Wikipedia calls it ethnic nepotism.
I think autoethnophilia sounds more interesting though.
In some ways it's so simple and happens without thought (I can't remember if it was in Dawkins' Selfish Gene book). At other times it just seems plain dodgy.
It's not quite the phenomenon of Asians herding together or whichever racial group... it's more favouring and can be weird.
I was told that a lot of the traders in Shenzhen speak Teochew dialect and that if you happen to be able to speak that dialect, you won't get ripped off as much. This is even though the area is geographically Cantonese (and Mandarin is standard). So there's a bit of favoritism going on there based on dialect/ same village origins.
My dodgier example involves two Hong Kong guys cruising around in a van trying to sell home theatre equipment, saying that they want to help out fellow Chinese with a great deal. This happened in Box Hill. Their excuse was quite dodgy, saying that they didn't want to drive back to the warehouse in Sydney with all this extra stock/mass. I found his English better than his Mandarin although he did ask whether I understood Cantonese. Reading back it doesn't seem too weird, but just seeing guys trying to sell stuff out of a van and use some magazine to put the price into perspective was quite a new experience for me.
Hmm maybe they just weren't confident enough to deal with any other kinds of people. But then I wouldn't have my excuse to make up such an awesome word.
Have you been a beneficiary or victim of autoethnophilia? Leave a comment below.
No comments:
Post a Comment