Saucestin_Roast
Member
Stay classy, SK.
This dude has a slick look. It's a shame.
This dude has a slick look. It's a shame.
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South Korea's first black model faces widespread racism
- Thread starter Rootbeer
- Start date
FootballFan
Member
Thank you for your input Shanks, interesting to hear and read your thoughts and experiences.
I like to get multiple takes.
See, I do that and some are like "don't go to _____, it's racist" and some are like "man, this place is awesome, everybody is so friendly!" And they both went to the exact same place.
And not just for Asia. I mean, it's to be expected to some extent as experiences vary, but still, the more questions I can ask the better, I think.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
This phenomenon is seen everywhere, not just Asia.
Some of my own observations as to why I think these ideas persist;
- 1) People fear what they don't understand or know. Traditionally you'll see more acceptance towards immigrations in cities than in the rural countryside, where "traditional" values forego that you stay within your kin and rank.
You see this pattern everywhere. It was mostly the big cities in the UK who had a lot of immigrants who opposed Brexit, while it was those who interacted the least with them that opposed them. Fear of the unknown.
- 2) People try to control, and are afraid of losing control. When immigrants come into a country it is seen as losing control. Different values, customs and beliefs are seen as a threat to your own. Not only are people not sure if their values will be respected or followed by the immigrants, but they feel annoyed that they now have to take these immigrants values, customs and beliefs into consideration. Or at least they fear it.
For more than thousand years across cultures, people have feared that immigrants bring crime, poverty and corruption. But it's almost never the case, yet the fear of losing control persists.
- 3) People easily fall prey to stereotyping based on very little. It only takes a couple of bad anecdotal experiences for a clear pattern to emerge. Your brain doesn't even know it does. It's a survival instinct that has helped us for hundreds of thousands of years.
You almost got killed in traffic one time due to someones neglect in traffic, and the driver happened to be asian. Now it so happens, you also heard that asians were bad drivers from various places. Your anecdotal now just reaffirmed something you've heard, and now in your brain it feels like it must be true. Asians are bad at driving.
The more upset and/or afraid you are, the less chances are you going to entertain the hypothetical that it might just be a hypothetical.
- 4) People see their nation state as a barrier from others. Your place of birth is a lottery. Your ancestors victories and losses in war and conquests have a massive influence on your nation states power today, and its power is maintained by the nation borders.
By having closed borders you make sure that countries like China, Russia, Japan, Korea, western Europe, US and others, maintain their position of power.
To soften your borders is akin to distributing all that wealth and power your ancestors claimed over their victors. A lot of what makes a state rich and bountyfull is taken by others by force.
Germans want to share their wealth other Germans, but they do not want to clean up Greece mess. Greek people are not Germans, and there is no solid solidarity between them just because they share a union. Germans worked hard for where they are, and they do not want to carry a country because their officials where corrupt.
You see this on a state level too.
I saw the other day, a study that said that in Scandinavia, the support for socialist welfare decreases as more immigrants come in via the globalized economy. In other words- people do not want to share with people they don't relate to from other cultures.
You see this in the US as well. Conservative thinking is that the massive underclass wouldn't have happened if there just hadn't been that many free loading immigrants in the first place.
If there had been no social welfare, food stamps or such- ever. then those people would never have come, and the US would not be under threat by this massive class of people who want government programs, welfare and help. And you see this in other places to.
Kill the programs, don't extradite or share the spoils with the lower classes.
The more you share with the common man, the lesser your own becomes, and then you risk losing control of your own country.
- 5) People are afraid of being outnumbered in their own countries. There is a direct link between the more advanced a society is, and the low birthrate. With few exception, a simplified explanation could be understood as, that the better your country does, the fewer kids your citizens will have. This is the opposite of the societies that are struggling the most with the higehest child death rates.
There is a very real angst in many advanced societies that they will be "outbred" by the lower classes and eventually they'll lose majority in their own country. If you go back 40-50 years, there would have been very few foreigners in most countries, compared to now, in various countries that has exploded, in some areas in massive concentrations, which are sometimes refereed to negatively as "ghettos".
