6 ms·

You're right. And I'm surprised more Silicon Valleyers have not figured out that China, a country that has concentration camps going right now is racist.

yourbandsucks 8y ago
Maybe overlaying a specific tiny-slice-of-America worldview to a billion people on the other side of the world is a little bit... lossy. Just food for thought.
- mb_72 8y ago
  Not in this case. China, Japan, Thailand - all countries where no matter how well you speak the language, know the culture or how much you spend creating companies that employ locals, you will always be a foreigner and 'less than' someone born in those countries. On looks alone, you will never truly fit in. Compare and contrast to the USA, Australia etc, where no-one can tell you are not a citizen by simply looking at you.
  - throwaway5yiu 8y ago
    And yet as a minority in America, I constantly get asked, “where are you really from?”
    - InterestBazinga 8y ago
      There is a difference between asking people's or parent's origin, and concentration camps over person's religion / ethnicity.
      - techVentureStar 8y ago
        A lot of black people do live segregated areas in usa. Just listen to serial podcast season3. Cleveland sounds like a concentration camp for black ppl.
        sheepmullet 8y ago
        I’m not sure if you are joking or not but Cleveland is nothing like a concentration or re-education camp.
        techVentureStar 8y ago
        Are you black then? Plus don't amurica have camps that killed mexican kids lately.
  - moosey 8y ago
    I'll make that comparison. http://www.wbtv.com/2018/11/27/desert-detention-camp-migrant-kids-still-growing/ http://www.wbtv.com/2018/11/27/desert-detention-camp-migrant... And if you think this policy isn't racist, then you haven't heard of the "Mexican Repatriation" in the 30's. And then when after WW2, Mexicans who were promised citizenship were again denied. Or we can look at this: https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ Our prison system, man. And of course, you can say this is whataboutism, but you asked for a contrast and compare. The US is horrid when it comes to race.
    - wetpaws 8y ago
      That does not make China less racist.
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    Ok, so we're expanding from stereotyping 1.4B to an even 2B now? Irony is dead. Applying American conceptions of racism to Asia is ignorant, full stop.
  - sheepmullet 8y ago
    > contrast to the USA, Australia etc, where no-one can tell you are not a citizen by simply looking at you. Yes America, Australia, the UK, etc are all running a great experiment to see if multiculturalism can work. The rest of the world might follow if multiculturalism ever ends up working.
wetpaws 8y ago
I had a Chinese manager once, who got hired, started discriminating against existing employer, promoting only Chinese people and bringing other Chinese people to key positions, openly. In a year whole business unit imploded. Racism and disregard for rules are culturally ingrained in them.
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  Same thing with some Indians in Silicon Valley. See eBay and PayPal as prime examples. That said there are enclaves within some companies of teams that are 90% one ethnicity be it Chinese, Indian, Eastern European or Israeli. Sort of the technology version of prisons being segregated ethnically. Really weird.
  - markdown 8y ago
    > That said there are enclaves within some companies of teams that are 90% one ethnicity be it Chinese, Indian, Eastern European or Israeli. But the most common scenario (90% white US-born male) isn’t as weird?
    - chadAnon69 8y ago
      Considering the US is, you know, the US and a majority white country, it's not weird at all. Indians and chinese make up something like 5% of the US population so for them to take up 90% of a select group can really only be caused by favoritism. Unless you want to open up the can of worms that certain races are just so far genetically superior in terms of intelligence that they are 20x more represented Do you think it's normal for tech companies located in India and China to have parts of their company that are 90% white?
      - tim333 8y ago
        It doesn't have to be genetics or favouritism. It's most likely cultural stuff.
yorwba 8y ago
Yes, many people in China hold racist attitudes. No, those attitudes do not usually result in negative views on Westerners. You're much more likely to hear negative comments about Uyghurs (terrorists), Tibetans (underdeveloped people who'll never make it at a university), South Koreans (obnoxious) and Japanese (the arch-enemy). On the other hand, Westerners (whether black or white) are seen as exotic and high-status and their presence in China indicates how far the country has made it. It's probably similar to European authors like Karl May (who'd never been to America) glorifying Native Americans as noble heroes, while Europeans who settled in America did their best to demonize and kill them. Simple tribalism: strangers from a distant land are exotic and no threat, but neighboring tribes that are only slightly different need to be shunned at all costs.
- chibg10 8y ago
  >On the other hand, Westerners (whether black or white) are seen as exotic and high-status and their presence in China indicates how far the country has made it. This is an oversimplification. Westerners are seen as exotic and high-status as individuals, but (Han, at least) Chinese also see China as a civilization as the "the Middle Kingdom" (between Heaven and the rest of the world) and that the West is currently dominant in global affairs is an unnatural occurrence that China is destined and entitled to rectify. The two are quite contradictory if you reflect on it at all, but most people in any country (whether China, America, Europe, or elsewhere) really all that reflectful in general so we are where we are.
  - yorwba 8y ago
    Sure, but that's nationalism, not racism. Wanting one's own country to be the best (at everything, or at least the most popular sport) is a pretty common view that doesn't necessarily require seeing the other countries' inhabitants as genetically inferior. As a historical example, the Sputnik shock and ensuing space race can be seen as an expression of the American expectation that the Soviet Union's dominance in space exploration was an unnatural occurrence that the US was destined and entitled to rectify.
  - withhighprod 8y ago
verroq 8y ago
Sorry those camps are miserable but they aren’t concentration camps. The word concentration camp has a specific connotation with the extermination camps build to kill Jews and other undesirable under Nazi Germany i.e. genocide. To conflate the two here like many people conflate Japanese internment camps with “concentration camps” is so off the scale it is at least misleading and at worst grossly insensitive.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  That isn’t true. The first concentration camps were used against the Boers by the British, for which the term was coined. Definition: > a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. The most famous usage was by Germans and is heavily associated with extermination, but the British just wish to deprive the Boer’s of support and to put pressure on them into surrendering. Hence the term “concentration” rather than “extermination”. Many Boers did wind up dying due to inadequate sanitation and food, but the point wasn’t to kill them. Whether the camps in Xinjiang are concentration camps or not remains to be seen. Definitely some of the awful work camps in China in the 70s met the threshold.
  - verroq 8y ago
    The meaning the words change with context. Much like the way the Swastika is no longer recognised in the western world as a Hindu peace symbol. My point is that the modern usage of concentration camp is the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, which is obviously not what’s happening in China.
    - roymurdock 8y ago
      They're extrajudicial camps used to punish and re educate people, the semantics aren't as important as the reality of the chinese government rounding up, imprisoning, and torturing an ethnic group of "muslim terrorists"
    - 8y ago

