4 ms·
I think a lot of the time people don't really think about what racism looks like when the shoe is on the other foot. All bets are off when you're not on home
by james_s_tayler 8y ago
I think a lot of the time people don't really think about what racism looks like when the shoe is on the other foot.
All bets are off when you're not on home turf. Understanding and opinions of how to interact with and treat people of different races/ethnicities are at remarkably different stages of development around the world because not everywhere has the same levels of immigration and immigrants and so they just haven't spent time thinking about there things and in some cases consider them completely non-existant issues.
I find it helpful to perform the thought experiment of taking any person of any nationality and dropping them into any other nation randomly and have them try to assimilate into society and imagine the challenges they might face and the treatment they might receive. Some situations fare better than others when I try to imagine this but suffice to say, the more homogenous the population and the less of your specific kind are visible in society the harder a time you have.
The tribalism is real.
- OnlineCourage 8y agoThat's nonsense. If anything racism in China favors white Americans over regular Han Chinese. As a white guy who has lived in China extensively I can tell you this. Are there anti foreign sentiments which shift with political winds? Yes. A structured racism focused at keeping white people down? No. Keeping Chinese minorities down? Yes.
- cauldron 8y ago>favors white Americans Only if you mindlessly praise anything Chinese, like how much better their food, systems, culture and products are, believe me they love these, that way you can probably become an internet celebrity. But once they discovered you betrayed them in anyway, you are done, you are back to your "white-skinned pigs" normal.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoSo there are no situations where as a non-Chinese you have a different experience than Chinese would? I call shenanigans on that. Anti-foreign(er) sentiment is a pretty narrow lense to view it through. Sometimes it's just the fact the system wasn't built to accommodate you and that causes you grief that a local doesn't experience. https://youtu.be/Y2_L71lFItk https://youtu.be/Y2_L71lFItk This is a pretty reasonable discussion of the kind of things you might bump up against. I can't imagine these issues are wildly different for you than these guys describe? The cultural stuff they talk about rings really true from my experience with Japan. And let's not do a uni-dimensional analysis of what it's like to be white in China, but consider being Black, Japanese/Korean, Indian etc. Using the words "structured" and "focused" is the wrong way to think about it. It's not usually something purposeful and sinister, it's mostly accidental and inadvertant. You're an edge-case that sometimes hasn't been accounted for.