IBARW 3: International Racism

[keilexandra]

Thus far, what I've read of IBARW has been excellent but largely U.S.-centric. Of course, I live in the U.S. myself, but I want to point out racism all around the world. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to analyze or elaborate on the situations, but I can present them for your consideration.

• teagrl83 on the burakumin in Japanese society, who are not ethnically different but are marked by darker skin discriminated against based on occupation and place of residence (thanks kyuuketsukirui).


• oyceter on black people in China and Taiwan; I can certainly attest to yellow-black racism personally, and I'm not surprised (but sad) to see that the situation is worse in my birth country. And jadelennox provides an anecdote confirming this.


• forthwritten on tensions in the U.K. Indian community.


• tithenai with a quietly horrific anecdote about associating the Arabic word sirlankiyyi with "housemaid" when its literal meaning is "someone from Sri Lanka."


• emily_shore on the racism faced by the Roma (more popularly known as the Gypsies) in Italy.


• troubleinchina on, surprisingly, black racism in Canada, a country often considered to be happy and liberal. I identify as Chinese-Canadian and I experienced a subtle kind of racism as a child in Newfoundland; no one was more hurtful than usual, but I was one of three non-white kids in my entire school (a Chinese friend and a black girl), so of course I stood out. And I was guilty, too, of goggling at the African girl with black skin (because China is even more homogeneous).


• troubleinchina again, on violence against First Nations (the Canadian equivalent of Native American/Aboriginal) women in Canada.

Discuss: give me more examples! Enlighten me.

Comments

[teagrl83.livejournal.com]

Hope no one minds my two cents here. I think the issue with race and the burakumin is a little bit more complicated than the similarity between the English word "black" and "buraku" considering that burakumin have been _viewed_ as a race apart (the argument I make in my contribution to IBARW3) as early as the Meiji period, before English gained as much currency as this idea would assume.

In my research I encountered youth groups from these neighborhoods who have picked up buraku and made the buraku/black connection, but I think that's another unrelated issue to the history of their discrimination and it's not particularly pervasive from what I have observed. I could be wrong, since it's been a while.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, I meant the reason many non-Japanese jump to the conclusion that the reason for discrimination is skin color.

[teagrl83.livejournal.com]

Ah! Gotcha. Sorry about that.