I’m a girl, and therefore entitled to get anything I want from men, anytime, any place.
I’m Canadian, so I’m automatically calm and polite.
So THERE, you bastard!
Not true. You have to want the right thing.
I, a proud Canadian, having lived here all my life, have only the most tenuous grasp of hockey and do not know Thing One about beer and
So, matt, can you recommend any good Canadian music?
OK, I’m of Polish extraction, and I love kielbasa, have been known on occasion to listen to polka music, and am looking for someone who can make me some duck’s blood soup.
Sorry, slight [hijack] This is probably a gross simplification, but inserting the condition of “power to oppress” is a nice little semantic trick used to insinuate that only people of white European stock can be racist. [/hijack]
I agree with the folks saying that you weren’t racist but perhaps a bit insensitive. I think it says loads about you in your favor that you actually like belly dancing. I think it would be a different story if you were some goof saying "you’re not one of them belly-dancin’ Eye-rainians, are yew? BTW, please post if you find some good belly dancing music or Middle Eastern music in general.
That would definitely apply to me, as well. If anyone were to ask me if I could recommend any good Cantopop albums, I’d say that I didn’t know a thing about it! (FTR, I like rock music)
As for the OP, I’d have to agree with the others who said you were stereotyping… it’s not being racist, per se, but asking somone repeatedly about it (even after he said he didn’t know anything about it) gets to be a little much.
This has already been said, but there’s nothing like a pile-on: I am 100% Finnish, but being raised in the states, I have NO idea what’s popular in Finland these days. I thought my mom was joking when she told me that tango is popular there. I laugh at the CD’s my cousins send me. For instance: pop music sung in Finnish by the Smurfs. It’s called “Smurfs in Space”.
Hahaa!! Smurffit: Tanssihitit, the original CD, has since been followed by at least 9 others. It’s happening in Germany, too. Smurfified versions of popular songs. Probably to appeal to kiddies… Good to listen to for a laugh. The lyrics kill me. 
But don’t get me started on Tiktak or The Rasmus… ugh.
From www.dictionary.com
No, you’re not racist. (At least, you weren’t being racist in this situation).
umm…isn’t that a generalization? :rolleyes:
**Witch - ** waaaaay too much whitespace in your post. You’re obviously threatened by the implicit power of the black-lettered words you wrote. 
Seriously, though, Thea Logica’s only real miscue was not believing Cyrus the first time he said he didn’t know any good belly-dancing music CD’s. What possible agenda could Cyrus have to lie to you?
Not racist. Perfectly reasonable assumption (especially if your colleague was brought up by Iranian parents). And he didn’t know; he told you he didn’t; no hard feelings. I think you’re worring about it a bit much.
Leonard Cohen, Stan Rogers, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright, The Wyrd Sisters. (But it’s just a coincidence.)
You’re Finnish? Well, you must listen to Jean Sibelius! (Do ya? Huh? Huh? What’s your favorite Sibelius symphony? Huh? Huh? 
)
I remember attending an all-Sibelius concert in downtown L.A. In the parking lot of the concert hall there were all these cars with “Finnish American” bumper stickers, and license plate holders that made references to Finland. So many Finns, in one place at one time! 
But no - to assume that all people of Finnish descent know all about Sibelius would be wrong.
OK, look, people, I’m not expecting Cyrus to be a world class expert on Persian music. But is it really streotyping to expect someone to have a sort of working knowledge of the music of the geograpic area where he was born and, at least partially, raised?
Some folk music, maybe, if that’s what he was into? Classical, if it has enough of a beat to shake my booty to? Or some Persian pop music that was currently popular before his family moved away from the country? I’m not expecting all of the above, just maybe an anthology CD of Iranian Golden Oldies, or something like that. Whatever was playing on his mom’s favorite radio station when he was a youngun’.
Hell, it’s not like I’m asking him to take me camel riding (I have actually ridden a camel more times than he has- exactly once to his never),
I actually stopped bugging him a few weeks ago.
Maybe I’ll just pop over to 365 Live and see if I can find some Turkish heavy metal.
Racist-no. A jerk-a bit.
I’m a Black guy and I can’t dance nor do I like the majority of rap music. I tell everyone this, still at parties people bug me. “Dance for me, drayton.” “Show me some moves, drayton.” Look, I can’t dance. Period. There isn’t some conspiracy of African Americans trying to withhold precious dancing secrets so that “Whitey” looks like an idiot when he tries to dance, so quit bothering me! Sheesh!
Yeah, I identify with Thea’s friend. I don’t expect every Jew I meet to be able to sing “Sabbath Prayer” from memory nor do I expect every White person under 25 to like ska music or even know what it is. Chalk it up as a learning experience.
I think its stereotyping, yes. That in itself isn’t a bad thing; everyone uses stereotypes at some stage or another, its a way for us to try and make sense of our world.
You said you aren’t bugging Cyrus anymore, so great!
Chalk this up to a learning experience. You now know that people don’t necessarily know much about the music of their cultural background.
Stereotyping? Maybe not.
But as others have pointed out, your expectations are unrealistic. You are expecting 100% of the population of a country to have a certain level of knowledge, and it just ain’t going to happen.
I’m 20.
While I did indeed live through the 80’s, I didn’t listen to pop music. I listened to classical. You know, Mozart etc. (Though I like Chopin better.)
Regardless of my supposed surroundings I do not have a working knowledge of 80 pop music. (My freshman year in college I had a friend put me on a crash course though…so I now know a little.)
It is entirely possible to live in a culture and totally miss parts of it. We are, after all, all individuals with our own views on things.
OK, look, if you asked a randomly selected American to recommend some good American music to dance to-
Some might recommend an anthology of big band swing. Others might recommend a disco collection, or some really funky, um, funk. Or someone who was into classical might recommend waltzes.
But they’d come up with something. This is basically what I was asking Cyrus to do. I seriously doubt that his mother kept him in a soundproof box.
The past few days, I’ve been listening to Persian music on the internet, and I’ve heard some traditional, classical, and modern pop, but there was nothing I couldn’t belly dance to. Well, OK, there was this one twenty-minute opus with really long, really slow oud solos, where I could have maybe veil danced, maybe covered myself with a veil and taken a nap. I’ve got an anthology of Arabic music, various artists, various styles, but same situation- I could get my hips going to it.