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by mqrs 1929 days ago
> Google is an international company with lots of immigrants not familiar with modern American norms

Still, doesn’t the responsibility of understanding the sensitivities of an unfamiliar culture fall onto the foreigner who’s coming in?

2 comments

Yes, but that particular quirk is unique to Wokeness which is very new even to most Westerners.
I don’t understand your point here—if I’m traveling to a foreign country and I’m asking about what’s offensive because I don’t want to offend the locals and be an annoying, insensitive tourist, then I’m just automatically being “woke” instead of trying to genuinely learn about the indigenous culture from the point of view of the locals? Are you saying that I should be asserting my own perceptions of the world to the people whom I am visiting?
Not the previous poster, but the point was that "I love your curly hair!" is not a statement that would cause offense pretty much anywhere in the world except in certain "woke" US corporations.

Also, while said companies go to extreme length to tell their employees how to handle any hint of racism, sexism, etc, they do not actually define what any of these terms mean in practice, meaning even the "indigenous" are walking on eggshells. There's also a difficult continual doublethink required to simultaneously celebrate diversity while avoiding any hint of appropriation, all while pretending to ignore everything about the actual people you're working with.

Sort of; is the company offering cultural integration training? If not, then no, if so, and they willfully ignore it, then yes.

But a lot of it will be down to the company, I think.

One big part of moving to my country (the Netherlands) is to partake and graduate in an integration course and exam - you need to have an adequate grasp of both the language and the culture to be able to get a Dutch citizenship: https://www.nt2.nl/en/dossier/kennis_nederlandse_maatschappi...