Ok. So are the Bloods racist towards the Crips? Bill Gates racist towards Steve Jobs? Catholics racist towards Protestants?
No I don’t. I never said anything like that.
So recognizing that the culture that enjoys absolute world domination, and that I’ve been born into and am perfectly acculturated to in every way, from language to values to philosophy to behavior, despite not having the prerequisite skin color; might have A flaw means I have “powerful anti-European lenses”? So you can easily recognize that blacks commit violent crimes disproportionately in the U.S., have generally lower I.Q.s, and that sub-Saharan Africa has never constructed a successful civilization, but you’re too guarded to admit that Europeans are the founders and prime merchants of racism?
God, your reverse race card is so freaking transparent and obnoxious - give it up!
The problem is, and I bet Paul would agree, is that there are no specific dramatic examples. It’s something you just have to experience and get a feel for the intensity or level of compared with the other two – the Chinese and the Japanese – which is why I said it was virtually indescribable to anyone who had not experienced it. Any examples I gave would sound much like what people have experienced elsewhere, and they might say, “Oh but that happens everywhere you go,” when yes, that might be true, but it’s not quite the same. “Same same but different” as they say in Thailand.
I’m very well aware that Japan raped much of East Asia, but I’ve no personal experience of that. Was just giving my opinion based on my own experience of all three for what it’s worth. Not much concerned with “persuading” anyone.
And while many agree with me, based on their own experience, not all do. I have a Brit friend who absolutely refuses to set foot in China again.
I don’t see why you are bothering to participate in a DEBATE if you’re not concerned with persuading anyone. This is not IMHO. Furthermore, the question wasn’t “What is the most racist country in your personal experience?” but “What is the most racist country?”. Personally I’ve experienced more racism in the US than I have in any other country, but I wouldn’t say that the US is more racist than Korea.
As someone who has lived in six countries (2+ years in each), including South Korea and the US, the latter has been easily the most racist country from my own personal experiences. I never realized how liberally the word nigger was used in these parts. Also, why would to try to tell an Asian guy that you just met jokes about Asian stereotypes? Am I supposed to find them funny or do you expect me agree with you? (“Haha yeah, I do have a tiny wiener, that’s hilarious”) But these are merely my own experiences and really neither here or there, but maybe worth sharing (or not).
Two personal experiences; I live in Korea for 6 months and spent a couple of weeks each in Japan and Taiwan. YMMV
Specific incident 1:
Standing in Seoul airport. Long line of Koreans. Japanese woman in queue was ejected from queue with large number of coarse-sounding comments following her. I don’t speak Korean, and don’t know the back story of this particular incident, but the tone was ugly and police ended up breaking up the almost-riot. It looked like the Japanese woman had attempted to jump the queue and the Koreans responded almost violently to her doing this, and since I knew the antipathy of Koreans to Japanese it seemed to me to be pretty racist in origin.
Specific Incident 2:
Another airport queue in Narita. I saw a small Korean child wandering around crying; again, not speaking Korean, all I could do was solicit help, so I asked a Japanese woman standing nearby if she knew where the parent of this (lost?) child was as my flight was being called just then and I had to bolt; Japanese woman replied (in English) “I have no idea and want nothing to do with that (almost in a sneering voice) Korean child.” I wound up taking the child by the hand and finding a cop to take her off my hands and damn near missed my flight.
Thanks for sharing those anecdotes - neither of them surprise me. The antagonism between Korea and Japan is nothing new and comes of a long and bloody history. Hatred against the Japanese is a given in Korea and no one really questions it. (And while I am against hating the Japanese as an entire people, the antics of the Japanese government completely justify Korea’s feelings towards them at least; IMO anyway.)
r4nd0mNumb3rs, I think that as a Korean, it’s to be expected that I’m going to personally experience more racism in the US than in Korea. But for a Caucasian, it would obviously be the other way around. My point is that we can’t really judge the level of racism of any given country based solely on personal experience (although how one measures the level of racism to begin with is also a question up for debate).
