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]

I wrote a little bit more at length on the burakumin in my LJ.

I'm versed in a lot of Ethnic Studies stuff (focusing on Japan and Latin America during the 1800s or so), another interesting topic would be race relations in South America. In Colombia, one of the ways that the Spanish kept control was to turn the indigenous populations against the African populations. I wonder if there's a parallel with what the US did, but if there were one, I imagine there'd be other stuff to consider, since they had a different view of how to "contain" race in the US during the 1800s.