I said in a previous part of this Japanese Racism group of posts that I would also tackle some of the comments left on the previously mentioned (other person's) blog.
There are a lot of comments so this might make up another few parts of the Japanese Racism group of posts.
Before I start, please let me say that once I'm finished with this, I'm going to write a post about a comment on my blog from tornados28. You should read his comments if you haven't yet, they add quite a bit to this blog. Anyway, That post that I will make (hopefully this week) will detail things like areas of Japan (the boonies and sticks and those types of people's thoughts versus the city folk and metropolitans) and that should clear up some things that might seem like I'm painting with too big a brush.
I'm skipping a lot of the comments that might be what I think are similar to that person's original blog post (some weird meeting/occurrence and mistaking it for racism). As well, there were a lot of positive, interesting comments but I'm afraid I have to skip them on account of the title of this post.
"are you nuts? Japan is one of the most racist countries I’ve ever been to. maybe your just waking up!"
I don't think that's true, and based on Japan being around 98% Japanese, it could hypothetically be HELL for a foreigner, yet many foreigners here are treated like celebrities and most are just dealt with like every other stranger and maybe with a bit more suspicion.
"I was born in Korea and now I live in the States. I have been living in the States for 20 years now. But, I constantly witnessed racism since the day one; both directed to me and directed to other ethnic mimority."
This is good to me, because part of what I'm trying to do with this blog is to take this idea that we as Westerners have of Japan and other asian countries, that it's so weird and maybe incomprehensible or even 'wrong' - and I want that criticism which is mostly based on stereotypes and a lack of knowledge - I want to turn that into educated criticism.. and then I want to take that criticism and turn it inwards. It's so easy to attack another culture and used the basic stereotypes that your culture has of that other culture to rest on your laurels and have the people around you agree with you. In the end, that means this blog is an extension of what I'm trying to do in my personal life - to take the experiences that come to me and the knowledge that comes from that and to turn it inward to try to grow from it all in some way. I think a lot of people could learn from turning such things inward - and another culture (especially one that's VERY different from one's own) is the perfect mirror for that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
This is one of my favorite posts on here. It drives me absolutely crazy that so often people are blind to the world around them and interpret everything as hostile.
Racism is a strong word. It shouldn't be thrown around without sufficient data, proof, etc, such as other watered-down words (i.e. love, hate, pedophile, and so on). There's a reason words were created to carry strong connotations and using them left and right in daily life completely defeats this purpose. It's sickening to hear comments about Germans being Nazis, Blacks being unintelligent, Middle Easterns being criminals, the list goes on.
I've gathered from your previous posts that you aren't religious, but, believing very heavily in Christianity, I think even if just a miniscule amount of selflessness and love from the Bible could be injected into today's world, disturbing and hateful comments like this would curtail sharply. Whether you're religious or not, I doubt anyone would have trouble accepting that.
This blog is great so far! Honesty is like a diamond in the rough these days.
Post a Comment