2021

MADE BY KIRILL SELIVANTCHIK

REPORT

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TMD2
ASSIGNMENT 5
CONTENTS
RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION BY SEBASTIAN VAN HOECKE............................................. 3
TABOOS IN CHINA.............................................................................................................................. 4
OPINION ................................................................................................................................................ 4

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Kirill Selivantchik 2IBM06
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RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION BY SEBASTIAN

VAN HOECKE
In the webinar by Sebastian Van Hoecke, he explains how widely misunderstood racism is and
undervalued. The webinar began with a basic explanation about who Sebastian is, and where he was
raised. Sebastian has lived for quite some time in Africa helping to preserve the elephant population
as these are declining very rapidly, and might go extinct in the near future.

After his introduction, he begins to explain about racism. Racism is often misunderstood as being an
individual thing, while it is more of a collective issue. It is a group of people discriminating against
another race, or population. Besides that, often people are not even aware of their racism. One
might say he isn’t racist, but that is the exact problem. Most are not aware because racism is
unconscious amongst most and a bias. Meaning that people might say they aren’t racist, while they
are. You don’t face the same issues as people of colour, if you are white. You don’t have difficulties
on school because you are of a different colour, you don’t have problems with finding a job because
of your colour or nationality, you don’t have problems with buying houses. It is not the same.

Later in the webinar, Sebastian asks everyone also some questions. One of these was if some of the
people have felt inverse racism, meaning racism towards white people. There were some interesting
answers from people, and the conclusion was that if you as a white person think there is racism
against white people, then you are the problem. You don’t understand racism, because racism is not
an situation, it is an ideology. And every ideology has a certain goal, so the same applies to racism.

Racism is something that has been going on for lots of years, only 63 years have passed by since the
last human Zoo has been closed, which was in Belgium actually. So thinking that racism will go away
or doesn’t exist anymore is pure lies. We are all children of our ancestors which have slaughtered
millions of people because they were not like us. It is in our blood to be racist, so if someone says
they are not racist, they are not aware of the meaning of racism. Everyone is racist, it is nature, but
some are just relatively less racist than others. The goal of this webinar was to spread the awareness
of racism, and that people stop being quiet about it. Because if you continue being quiet, you are
allowing to let the racism to continue and are on the side of the oppressor.

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Kirill Selivantchik 2IBM06
TABOOS IN CHINA
In this virtual activity which was organized by ArteveldeHogeschool gent on 30 of April, was an
explanation about the taboos in china and the cultural differences with Belgium. Lot of people are
actually not aware of the big cultural differences that existing between European countries and
China.

There are a lot of taboos in China which foreigners might not be aware of. The first one, which is
especially very important in business, is gifting. In China you should never buy them known Belgium
chocolate. What you should buy instead is a local chocolate brand that isn’t know at all around the
world, or something really expansive. The reason being because almost everything is made in China,
so they know the price out of their head. Secondly, be careful with the number 4 as the number 4 in
Chinese sounds almost the same as death. Meaning that Chinese people are culturally scared of the
number 4 just like Americans of the number 13. Thirdly, we careful with colours. Some colours are in
China have specific meanings. For example, yellow is associated with pornography, red is a favourite
of Chinese people because it stand for luck and happiness, and if someone wears green it is often
associated with a cheating wife. Fourthly, be careful with topics like protest pf Tibet in 1999, re-
education camps, Japan & China relations, Chinese and dog food, and etc. These topics can be very
sensitive to Chinese people. Last but least, if you have a certain opinion that could be ‘not
appreciated’ by the Chinese, it is better to say ‘I don’t know’. The reason is because Chinese might
not like you anymore once you have a belief or opinion that they don’t like.

Concluding ‘Taboos in China’, it is noticeable that you really need to do good research on the cultural
differences once you go into business in other cultures.

OPINION
The exact reason why I chose these 2 activities as my favourite is because they were quite interesting
and showed me a new perspective on things. You could say it opened my eyes. The first activity on
Racism, is something I already learned in a trading group in which we regularly discussed racism. But
the webinar of racism showed another perspective on Racism. And that is what it is about, looking at
something from different angles to have a better perspective of the truth.

The second activity, which was by Mr. Liu, was also interesting. It thought me how often we people
only see things from our perspective and ego. People in Europa and Americas often talk about how
cruel eating dog food is, but if you look at it from the Chinese perspective: people in Europe eat
horse food. Which is also ridiculous for Chinese. Judging a culture is an ego thing, we should have
some empathy and understand the others perspective. This way we will understand each other
better. The last thing I’d like to mention is, do your research on a country before traveling there or
doing business. You surely don’t want to wear a yellow tie, while in China it stand for pornography.

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Kirill Selivantchik 2IBM06