You see this particularly in Japan where they are desperate for labor, but they try to fix this via automation. It's a common concern that foreigners bring crime. It's a common fear in many parts of the world that over population will be all consuming. But it's not realizing that your C02 footprint is 100x larger than a sub Saharan mother + her 9 children. Living in a first world country alone, by just being a consumer is 100x as bad for the environment as the footprint of 10 people. Both in consumption of food, electricity, waste, consumer goods, water.
- 6) People from poorer cultures are seen as being culturally incompatible with the values of rich countries. 200 years ago, nobody could explain European colonial success in the world. It was a generally accepted belief that European colonialism was an act of god, and all the victories proved that. Up until WW2, it's probably fair to assume that the ideological understanding of power between nation states was based on conquer or be conquered. It's how it has always been done, and if you're sleeping, you'll be the one who gets run over.
Conquered nations can be bitter, but nothing seems to suggest they wouldn't have done the same had the roles been reversed.
These days there are similar patterns- Particularly in the middle east, where the rhetoric underneath is basically this: islamist ideals, values and ethics are not compatible with the European way of thinking and therefore people of middle eastern origin are seen as a bigger threat, even though there is a lot that suggests that as far as crime goes, eastern European immigrants are far more dangerous and prone to crime. Organized and otherwise.
However, the color of their skin, making them much closer in relation to the western European self image along with sharing various religious elements through orthodoxism, makes them favorable to the middle eastern immigrants.
The general fear is that it's the value, belief, religion and culture of people in the middle east and africa that makes them violent. The level of genocidal warlords, chaos and religious fanaticism is on another level in these regions, and the immigrants are seen as bringers of that.
That is why you see people flip when they hear words like Sharia, Jihad, Halal, Ramadan- They don't even want to know what it means before freaking out. All they know is that it's bad and will bring ruin to their own countries.
- 7) People are tribal. Things are rarely conclusive in pre-agricultural anthropology, but IF it is true what has been said about hunter-gatherer societies, that human beings could co-exist peacefully in smaller solidarity based communities as long as there where a few people. Some anthropologists have proposed that the way of life in a small tribal community pre-agriculture would have worked in a way closer a primate group. One idea that has been proposed by some is that people who lived more than 10,000 years ago would raise their families in a collective, and that it was believed that the woman could get sperm from multiple partners, and as a result, the children would have many fathers.
It's a very rose-tint glasses happy-go-lucky way of looking at it, that makes it sound like that we were just peaceful and friendly towards each other with little ego, lust for power or need to kill, rape or enslave one another.
There has been some criticism to these ideas, saying that they are too optimistic.
Never the less though, it's a popular theory that once agriculture emerged, hierarchies where needed. Some people would need to be on top and in charge. You have to many people congregating around there is food. You cannot make it work if there is nobody in charge. And if someone has to be on the top making the decisions, someone has to be on the bottom.
We live in a meritocracy. We believe that if you work hard, you should achieve success. But by that implication, it also means that people who do not work hard deserve to fail. Republicans and Conservatives are way better to live and breathe the direct values of the meritocracy, where as democrats and socialists argue more that, due to peoples circumstances and places of birth makes it unsustainable to judge everyone on an even keel.
Not everyone is born with the same resources, privileges, money and access, and therefore it is cruel to judge them as equals. Conservatives see this as excuses among freeloaders, the lazy and people who wanna trick the system to skip out of working hard.
- 8) People are biased towards those they feel closest too. There is a pop-culture psychology phrase that goes around about how you can only have about 200 individuals in your "system" at a time. As you go through life, some people will be more forgotten to you, as your subconscious try and weed out the main few hundred individuals that are closest to you.
But this effect continues like circles in the water as you go up. You're bound to be more concerned for your family and friends than anyone else. After that it might be the people you interacte with on a daily level. People in your organization, place of work or education or local community. After that it might be that your concerned about the well being of people within your area- your city or state, and after that your country.
