Tan France Quotes
I think that we in the West expect people to adapt to our culture very, very quickly when they come to our country. But when we go over to someone else's, I don't think we are willing to meet them halfway like we expect them to meet us. I think having cultural sensitivity is a lot more important than we realize.
France, Tan. "Tan France Quotes." Quote Catalog, quotecatalog.com/quotes/author/tan-france. Accessed 24 May 2024.
The inscrutability of the “oriental” was not racial as Nicholson and many others thought as most Asians who became Westernized tend to behave and respond to the Western culture in which they were brought up. However, many of the “oriental” cultures place a premium on inscrutability and avoidance of candor. Therefore, often they interact with Westerners and are unsure of the certainty of what they hear and observe. Or they hear it in ways that in their culture would not indicate strong feeling when that was intended by the Westerner. For example, Arab oratory tends to repeat something intensely felt several if not many times. A Western Diplomat who thinks he “makes himself clear” might slow down and emphasize each word distinctly—a sign of strong emphasis in Western oratory—but if only stated once or twice might not be taken as seriously meant. So communicating between cultures has often caused difficulties which people have assumed were racial characteristics but were cultural.
Tanveer Wasim "Tan" France is a British-Pakistani-American fashion designer, television personality, and author. He is one of the very first openly gay South Asian men on a major show and one of the first out Muslim gay men on western television as the fashion expert for the Netflix series Queer Eye, host of the web series Dressing Funny, and co-host of Next In Fashion. His memoir, Naturally Tan, was released in June 2019.