When I was working as an ESL teacher in Korea, I was the only billingual person at the school, so I ended up doing a lot of translation between the other teachers and the administration. There were a lot of disagreements between the teachers and the admins, and one day the assistant director took me aside and warned me that “taking the side of the white people” would get me nowhere, because white people would use me and then stab me in the back when it was convenient for them, and the only people I could really trust were my fellow Koreans. :dubious: I wanted to remind her that if I seemed to be taking sides, it was only because I was a TEACHER and therefore it was only natural that my interests would coincide with that of the other teachers as well. The sad thing is, her attitude is not uncommon among Korean people working with foreigners (ironic, since they’re making so much money off of these “white people”). I have never been so ashamed of my Korean background as I was then.
I probably should’ve mentioned my ethnic background (Korean) in that post, but what you’ve stated is among the reasons I was emphasizing the fact I’m merely stating my own personal experiences. Either way though, I doubt that many foreigners in Korea (even immigrant workers, who don’t share the same esteem as white foreigners) would be treated with such thinly-veiled condescension so frequently. Apprehension, maybe (or probably). Waaay too often when I meet new people here in the States, among the first comments I am greeted with is some reference to an Asian stereotype. I realize they’re trying to be friendly or chummy but I think a lot of boils down to “you’re not a minority that I feel is being oppressed, so I can say insulting shit and you’re a poor sport if you don’t like it.”
I’d like a cite on this, specifically with regards to the threat being about (forced) interbreeding rather than German and Russian persons being born in each others countries due to immigration.
The postwar actions of Russia are not in dispute here, and the actions of a handful of German soldiers are pretty believable in an army of millions of soldiers, but its a bit unbelievable to have a German general on the record as threatening any interbreeding whatsoever, due to the offical antimiscegenation doctrine aspect of the thing alone.
Another thing - the German army certainly raped it’s way across Eastern Europe; I’m not an expert, but my recollection is that the miscegenation laws only concerned interbreeding with Jews.
I agree with your last sentence - I’m pretty laidback about racist jokes, and usually my (white) friends are more sensitive about the issue than I am. That said, it’s really amazing how casually insulting people can be towards Asian Americans because they feel that Asian Americans “have it easy.”
The Korean attitude towards foreigners is a curious one. I have to disagree and say I’ve seen many displays of outright condescension - they assume said foreigners can’t understand Korean, so they talk shit about them to their faces with a smile. (To be fair, a lot of Americans do the same thing. One time on a bus I was sitting next to an American guy and his friends were urging him loudly to “do the girl sitting next to you” because “she wants you so badly, dude.” :rolleyes: ) There is an odd mixture of veneration and contempt directed at Caucasian foreigners. It’s also complicated by the fact that until recently (like in the past two decades) most contact between Koreans and Americans consisted of American soldiers interacting with Koreans working in the seedier parts of the tourist industry. Nowadays, of course, it’s mostly Koreans as students and Americans as ESL teachers, which is a completely different dynamic.
As for how Koreans treat immigrant workers… I used to work as a volunteer interpreter for a civil rights group in Seoul and let me tell you, the conditions of immigrants in Korea are terrible. They are treated like shit and because most of them are here illegally and can’t speak the language, it’s very difficult for them to make their grievances be heard.
It’s really apples and oranges I guess (Korean xenophobia vs. American racism). I do agree that immigrant workers in Korea have it pretty rough, but I don’t think so much of it is malice from the Koreans as much as the inability of an extremely homogeneous country to accommodate a very small group of foreigners.
The mixed feelings toward American/European foreigners is an interesting one. But even though they usually can’t speak the language, most Koreans I’ve observed tend to be courteous if somewhat apprehensive towards foreigners, probably because of the language barrier. They’re basically treated like tourists and that’s what most of them are, to some extent. In both cases, contact between an average Korean and non-Koreans in Korea is generally so limited, the xenophobia doesn’t even come into play.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is racism/xenophobia/ethnocentricism/whatever across different cultures is hard to quantify with so many demographic, cultural and historical factors.
Racism is discrimination against another ‘race’, while xenophobia is not directed towards different races but is a more broader term for hatred/prejudice towards anyone that’s not ‘us’. For example, I think it would be inaccurate to say the Japanese are racist towards Koreans because they’re the same race.