All by itself, you have a cone of influence where you give more of a shit about the people who are the closest to you. If 55 people die in a horrible accident in your city, you're bound to be more influenced by it, than by 500 people dying in a country on the other side of the world. You have a 10 fold of a human tragedy, yet, your concern is fixated on your proximity and your ability to relate with the people affected.
This is why it's very unhealthy to have segregated communities. It's why it's very unhealthy to not have traveled. It's why it's very unhealthy not to concern yourself with other countries history and affairs.
When you're cognitively and unaware, it is difficult to have empathy and understanding for others. I always have the feeling that people who make off hand remarks about how "we should nuke the middle east, wherever ISIS is" in a serious tone are people who've not tried to really honesty put themselves in the shoes, history and culture of people who live there.
- 9) People tend to see life as a source of limited resources. If other people gain something, they are taking it from you. You're in competition with everyone. In school, for your job, for your partner, for your credit rating. Everything you do, is graded directly or indirectly by the token of how well or how much worse everyone else is doing. Like the classic glass anecdote- half empty, half full. Which one are you?
Immigrants are often seen as coming to richer country to seek more opportunity. They couldn't make it in their own country, so now they want your piece of the pie. This mindset turns immigrants and refugees into the sum of an entire threatening whole.
Secondly, there might also be an element (related to closed borders) that the stream of poor immigrants who seek a better life in other countries is unimaginable large, and instead of tackling the global poverty situation, richer countries shut down and shut off, because it feels impossible overwhelming.
The stream of poor people is never ending and there is no stop it, so why help at all?
People like Bill Gates have tried to make a point of just how many hundreds of millions of people have been carried out of extreme poverty in the last 30 years.
The child deathrate has never been lower, there is more opportunity for women and girls in many countries than ever before, but you rarely see all these historic breakthroughs on TV. What is being reported on is always the bad stuff, and this creates a perception that the middle east and africa will never been anything other than fucked up and violent.
I cannot tell you how surprised I was reading about Omar.
While not some paradise, it just blew me away, and reminded me of how many many many many different countries and cultures that are shoehorned and stereotyped under islam, like they are all adhering to Saudi Arabian values like a monolithic hivemind.
Where you see the competition aspect is particularly noticeable in the classic "the immigrants are taking our jobs". Either by outsourcing, underpaying slave labor or simply blue collar grit, the fear persists that immigrants will steal their jobs.
But it rarely has basis in reality. It is true that handcraft jobs sometimes favor the cheaper immigration labor, but what is often ignored is that immigrants are also consumers who consume, purchase and benefit to a local economy. They often are a critical part of a countrys growth rate.
In a pessimistic sense, I think most people are ultimately deeply self centered in almost everything we do. When we do step out of ourselves with compassion, it's despite our natural instinct to think firstly about ourselves and those closest to us.
In a optimistic sense I believe that a lot of xenophobia in the world today, does not come out of a place of hate, but fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown wanting to harm them or change the things they want to keep the way they are, in a way that makes that place not favorable to them anymore.
In a pessimistic sense, I wonder if it matters at all, as regardless if something comes from a place of hate or fear, if the people feel the blunt trauma of it either way. You can mean no offence by it, but if you hurt someone, you're still hurting them. The hurting is not less even if you didn't intent to hurt them.
In a optimistic sense, I think we'll eventually move past this. There are many avenues where technology could change everything and make life so convenient that there would be resources, housing, food and everything else you could desire, for all people, and that this technology would eventually stop a lot of the tribal feuds.
In a pessimistic sense, I fear that there are people so dangerous and disillusioned in a paranoid racial fear mongering that they'd risk undermining and ruining their own countrys out of an irrational fear, that seemingly won't die, and which has persisted for thousands of years. Even our oldest writings have records of biased and negative ancedcdotals of foreigners along with the evil tidings they'd bring with them to whatever shores they'd go to.
