Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

If they don't, they need to look up the history of Ireland. Or Eastern Europe during WW 2...

The general argument I see is that those sorts of things aren't a problem in the modern day.

Just look at the UK right now, you've got Polish people being harassed and referred to as vermin after the Leave vote.

@Rationalinsanity: In those cases, those groups weren't considered to be "White enough" and/or were discriminated against for their religion. It's probably more that the definition of who counts as "White" (or who benefits from White privilege) has changed over time and in different countries/places. Edit: Or in the case of Polish people being discriminated against in the UK nowadays, that would be over nationality or ethnicity.

About the article about the school, I agree with the intent to teach White children that they have some advantages that others don't and to give non-White children safe spaces to express their feelings about racism where they're not going to be silenced by White voices. However, in practice, the staff is encouraging White guilt, which isn't necessarily useful for preventing racism, especially in children. For teaching children about privilege (or adults who aren't aware of the concept), I would personally recommend starting by having them discuss ways that they feel disadvantaged, and then moving on to explaining how they also have advantages in other ways (such as race, in this case). For teaching about accountability, teaching children that "sometimes people hurt each other without meaning to" is probably a good lesson in general, and that saying "I didn't mean to" doesn't magically make the pain (whether emotional or physical or both) go away. However, the problem here is making it a "good people/bad people" issue, because as people in this thread have said, it just leads to resentment and Then Let Me Be Evil. Unfortunately, as I'm not a teacher or someone who has experience working with children (although I do find them to be good company as friends), I'm not quite sure how one would go about adequately explaining to children the difference between individual acts of racism (or sexism, etc.) and wider trends of oppression in society that aren't confined to one individual's act.

edited 2nd Jul '16 2:39:28 PM by Rainbow

As an extreme radical, I just want to say, please don't lump crazy school program person in with radicals. There is a clear difference between radicalism and counterproductive and hurtful programs based on clearly false beliefs.

White people can totally discriminate against other white people. There is nothing magical or special about the colour white. Most of this stuff is based on ancestral nationality more than anything.

@war877: That's what I meant, that intra-racial (not just within the "White" category) discrimination is possible, and that it's often over national or ethnic lines rather than race (or sexism, ableism, and other non-racial types of discrimination). What I also meant is that the groups that are considered to be truly "White" have changed over time, or that in many cases (mainly in the US?), it wasn't enough to be "White", but you had to be Anglo and/or Saxon (the latter being a term for Germanic/Nordic) and Protestant to be included in the "superior" group, which is where the religious and ethnic discrimination among Whites comes in.

I'd also note that I think that school also ignored intersectionality, which acknowledges that an individual person has multiple traits and that one can be privileged in some ways and disadvantaged in others (ex. I'm a White woman, so I would have racial privilege but be disadvantaged when it comes to general sexism) and that those different traits interact with each other. It was described as an "elite" school, so that might mean, to use another example, that most of the students there would come from an economically privileged background.

edited 2nd Jul '16 3:40:12 PM by Rainbow

We all live in america, the races are white, black, hispanic, asian and muslim and maybe jew.

But yes, people still make a distinction between "slavs" and "germanics" and whatnot, finns being considered "mongoloids" by scandinavian racists, the list goes on.

The definition of "white" can be pretty different depending on where you live, yes.

This is no more apparent when it comes to "latinos" or "hispanics". In the actual latinosphere, white privilege definitely exists, but people of iberian (i.e spanish and portuguese) descent are considered "white" because they had comparatively lighter skin than the amerindian and black people who were brought over or already lived there.

This doesn't really seem to be the case in the US, because of the linguistic barrier and the fact that a lot of people in the latinosphere have at least partial amerindian descent, some people seem to conflate a bunch of people into the "latino" or "hispanic" group as "people of color", which I don't really agree with. Being a "hispanic" (as in, a spaniard) is different from being amerindian, and while I understand why they blend together in the US as a group, I don't really agree with it.

-

On a different subject, I was doing a little bit of research for a personal project of mine, and I stumbled upon this article about something that doesn't get a lot of visibility: the experience of being mixed race in Japan. There's a lot I could cite, but I think this is the most interesting part of the article for me:

So basically, white privilege and discrimination of black people occurs even in a country with a completely different history and majority population.

The article is actually primarily about the experiences of Ariana Miyamoto, who is half black and half japanese herself. It's a bit depressing (emphasis mine) :

edited 2nd Jul '16 4:14:52 PM by wehrmacht

That's interesting. I'd have thought that half-Japanese half-other kind of Asian would have been the most "acceptable" to most people in Japan, not half-Japanese half-white hapas. :/

I get the distinct impression that a lot of east asia sort of hates each other, so I'm not really surprised by that. I think the unfortunate position of korean minorities in Japan is well-documented.

I figured half-Japanese half-Korean people wouldn't be liked in Japan, but I didn't realize it would be the same for half-Japanese half-other type of east Asian. But I should have expected that, since, like you said, most of east Asia really seems to hate each other.

Koreans, Chinese and Japanese.

They all hate each other, for many reasons but the hate ball is a bit stacked with Japan because the atrocities the Imperial Japan committed in WWII.

Besides the history of Asia is full of those three nations trying to conquer each other.

Like the British, the French and the Germans hated each other but Up To Eleven.

I figured the Chinese bit was partly due to the well-known rude behavior of Chinese (as in people from China). At least, that's what other people think of Chinese...?

