal immigration.
Well last time we talked about legal immigration.
Legal immigration was what one seventh of the population.
Yeah, it's a pretty big number.
What about illegal immigration?
Well, no one's entirely sure because they don't have records. There’s about eleven to twelve million people in America are illegal immigrants or the word we use is "undocumented immigrants"
And which authority would deal with that, would deal with illegal immigration?
Immigration and Border Control.
How do average Americans feel about illegal immigrants?
This is a controversial topic in America, because there's, you know, very different views depending on who you ask. Many Americans think they should have the opportunity to legalize their status and become legal immigrants. Many people think they should be deported, and kicked out of the country because technically they entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas.
So that would also be a major topic in the political circle, wouldn't it?
Yes if you watch a lot of American politics, you know, debates for leaders, illegal immigration is a very common talking topic.
Of course. And then moving onto stereotypes. Stereotype is a set perception of certain groups of people. So you can say? "oh yeah, let's say people from this country, they're all…" or "people from this specific racial backgrounds they're all…"
Like common one in Americans "Chinese people are all good at math" .
Stereotype doesn't have to be very negative, it's just, it's something that is over-generalization
It's overgeneralization. So stereotypes can be positive, stereotypes they can be negative stereotypes, but it's just overgeneralization.
Like in China we have, obviously, we have stereotypes of people from other countries, but we also within China we also have reginal stereotypes. So we think "people in Beijing, they're all like this", "people from Shanghai they're all like that". Is that the same in America?
Yeah, we do have regional stereotypes. We think of people who are from the big cities, like in the east of the west coast to be more elitist, they are more, em, think they know best.? People who are in a more agricultural regions in the South or the Midwest, maybe they're more simple because they’re farmers. Whether these are true, it really depends from person to person you talk to. That's why they're stereotypes, because there are overgeneralizations.
Most of these are not entirely true. What about racial stereotypes?
Sadly we have those too, and well yes, we have some people would consider to be, you know, fairly innocent like as I mentioned earlier. We say "Chinese people are all good at math" or "Italians are great at cooking", and things like this. But sadly not all of our racial stereotypes are positive.
So if they're not positive, a lot of them turn into prejudice.
Yes, they do.
What is the difference between prejudice偏见 and discrimination歧视.
Simply action. Prejudice is more about the feeling and the thinking. You think you are better than another group of people or you think another group of people is below you. Discrimination is actually doing actions that limit those other groups’ freedoms or rights.
So, for example, if I own a company and I say I don't hire people from this racial background, that would be discrimination.
Discrimination, yes.
So you can have discrimination against racial background also, obviously, gender?
Gender, yeah.
Religion as well?

You're gonna have discrimination in all kinds of things.
So where do these discrimination come from?
Sadly in America we have our historical roots, so if you're familiar with the American history, we had slavery, so that's where a lot of our discrimination come from. We have issues with discrimination against Chinese; we've had history which is discrimination against Japanese. Irish immigrants, Mexican immigrants. So there is a long history of this in America. When a new group of people show up to the country, people have prejudices and then leads to discrimination against these groups.
Would you say it's getting better or worse in the United States, in your opinion?
In my personal opinion, I think it's getting much better, but it is far from perfect.
Well I mean for a country of immigrants, it's quite natural to see prejudice and discrimination with all these people from different religious racial backgrounds. One concept in America, I think, if you watch a lot of crime drama or like a courtroom drama, you would know it’s hate crime仇恨犯罪。What exactly is hate crime? That's related to, for example, race.
Well hate crime would be a crime that was motivated by prejudice and racism in discrimination so if I give you an example, if I kill you because I want your money, that's just murder. That's just crime. If I kill you because you're a Chinese, that's a hate crime.
Hate crime, they would get even more severe punishment.
That would be a much more severe punishment.
But it would be difficult to prove that, wouldn't it?
It would be very difficult to prove. You usually have difficulty to find evidence of this person, who has a record of being racist or discriminatory to other people.
So is there anything that we need to watch out for? Because obviously China is not a nation of immigrants. Sometimes it's difficult for Chinese to understand or to even imagine being surrounded by people from very different background, religions racial background. So if I go to America, for example, is there anything that I shouldn't do?
Yeah, we have several like conversational taboos that especially for people you meet for the first time or things we just shouldn't ask about or shouldn't talk about because they can lead to very big misunderstandings or even resentment. So common one is we tend not to talk about race, religion or politics with people we meet for the first time, because we don't know their background. We're not close. We might say something that they will find offensive.
Saying thing. so you don't ask about race religion, politics but you also don't talk about your own views on race, religion, politics.
No. We wouldn't. Not with a person we just met.
The same with work context?
Definitely in work, 'cause in work you can even get fired if you say something that the boss doesn't like.
And in America there's this idea, or not just in America but generally in the West there is the idea of PC, political correctness政治上正确。What does it actually mean?
Well, political correctness has to do with using language that would be considered most appropriate and least offensive.
But it changes all the time though.
It does. It changes with different understanding? or different ideas and it's pretty hard to follow what things are considered PC and what things are not.
For example, it's ok to call someone white, but calling someone black might be a non-PC word.
It may or may not. It depends on who you talk to. But a good example for this would be you can call Caucasians white but could not call Chinese yellow.
So you call Chinese I guess just Chinese.
Or Asians if you don't know.
So these are some of the simple suggestions or reminders for people who are traveling or going to work or study in America. Watch out for PC language. If you are not sure you can ask some of your friends there or if you get to know them a bit better what is the appropriate way to talk about certain groups.
Or might just as play on the safe side and just tend to avoid these topics the first time you meet them. Stick to more innocent daily conversations talking about food, weather, traveling.
Ok, so that's about demographics. Next time when we meet we're going to explore something else about life in the United States.
So if you have questions or comments, please leave them down below.
See you next time.
Bye, everyone.
Bye.

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