In a optimistic sense, we've come so far. If you took the last 80 years and graded this period "the long peace" against entire human history, you'd see that these last 80 years have been the most remarkable and peaceful. This tiny bit of period doesn't even count for 0,1% of the human experience. 99,9% of all the time there has been humans, the appropriant response was to burn everything down, rape the women and kill the children and destroy the cultures.
Let us not lose sight of all the people who've ever lived have suffered under many terrible circumstances. Human ignorance persists, but shit is better than it has ever been. Maybe that won't last, but it's worth appreciating things in the broader context I think.
Fixed2BeBroken
Member
So then take it as "Your mileage may vary" just like almost anywhere. At the very least you for sure will be physically safe.
Some black people think Boston is "fine" and not all that racist. Lol.
Fixed2BeBroken
Member
a place being fine and a place being racist are 2 different things, that can co-exist believe it or not.
are there racists in Boston? sure.
can you goto Boston and have a good time and it be fine regardless of racist people? yup.
Mr. Giggles
Member
I still love SK though.
I'd definitely go back.
I'd definitely go back.
My sister and I (we're black) had this exact conversation before she returned to South Korea. I've lost all interest in their entertainment industry because of the blatant hypocrisy.
Also, while you will certainly run into some ignorance, SK isn't a dangerous country for Black folk.
so here's the question, instead of getting uncomfortable with the thought of someone wanting to ask someone else about the race problems in a country. why not follow your own advice? Someone wanting to visit a place, also wanting to hear about the stories of "rare" racism from a person who has multiple experiences may see that as their way of co-existing with racism. Of keeping their black and brown bodies safe. Can you identify with that reality?
or is that person the real racist?
Eh, "Asians are all racist" feels plenty dehumanizing to me.
South Korea definitely has racist attitudes embedded deeply into its society but it is also a very easy place to live and work if you are a POC. At most you'll get stares but rarely any aggressive behavior or harassment. Its racism comes from its homogeneity but not as much from decades upon decades of institutional racism that perpetuates violence and murder.
Fenderputty
Banned
Heh ... I think this is a yearly thread. There was one a couple years ago I want to say?? Anyway it had an Asian woman put a black man into the washer and come out and Asian man. This was for clothing detergent.
Even as a yearly thread though, some of this stuff is pretty shocking. It ain't roses in the US by any stretch either
Fried Food
Banned
Handsome man
Get people away from their bubble and suddenly it becomes better.
I read about him in Netizenbuzz a few weeks ago. The comments from Korean Netizens were actually really kind and supportive which gives me hope.
http://netizenbuzz.blogspot.co.nz/2017/06/profile-on-korean-nigerian-model-han.html?m=1
http://netizenbuzz.blogspot.co.nz/2017/06/profile-on-korean-nigerian-model-han.html?m=1
This is well documented. Has less to do with a bubble and more to do with privilege of others, economic opportunities, the feminization of asian men in the west etc. Look how asian women marry outside their race in the US. Why? For a long time, a lot of asian women just don't have the ability to marry asian men. Small and sparse communities etc. However you are seeing the rates decrease are more Korean and Indian and Chinese immigrants come. No longer do you need to marry into the dominant race to secure a future, or feel worthwhile.
It is human nature and tribalism to want to marry into your own, whether 'own' means ethnicity, skin color, religion, culture, nationality, race etc. I have no doubt SK has racist tendencies. They are a homogenous nation that has few foreigners and little global shared culture. Nationalism is also rampant. Expecting because the US and West have gone through post-colonial or civil rights movements that the same should be expected everywhere is just dumb. Wait till you see the reality of a global power China, a global power India and how they will treat others. In parts of Japan, even white people are still routinelt discriminated against.
Yeah, cause America was the one that invented racism...
Id like to see the receipts on rates decreasing.
