Kristin Collins, News & Observer (Raleigh), August 24, 2009
Christine Wai could hardly believe it when she got the call asking her to teach a class in her native tongue of Karen.
Karen is an obscure tonal language spoken by only about 6 million people on the planet, all of them members of an ethnic group from Myanmar. It is also a language that, in Myanmar, has been banned in schools, burned in books and seen as the mark of an inferior people.
But this summer, Wai, 23, found herself in front of a class of educators, health workers and religious leaders in her adopted home of Chapel Hill, teaching them how to say “hello” or ask the time in Karen, pronounced kuh-REN.
It was yet another sign that Wai, and hundreds of fellow Karen refugees, have found a permanent home in the Triangle.
Refugee resettlement agencies have brought several hundred persecuted indigenous people from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, to North Carolina in the past few years. Many have settled in Chapel Hill, turning three apartment complexes into Burmese outposts and changing the face of the town’s schools, churches and health clinics.
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More than half a million Karen people have fled to refugee camps since the mid-1980s, when their country’s totalitarian government began using violence to drive them off their land.
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Flicka Bateman, a community activist who has become a fierce ally of the Karen in Chapel Hill, was one of 14 people who signed up for the inaugural course.
“I was in the Peace Corps,” said Bateman, who is principal of a school for children staying at UNC Hospitals. “I saw the value of being an American who cared enough to speak their language.”
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Original article
Email
Kristin Collins
at kristin.collins@newsobserver.com .
(Posted on August 24, 2009)
Comments
On the other hand, Karens are Asians, they are mostly Christians, there are a limited number of them… Better Karens than the limitless hordes of Hispanics swarming across our southern border.
“Karen is an obscure tonal language spoken by only about six million people…” Uh-oh! Great! My Slovak ancestors are outgunned verbally 3-2 by a bunch of people making “tonal” sounds and living in the woods. And as a native North Carolinian I`m not feeling good about refugee resettlement there.
Call me crazy, but wouldn’t it make a little more sense to have this girl stand in front of the Karen speakers and teach them how to say “hello” and ask for the time in English as opposed to expecting native health care providers to learn these phrases in addition to the plethora of other languages (Spanish, Hmong, ebonics,whatever) they deal with on a daily basis
My daughter asked me how Obama became President; my response was that the country had a case of temporary insanity and that the majority of people would experience buyers remorse. I sometimes wonder if we haven’t allowed the insanity to spread throughout the whole of society. The world keeps dumping every undesirable (sick, lame , lazy, mentally deficient and criminal in their prisons onto the people of the United States) and ther is little or nothing we can do about it.
“I saw the value of being an American who cared enough to speak their language.”
This is a good point BUT!! I speakk pretty good Arabic, but by no means do I want any Arab muslims coming to my country (anymore) I don’t let the Arabs know I understand most of what they say and gather inadvertent intel!
So now we have become the guardians of a language unwanted in it’s home country. Isn’t nice Mr. Bateman cared enough to speak their language overseas. Well drop it now….we are still nominally an English speaking nation.
It is called suicide. White America gave up.
what a crock of ******
give em guns to fight the corrupt govt of Burma. Don’t give em homes in America where we end up with Karen slums and a culture utterly at odds with our Anglo Saxon culture.
I wonder how long it will before this whole tribe is relocated to the US? And then they wonder why there is anger out there.
i live in raleigh and i must say i don’t like the diversity here, especially not the kind of diversity that produced those terrorists who were from here. the first time i had ever seen a woman in a full burqa was a few months ago at the farmers market, and let me tell you it wasn’t a pleasant sight. i don’t dislike the 3rd worlders as much as the white liberals, which raleigh is infested with. if it comes to the point where the country is partitioned along racial lines i would not choose to stay in north carolina because the elites in raleigh and charlotte who run this state would import even more non-whites against the wishes of those who cannot afford to buy a loft in a diverse downtown neighborhood.
Dear Flicka - wouldn’t Christine benefit EVERYONE if she taught those Karen speakers English? Caring enough to speak another’s language does not equate with caring enough.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why Asiatic countries (with Asiatic culture and customs) cannot offer refuge to fellow Asiatics, but for some reason they must dwell amongst Whites - a people and culture who must be completely alien to them.
I wonder what the immigrants of old would think of this country trying to appease everyone to the extent of winding up with a tower of Babel? Early immigrants went to night school to learn English. If they didn’t, they were out of luck. No government officials rushed around to find someone to aid and abet them in not living up to one of the rules of the oath of citizenship - that of learning the English language, which is the major unifying bond of this country. But I’m becoming convinced every day that this pandering is just part of the “change” we can expect.
“It was yet another sign that Wai, and hundreds of fellow Karen refugees, have found a permanent home in the Triangle.”
Yet another gushing, heart-warming, feel-good article. As I was reading it, I quickly knew the reporter was female.
These types of sappy articles written by women have become the mainstream. They’re written by girls who went to ‘The School of Sesame Street’ where everything was happiness, friendship, and love. You can just see them grinning and giddy as they pound out this tripe.
— Anonymous wrote at 6:20 PM on August 24: On the other hand, Karens are Asians, they are mostly Christians, there are a limited number of them… Better Karens than the limitless hordes of Hispanics swarming across our southern border.
Nonsense! What difference does that make? I am so tired of reading: “but they are Christians!” Oh, well then, by all means we should let them in!!! Let’s accept all the Christians in the world.
I have to ask — Is this site about religion or about race?
As for your (all too common) either/or attitude, that’s irrelevant too, because in the end we’re going to get them BOTH. All of them! Hispanics AND Asians.
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“I saw the value of being an American who cared enough to speak their language.”
Well, that’s a good idea (to a point, as Skip says) …. when you are in THEIR country, that is, and they are your hosts.
But when they are HERE, as guests in YOUR country, let them learn to speak YOURS!
All the more so if they’re planning to settle here and make their living among you.
Flicka Bateman, a community activist who has become a fierce ally of the Karen in Chapel Hill, was one of 14 people who signed up for the inaugural course.
“I was in the Peace Corps,” said Bateman, who is principal of a school for children staying at UNC Hospitals. “I saw the value of being an American who cared enough to speak their language.”
Enter the eternal undergraduate (or freshman) to top this cute article off and ram it home. Couldn’t give a %$@#$* about your own people…no ‘brownie points’ to be scored there.