yourbandsucks 8y ago

Maybe overlaying a specific tiny-slice-of-America worldview to a billion people on the other side of the world is a little bit... lossy. Just food for thought.

mb_72 8y ago
Not in this case. China, Japan, Thailand - all countries where no matter how well you speak the language, know the culture or how much you spend creating companies that employ locals, you will always be a foreigner and 'less than' someone born in those countries. On looks alone, you will never truly fit in. Compare and contrast to the USA, Australia etc, where no-one can tell you are not a citizen by simply looking at you.
- throwaway5yiu 8y ago
  And yet as a minority in America, I constantly get asked, “where are you really from?”
  - InterestBazinga 8y ago
    There is a difference between asking people's or parent's origin, and concentration camps over person's religion / ethnicity.
    - techVentureStar 8y ago
      A lot of black people do live segregated areas in usa. Just listen to serial podcast season3. Cleveland sounds like a concentration camp for black ppl.
      - sheepmullet 8y ago
        I’m not sure if you are joking or not but Cleveland is nothing like a concentration or re-education camp.
        techVentureStar 8y ago
        Are you black then? Plus don't amurica have camps that killed mexican kids lately.
- moosey 8y ago
  I'll make that comparison. http://www.wbtv.com/2018/11/27/desert-detention-camp-migrant-kids-still-growing/ http://www.wbtv.com/2018/11/27/desert-detention-camp-migrant... And if you think this policy isn't racist, then you haven't heard of the "Mexican Repatriation" in the 30's. And then when after WW2, Mexicans who were promised citizenship were again denied. Or we can look at this: https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/ Our prison system, man. And of course, you can say this is whataboutism, but you asked for a contrast and compare. The US is horrid when it comes to race.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    That does not make China less racist.
- yourbandsucks 8y ago
  Ok, so we're expanding from stereotyping 1.4B to an even 2B now? Irony is dead. Applying American conceptions of racism to Asia is ignorant, full stop.
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  > contrast to the USA, Australia etc, where no-one can tell you are not a citizen by simply looking at you. Yes America, Australia, the UK, etc are all running a great experiment to see if multiculturalism can work. The rest of the world might follow if multiculturalism ever ends up working.

wetpaws 8y ago

I had a Chinese manager once, who got hired, started discriminating against existing employer, promoting only Chinese people and bringing other Chinese people to key positions, openly. In a year whole business unit imploded. Racism and disregard for rules are culturally ingrained in them.

IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
Same thing with some Indians in Silicon Valley. See eBay and PayPal as prime examples. That said there are enclaves within some companies of teams that are 90% one ethnicity be it Chinese, Indian, Eastern European or Israeli. Sort of the technology version of prisons being segregated ethnically. Really weird.
- markdown 8y ago
  > That said there are enclaves within some companies of teams that are 90% one ethnicity be it Chinese, Indian, Eastern European or Israeli. But the most common scenario (90% white US-born male) isn’t as weird?
  - chadAnon69 8y ago
    Considering the US is, you know, the US and a majority white country, it's not weird at all. Indians and chinese make up something like 5% of the US population so for them to take up 90% of a select group can really only be caused by favoritism. Unless you want to open up the can of worms that certain races are just so far genetically superior in terms of intelligence that they are 20x more represented Do you think it's normal for tech companies located in India and China to have parts of their company that are 90% white?
    - tim333 8y ago
      It doesn't have to be genetics or favouritism. It's most likely cultural stuff.

yorwba 8y ago

Yes, many people in China hold racist attitudes. No, those attitudes do not usually result in negative views on Westerners. You're much more likely to hear negative comments about Uyghurs (terrorists), Tibetans (underdeveloped people who'll never make it at a university), South Koreans (obnoxious) and Japanese (the arch-enemy). On the other hand, Westerners (whether black or white) are seen as exotic and high-status and their presence in China indicates how far the country has made it. It's probably similar to European authors like Karl May (who'd never been to America) glorifying Native Americans as noble heroes, while Europeans who settled in America did their best to demonize and kill them. Simple tribalism: strangers from a distant land are exotic and no threat, but neighboring tribes that are only slightly different need to be shunned at all costs.

chibg10 8y ago
>On the other hand, Westerners (whether black or white) are seen as exotic and high-status and their presence in China indicates how far the country has made it. This is an oversimplification. Westerners are seen as exotic and high-status as individuals, but (Han, at least) Chinese also see China as a civilization as the "the Middle Kingdom" (between Heaven and the rest of the world) and that the West is currently dominant in global affairs is an unnatural occurrence that China is destined and entitled to rectify. The two are quite contradictory if you reflect on it at all, but most people in any country (whether China, America, Europe, or elsewhere) really all that reflectful in general so we are where we are.
- yorwba 8y ago
  Sure, but that's nationalism, not racism. Wanting one's own country to be the best (at everything, or at least the most popular sport) is a pretty common view that doesn't necessarily require seeing the other countries' inhabitants as genetically inferior. As a historical example, the Sputnik shock and ensuing space race can be seen as an expression of the American expectation that the Soviet Union's dominance in space exploration was an unnatural occurrence that the US was destined and entitled to rectify.
- withhighprod 8y ago

verroq 8y ago

Sorry those camps are miserable but they aren’t concentration camps. The word concentration camp has a specific connotation with the extermination camps build to kill Jews and other undesirable under Nazi Germany i.e. genocide. To conflate the two here like many people conflate Japanese internment camps with “concentration camps” is so off the scale it is at least misleading and at worst grossly insensitive.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
That isn’t true. The first concentration camps were used against the Boers by the British, for which the term was coined. Definition: > a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. The most famous usage was by Germans and is heavily associated with extermination, but the British just wish to deprive the Boer’s of support and to put pressure on them into surrendering. Hence the term “concentration” rather than “extermination”. Many Boers did wind up dying due to inadequate sanitation and food, but the point wasn’t to kill them. Whether the camps in Xinjiang are concentration camps or not remains to be seen. Definitely some of the awful work camps in China in the 70s met the threshold.
- verroq 8y ago
  The meaning the words change with context. Much like the way the Swastika is no longer recognised in the western world as a Hindu peace symbol. My point is that the modern usage of concentration camp is the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, which is obviously not what’s happening in China.
  - roymurdock 8y ago
    They're extrajudicial camps used to punish and re educate people, the semantics aren't as important as the reality of the chinese government rounding up, imprisoning, and torturing an ethnic group of "muslim terrorists"
  - 8y ago