As far as I know intermarriage has been going up among all couplings for years.
wtf
HisImperialMajesty
Member
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/fashion/more-asian-americans-marrying-within-their-race.html
It's been declining slightly for Asian Americans. That's because the population of Asians in America has almost tripled in the past 3 decades due to immigration, so there are more eligible Asians out there who are able to date each other. There are still high rates of outmarriage, but I think we're seeing the birth of a distinct Asian American community and identity versus forced assimilation due to no other choice.
Funyarinpa
Member
That's fuuuucked up
HisImperialMajesty
Member
Hollywood media is responsible for disseminating it's image of African Americans around the world. Where do you think the images of black people as gangsters, drug dealers and criminals came from? Do you think SK got that from the few black people who immigrated there?
Also, America and Western Europe is kind of responsible for inventing racism. Race theory as it is understood today and the closely tied Eugenics movement, which had and continues to have an dark but influential legacy, has its roots in the United States.
Eh, it's your life, do what makes you happy.
I would never after that kind of treatment.
Yeah im moving back to Korea this fall . Outside of people touching my hair, pretty much all of my non-black friends living in Korea have experienced the same things. I don't think many westerners realize how closed off East Asia has been to foreigners throughout history. These situations don't just change over night.
I'd even say its not even fair to compare Korea to China in Japan in this situation because both of those have had large tourist industries since the 80s . South Korea didn't even have many western tourists until like 2010.
Obliterator
Member
You like don't actually believe this right? People have been racist for a hundred thousand years. Long before the idea of America even existed. Its origins likely go even as far back as when (if) we co existed with Neanderthals
this explains why my girlfriend never uses deodorant but I stink after 8 hours of sitting in a chair.
The Fatal Englishman
Member
These are not really mutually exclusive sentiments. Japan is incredibly xenophobic, but the people are nonetheless polite and helpful to a fault. Speaking personally, I always felt a decidedly dehumanising effect when I lived in Japan - as if every interaction was two-faced. Competing in the job market or making friends are pretty much non-starters if you are not a native.
I am, however, white. It is my understanding that people of Nigerian descent are frequently regarded as associated with crime/hustling by default and mixed-race people have it particularly bad both as direct targets of racist sentiments or as objects of fetishisation.
I think mainland China is actually far better in respect to xenophobia.
I mean, what the hell is wrong with SK? It's shameful in today's world for them to be the only country where this situation could possibly play out.
GhostTrick
Banned
[boots];243215157 said:
This is sarcasm ? :O
HisImperialMajesty
Member
People have been tribal and prejudiced for millennia, yes. However, the idea of race as a scientific theory, and social construct used for categorization of people, was born of the scientific and medical establishment during the early scientific revolution and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the late 19th and early 20th century.
This was also the European age of colonialism and imperialism, so the idea that some races possessed certain desirable traits compared to others, be it intelligence, athleticism, even morality, was quickly used to justify the conquering, subjugation and enslavement of "inferior" people. Eugenics was a highly influential movement, born soon after the Darwin's theory of evolution, that gained steam in America and Europe and culminated in Nazism. Even Woodrow Wilson was a Social Darwinist and was racist towards blacks (and hence the controversy of the Woodrow Wilson school name in Princeton). Obviously, Eugenics and Social Darwinism fell out of favor after WW2, but many of its ideas persist, and has as its legacy systemic racism and ideas of racial superiority and inferiority that many people still possess.
Vincent Alexander
Member
First thought was...that's a good looking dude.
When I was in Tianjin nobody seemed to give a fuck about my race haha. Not in a positive or negative way it was pretty interesting. I'd go back to China for a while if the air quality was better.
AcademicSaucer
Member
Oh wow, thats crazy, I wonder if the deodorants over there are just not strong enough for anyone outside the native population.
Aquavelvaman
Banned
You can get these Nivea rollers at basically any convenience store. Works well enough for me.
Chaos2Frozen
Member
I read that as "South Korea's first black face model" and did a double take.
I get where you're coming from with historic propagation of slavery and institutionalized racism, but racism itself was not invented by EU/America it's part of human tribalism. It's a worldwide problem.
