east asia and being an outsider

[amw]

It's time for another morning update. I suppose i should write about the last leg of my journey along the Magdalena Alto and through the Tatacoa desert, but i'm not feeling it. Currently in Neiva, strongly considering finding a bus to take me back north - there's not much left for me to do along the Magdalena

Comments

[amw]

There are so many facets to this. Because the US is a nation that still embraces immigration to a certain degree, it's implicitly more diverse than largely monoethnic nation states. So on one hand, it is probably on average less racist or xenophobic than some other countries. On the other hand, members of specific ethnic minorities inside the US may find themselves targeted by bigots in ways that they wouldn't in other countries where their ethnicity is more common. So, i think it can both be true that white people in the US are racist toward Asians, but also that Asians in Asia are racist toward white people. Of course in other parts of "the west" (notably some European countries) this racism exhibits itself differently, because they never really embraced immigration to begin with.

"The west" aside, in my opinion US-centricism is a big problem with the way most US Americans talk about racism. It absolutely does exist in other countries, but it doesn't exist in the same way or with the same context, so the talking points can't just be recycled. There is an argument to be made that racism against indigenous peoples is fairly consistent all through the Americas (and Australia too), but racism toward black people - in the sense of descendants of slaves - is different in different countries. In particular here in Latin America there doesn't seem to be the same definition of race the way US Americans perceive it, but there still definitely appears to be a relationship between skin color and wealth, where lighter skin means more money and better opportunities. And - something many US Americans don't realize - that's true in Asia too. Lighter-skinned Asians are perceived as higher class (or at least more attractive), everywhere from South Asia to East Asia, and that's not "white supremacy", it's a prejudice that goes back prior to contact with Europeans. Meanwhile there are hundreds of different ethnicities within the US American "Asian" category, many of whom have histories of conflict going back centuries. Not to mention in Africa still to this day there are fierce wars between people of different ethnicities, people who in the US would all be considered equally "black", which is plainly ridiculous.

I guess that's all to say that the way racism and xenophobia is discussed in the US isn't very helpful in the context of anywhere outside of the US. And even inside the US it often lacks nuance, given the very large diversity behind categories like "Asian" or "Hispanic". ("Black" is perhaps a more reasonable category in the US where something like 90% are still descendants of slaves.) Unfortunately due to US cultural hegemony over the English-speaking world, a lot of the US talking points end up getting repeated in Canada, UK, Australia etc, even when they don't apply very cleanly, and it's frustrating.

[coercedbynutmeg]

And - something many US Americans don't realize - that's true in Asia too. Lighter-skinned Asians are perceived as higher class (or at least more attractive), everywhere from South Asia to East Asia, and that's not "white supremacy", it's a prejudice that goes back prior to contact with Europeans.

A friend of mine lived in the Philippines for a few years, and she said the number of "whitening" products that were available in the stores was amazing, from soap to body wash to lotion. She didn't think they worked too well, but she was afraid of using them for fear of glowing in the dark.

[amw]

Hilariously, i got a gift of a whitening lotion at Secret Santa in China. Like, of all the gifts to end up going to the one white person in the company, that was the one! I can't remember if i used it or just gave it away, but it was a moment of both humor and cringe for me and the person who i later found out put it in the gift bucket.