I've never heard that one before.

Seen it thrown around in the context of tourists a lot.

Seen it thrown around in the context of everything. Modern Chinese are infamous for having no manners, no principles, and no ideals, and behaving like incrarnations of the Nouveau Riche trope at best and particularly belligerent and slimy versions the Lower-Class Lout at worst. Something to do with excessively quick industrialization coupled with the systematic beheading of the entire non-Party intellectual class during the red years.

edited 2nd Jul '16 6:07:59 PM by TheHandle

So this particular stereotype/idea/perception of the Rude Chinese (from China) has some truth to it? How much truth?

edited 2nd Jul '16 6:16:46 PM by hellomoto

Even Hong Kong people who are ethnically the same as mainlanders feel the same way. There's a lot of outrage on their social media about how the mainland Chinese are uncouth and uncivilized because they do stuff like pee on the corners of buildings instead of using public bathrooms and the like. Genetically they're no different but a century of cultural and political difference has caused them to see themselves as separate peoples.

Re: only whites can be racist, another unfortunate side effect of this is that it's often used by people of color who are, well, racist, to mask or downplay their own bigotry towards other people of color, e.g. stop getting mad when black people make nasty comments or jokes towards Asians or what have you because white people are still worse or started it, and if you complain you're sowing divisions between fellow people of color so if you really care about ending racism just grin and bear our nastiness, or things like that.

From what I've heard, the "source" of the rude Chinese people stereotype comes from the single-child system, where because families were only allowed to have one child, they spoiled that child excessively. See "Little Emperor Syndrome."

I am not experienced in Chinese culture and politics to say whether this is just another racist stereotype or not.

Thanks for the link, werhmacht, it was good.

I noticed that the article pointed out right wingers as a source of discrimination, the article example being towards Koreans.

Korean-Anerican here. I'm just bemused because I can't think of a single incident in history where Korea fucked over Japan when it's been the other way around, so lol.

Also want to point out from hearsay that younger East Asian generations seem to not have inherited the xenophobia as much, so this should die out literally.

I think Korea also has this racial purity problem too.

Yeah, I read an article a while back about how the kids of Koreans and Americans (usually soldiers) face a lot of crap in SK. Doubly so if they are African-American on one side.

Of course that's not getting into the race purity propaganda from the other Korea...

edited 2nd Jul '16 9:08:58 PM by Rationalinsanity

Mostly tied to culture anyway, it is a plethora of reasons most of them was already mentioned but China has this nasty culture of cheating everyone as much as you can get away with to get ahead. Which is a bit related with the general rudeness, unless you're a relative or a superior, the average mainland Chinese would have no reason to be nice to you, not having some sense of courtesy also makes much easier for them to cheat you out of deals or outright scam people.

Which translated to things like the incidents like toxic melamine being mixed on milk and baby formula tainted with baking soda to buying from Chinese stores only to find out your hard drive is just a case with a pendrive and a brick inside ^note this one happened from a friend who bought an external hard drive from Alibaba to a shipment of SAE grade Nickel rich steel that is only the right measure on the external layers but the rest of the steel a crappy carbon rich and brittle steel with the wrong thickness^note tales of a steel trader in China.

Never mind that the Han ethnic in China is the mainstream and other ethnics have a hard time, like the Uigurs in the North and the India and Pakistan border cities, that had their native population displaced by Han settlers being moved by the PRC to "colonize" those regions with a population that is supportive of the Party thus reducing the chances of separatism.

The PRC actively encourages the notion of racial supremacy among the Chinese, in such way Chinese woman are shamed if they marry non Chinese men. Meanwhile Chinese men are pressured to get married, with the lack of available women in China they end up exporting wives, preferably Chinese women abroad, but most settle for Korean, Cambodian and Vietnamese wives. Which I guess live in less than ideal conditions, since they are mostly a commodity rather than people.

Also most of the Chinese population score low on literacy and education ratings, which doesn't help either.

Korea and Japan also have issues with racial purity but China made it an unofficial state policy.

Oh, hey, were getting into non-amercian racisim, in a topic I know pretty well, too bad I am on vacation and don't really have the time to weigh in too much...

But yea, half white is way more acceptable then half Korean, porobaly because koreans are disliked more in general, to the point that the Liberal Democratic Party has blocaded all attempts by Koran residents to get the right to vote.

And yes, the Chinese are vewied poorly due to a wide variaty of reasons, ranging from Rude Personality, Attempts to claim our land, and.... uhhhh..... tendancy to poop in public places....

And I dont mean in the bathroom either, I mean in places like on the subway, or infront of stores, even airplane cabins.

edited 2nd Jul '16 9:43:52 PM by Imca

That makes me

Even in the States, there are significant problems with interracial tension between minority groups. For example, anti-blackness is unfortunately pretty endemic in the Asian-American community, even the areas of it that claim to be progressive. Look at how much harassment April Reign got during #OscarsSoWhite, from Asian-Americans who felt she wasn't doing a good enough job of representing them. Despite the fact that she made it eminently clear that the hashtag was for everyone, and the only reason she mainly talked about the black community was because that was the community she was the most familiar with.

And (going back to racial problems in Asia), this has been posted before, but...this Chinese soap commercial pretty much speaks for itself.

At least in the States, being that overtly racist generally isn't permitted.

edited 2nd Jul '16 10:21:25 PM by RBluefish