Broken English & discrimination

Yesterday I had an unfortunate experience Steemit.

I confess I thought about leaving here.

I may be immolating myself in writing this post. You choose. That's just Steemit.

When I got Steemit I started writing some content in Spanish. What was the problem? My messages were not read. I imagine most of those who are non-native English have gone through this situation. The handicap of creating content in a virtually nonexistent community (fortunately is growing) is that there are no answers. Everyone, absolutely everyone, write to read us, so that we discuss and to feel part of the social network. Nobody wants to feel isolated texting vacuum. So I decided to translate my text.

I am aware that not mastered English. Yes, my English is bad. To the beginning, when wanted to comment in the post of others people I felt embarrassed and I apologize for my errors. Yet I was slowly losing the shame. I have to say that I have met many people from English-speaking who have treated me wonderfully. They got that I began to feel me comfortable and to share my opinions with others people that didn’t not judged me by my English level grammar.

Until yesterday

Yesterday I met with an article that made me feel really insulted. I will not name the author or links its contents for education. The post of which I speak is a protest to the whales that have voted content written by people who are not proficient in English. I haven’t come to earn money to Steemit. I even those who are whales. Understand the concept of whale but not them still or those named for begging their upvotes.

In the text the author tells what really hurt it feels for our failures to write in their own language. First he tries to clarify that not has anything against the people that do not master the English. Then he begins to criticize them to those people openly. It links several post and lists the defects of each one of them with content of the type "Full of grammatical errors" or "Just awful". Is clear that the intended to ridicule them to them. What really seems strange is that it names, I mean @names to draw attention, the whale who has voted in every post. Really he is monitoring where the votes of the whales go? Do people really do that?

In the following paragraphs he illustrates us with arguments like “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” (meme included) and he asks us to respect. ¿Really? Does anybody really dedicated to disparage others for their lack of knowledge may ask for respect? What first impression he believes that generates criticizing and despising others?

To end, he explains his true frustration. Oh, yes. The upvote of whales. If I was not enough clear. He does not mind that we write. What really bothers him is that we may be depriving writing in broken English (as he calls it).

He proposes a solution to this heartbreaking problem. He proposes a specific tag for all non- native speakers in English. Something like "secondlanguage" o ''ESLwriters”.

Dear friends, if you have no absolute mastery of English, you must write your content begin on a tag in which you feel comfortable. You have more in common with the others like you. If you do not offend, you could wear this yellow badge so that we can recognize you. Why not openly call this new tag ghetto?

I don’t know what hurts this user a whale to vote contained in "broken English" The author even raises the possibility that the whale in question thank the effort of a user to communicate in a language that is not their native. It is even possible that he do to strengthen the non-English speaking community. Or, who knows? Maybe the whale has liked the content and has not judged the author for his grammatical errors. Call me crazy.

I will always do everything possible to understand a person who tries to communicate with me.

Regardless of its grammatical or cultural level. I will always cherish the effort that person to adapt to my language. What I will not do is ever consider arguments that despise others for their origin or for any other reason. I seem much more harmful discriminatory arguments that spelling or grammar. I propose to create a tag for the discriminators. For people who believe in equality we do not have to see contaminated exclusive arguments.

Of course I will continue to write as I want.

I hope you do the same