I would argue that racism is a form of xenophobia, based on the distinctions and classifications made in 19th century Europe as someone already mentioned.
In my earlier posts, I wasn’t trying to say that Americans are anymore racist or xenophobic than Koreans. It’s just two very different circumstances and I don’t think anyone can say which is better or worse.
Who - that’s not right. Japanese and Koreans are very much different races. They have very different facial features, different languages, different lots of things. They are NOT the same race.
I disagree. Koreans are very racist. Koreans are also very xenophobic. You could be right that racism starts as xenophobia, but you can be xenophobic (distrusting everything ‘not like us’) but also be racist (‘they are us (i.e. African Americans) but I don’t like them because they’re different.’)
So I suppose you consider the German and the French different races too? According to you, there must be hundreds of races.
Yes, Koreans are so very racist with a history of slavery and discriminatory laws against a substantial portion of the population. Oh wait…
So you’re saying that Koreans are racist against all those “African-Koreans” that have integrated into Korean society? Because last I checked there weren’t too many of those.
If by “malice” you mean “actively seeking out these people with ill intent” then yes, I agree - there isn’t much “malice” towards immigrant workers. But they are still treated badly and looked down upon. They are a rapidly growing part of the population, along with foreign brides from SE Asia, and they are considered “inferior” because of long-standing prejudices Koreas have about that part of the world.
When was the last time you were in Korea? I worked as an ESL teacher for 5 of the 11 years I was there (up till 2006), and it’s no longer the case that contact between white people and Koreans is as rare as you seem to be implying. Seeing white people in Seoul doesn’t even merit a second glance nowadays.
Koreans are usually polite to white foriegners on a one-on-one basis, but as a whole they tend to resent the fact that white people are making so much money teaching ESL in Korea. There was a scandal just a couple years ago when a photo of some white guys talking to a couple of Korean girls was published with an editorial that slammed “white men” for taking advantage of Korean women. I used to date white guys in Seoul and would get the dirtiest looks just walking down the street with them. White people are spoken of as unreliable, promiscuous, and deceitful - ESPECIALLY by Koreans who work in the ESL business as admins, who ironically probably have the most contact with them than other Koreans.
(To be fair, there are a lot crazy foreigners in Korea, who come to get a job because something prevented them from getting a “normal” job back home.)
On the flip side, it’s the easiest thing in the world to get an ESL job in Korea if you are a white person. If you are any other ethnicity, though (other than Korean, although in the ESL business white people are more sought after than even Koreans who speak perfect English), good luck.
Last I was there was summer of 2006. Having no affiliation with the ESL teacher community, I very rarely had to interact with a foreigner. Being a part of the English teacher community may have influenced your perceptions on how common foreigners are in Korea.
As most Koreans do not speak English fluently, I don’t think that’s the cause for much resentment.
I will readily admit there is some resentment towards white foreigners, and it’s the xenophobia I was referring to. But because the majority of foreigners in Korea do not learn the language to fluency (if you do, you could probably get on TV) so if the foreigner community truly felt “oppressed” by the Korean majority, try learning the language. I doubt the the struggles of the English teacher in Korea are greater than those of working class hispanics or (God-forbid) Muslim in the United States. And I don’t think they’re there for a year or two to make some dough. Yes Koreans are xenophobic, but our xenophobia is of little consequence at least. American xenophobia and indifference towards the lives of foreigners may lead to an invasion. But as I have been saying, the circumstances are too different to be compared in any meaningful way.
I happen to hail from Michigan, USA, far from being an intellecual state. Most white people i know are racist against anyone not white. However, i believe it to be that all races are racist against others and from what i’ve seen, it’s mostly from the beliefs of their parents, which is based on their parents beliefs, ad infinitum. Not to say that all people are racist, some people obiously grow a brain and realize their parents beliefs are totally wrong regarding racism. Personally, i believe as MLK did, a man should be judged on the content of his character, not the color of his skin. To believe that because someone has more melanin (your skin pigment) than you do justifies that you are better than he is, is plain lunacy.