Second, even though non-Japanese people are discriminated against in Japan, being white in Japan still carries privilege that being Ainu, Korean, Filipino, black, Ryukyuan, and etc. does not.
YES. I'm a non-Japanese person currently living in Japan, but I've never been the victim of any kind of racial prejudice - because I'm white. Everyone is not only not prejudiced towards me, they are actively kind and go out of their way to help me, put up with my constant failure to express myself in Japanese, and so on. Part of that is because I'm young, female, and earnest, but I would be kidding myself if I thought that race didn't have anything to do with it. Whenever I hear one of my host parents say something snide and racist about Korean or Chinese people, whenever I go to a nearby city with one of the highest Brazilian populations in Japan where the only bilingual Portuguese signs say things like "Beware - police patrol here", I'm reminded that even here in racist Japan, I have privilege. I can't help but cringe when my English teacher talks about how he was treated when he went travelling in several Western countries, how he was called names and jeered and laughed at; it is not only stupid and inappropriate but wrong to hijack a discussion of racism by saying that the way he and I have been treated is the same thing. It's not, and we need more people like you saying that. So thank-you.
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Thu, Aug. 16th, 2007 03:02 pm (UTC)YES. I'm a non-Japanese person currently living in Japan, but I've never been the victim of any kind of racial prejudice - because I'm white. Everyone is not only not prejudiced towards me, they are actively kind and go out of their way to help me, put up with my constant failure to express myself in Japanese, and so on. Part of that is because I'm young, female, and earnest, but I would be kidding myself if I thought that race didn't have anything to do with it. Whenever I hear one of my host parents say something snide and racist about Korean or Chinese people, whenever I go to a nearby city with one of the highest Brazilian populations in Japan where the only bilingual Portuguese signs say things like "Beware - police patrol here", I'm reminded that even here in racist Japan, I have privilege. I can't help but cringe when my English teacher talks about how he was treated when he went travelling in several Western countries, how he was called names and jeered and laughed at; it is not only stupid and inappropriate but wrong to hijack a discussion of racism by saying that the way he and I have been treated is the same thing. It's not, and we need more people like you saying that. So thank-you.