HisImperialMajesty
Member
Tribalism and being scared of people who are different from you is worldwide and ancient. The idea of race as a scientific theory used to classify people, and the idea that some races are superior to others, was indeed invented in EU/America during the 17/18th century and can explain the origins of modern day racism. Race, like the caste system in India, is a social construct used to control and subjugate groups of people. My previous post also explains some of that.
Here are also some links:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
Edit: Just like the caste system in India, there were historically different social constructs in various civilizations used to classify people. For example, the Chinese person thought themselves as belonging to the "Middle Kingdom", and everyone else were "barbarians" on the periphery of civilization. The average Chinese person pre-European contact certainly did not think themselves as belonging to the "Asian" race.
Yes, eugenics and the "science" of racism was invented then, but that just puts a name and a faux science to what was always there. The first time europeans came in contact with africans they thought they were below them, they didnt need to wait until the 17/18th centuries to make up a science to believe it. It was already well entrenched just by the fact that humans are afraid of what is different.
Valkerionseven
Member
This. 9 times out of 10 people who make videos that say "Don't go to _____ ! The truth about living in _____!" Asia countries are people venting about a problem they had 20 minutes ago, and inserting every other story they heard in their life to justify it. If you have a bad day or incident suddenly everything looks bad until you cool off, that might take 10 minutes, it might take 10 years for some people.
The people talking about how awesome it is are people who genuinely had a good time and are having one.
Personal experiences are just that, personal. I'm black and have been living in Japan for 2 damn years. Everyone I've met has been more than nice and kind. I don't surround myself with assholes, I don't go out looking for them, and I don't take every person accidentally bumping into me when the train stops hard as a racist. Nor do I make "vlogs" asking loaded questions like "do you like black people" -shrug-
If you really want to know what a place is like, you have to go for yourself most times.
This gif is what... 10 years old? and its still taken out of context lol.
skipping that other stuff to keep it short lol...
But I'd say smaller cities and country sides tend to be better for foreigners in most places. There seems to be fewer personal bias' from real world interactions compared to ones seen in movies or the internet. I think its better because if your the first -insertfromwherever- they have met, you are going to shape their view of people from that place more often than not. Hence my issue with alot of the other black folk in asia shilling themselves on TV or other places as characters they clearly are not.
The fact that the article uses a vietnamese/indian marriage as an example of a non-interracial marriage seems very odd to me... IMO that is definitely an interracial marriage but I guess they are technically both Asian.
texhnolyze
Banned
That's fucked up.
How racist are they compared to Japan?
How racist are they compared to Japan?
SporeCrawler
Member
dude looks really handsome. wish him the best of luck.
and yeah koreans are unfortunately very racist.
id say about the same
they are also racist to each other
and yeah koreans are unfortunately very racist.
id say about the same
they are also racist to each other
Dreamgazer
Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ly-tolerant-countries/?utm_term=.cf68512d6a63
I would not say they are the same.
Japan has a longer history of dealing with black and mixed-raced children because of the integration of American expat/military personnel.
There are many half black celebrities in the country like Crystal Kay, Ariana Miyamoto, etc.
SporeCrawler
Member
in SK military personnel was stationed right after WW2 as well, so the "longer experience" part doesnt really apply. if you want to go back to 1857 then maybe sure they have more experience but keep in mind that the japanese brutalized many asians they considered inferior to their race.
so yes they maybe more tolerant towards black people but they are less tolerant towards chinese, koreans or south east asians and there are a lot of koreans, chinese or south east asian people living in japan.
to be fair koreans are shitty to japanese and south east asians too... (to chinese i think they are in general very humble due to the present wealth of china but also due to the past.)
Pretty similar. I think Japan would be seem less racist to a tourist though. Japan is a place that is good at hiding its negative aspects from the outside IMO.
But if you're living there maybe not , they do a-lot to make it difficult for a foreigner to get a house / apartment in Japan and with other things that require official paperwork.
In Korea you'll have no issue with getting a house or anything like that.
They're both cool places though.
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