Ethnic contributions are those things that a culture or ethnic group has contributed to “mankind”, aka white people.
A few examples:
- Chinese: compass, gunpowder, printing, paper, silk, etc.
- Arabs: algebra, Arabic numerals, “preserving” Greek learning, etc.
- Tainos: tobacco, maize, cassava, hammocks, etc.
- Iroquois: maple syrup, ideas of constitutional government, etc.
Meanwhile white people’s contributions are known as Inventions, Discoveries, Science, the Enlightenment.
As bad as this mindset is, it is way better than what came before:
North of Mexico, most of the people lived in wandering tribes and led a simple life. North American Indians were mainly hunters and gatherers of wild food. An exceptional few – in Arizona and New Mexico – settled in one place and became farmers.
That from a high school textbook on American history by Boorstin and Kelley, still in use in the 1990s.
Even Hollywood’s iconic Sioux were farmers before the Spanish brought horses to North America. Much of the world is fed by maize, potatoes and cassava, which Indians, like Squanto, taught white people how to plant.
Even hunter-gatherers are not “simple”. By age 40 they are walking encyclopedias of history, religion and biology, among other things.
While better than nothing, the “contributions” thing is still Eurocentric:
- Ethnic contributions reconfigure others to the greater good of whiteness. Other cultures are valued only to the degree that they help white people. They do not have value in their own right. They appear as bit players in someone else’s history.
- Ethnic contributions set up white people as the judge of what is important. For example, jazz and hip hop were seen as just “ghetto” music – until they got the White Stamp of Approval.
- Ethnic contributions place white people at the centre of history and push everyone else to the edges. People at the edges (aka, most of the world) live, die and every now and then come up with a Contribution. That is all you need to know about them, pretty much.
- Ethnic contributions favour what white people are good at – science and invention – over other fields of human achievement. Back when they were technologically backward, they made everything about – religion.
- Ethnic contributions wind up favouring white countries and nearby regions since that is where most things come to the attention of white people. For example, it is “Arabic” numerals, even though zero was invented in India and Mexico. It is “Gutenberg invented the printing press” not “Koreans invented printing.” It is “Elvis invented rock and roll,” and “Miley Cyrus invented twerking.” It is “Columbus discovered America”.
Cool tricks:
- Cool trick #1: Make the people of nearby regions members of your “race”, honorary or otherwise. That way you can claim your race Invented Everything Important, even if your people were unlettered barbarians for most of history.
- Cool trick #2: By reducing people of other races to their contributions, you can put a smiling ethnic face over the ugly parts. Like make it about George Washington Carver, not Jim Crow. Or Squanto, not the Mystic massacre 16 years later.
See also:
- ethnic
- What “world” history has taught me
- Eurocentric words
- The lies you were taught about Native Americans
- Tainos
- How white was Ancient Greece?
- white man’s burden
- Hunter-gatherers as not “simple”:
Sounds (reads) like the truth. Now what’s this anti-white business…
Hit a gremlin w/da TRUTH (H2O) & watch ’em go crazy.
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@ Kiwi,
Do you see what I mean now?
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I like the “cool trick” idea. That is how Crispus Attacks contributed his life to American Independence, Or how Marco Polo brought knowledge of paper money and noodle-shaped pasta to Europe.
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“Cool trick #2: By reducing people of other races to their contributions, you can put a smiling ethnic face over the ugly parts. Like make it about George Washington Carver, not Jim Crow. Or Squanto, not the Mystic massacre 16 years later.”
******************
Cool trick #3:
Assign black people in the US one month out of the year (Feb) to focus on their historical contributions while simultaneously giving the terminally deluded grounds to complain about why they can’t have their own WHITE HISTORY month. (..the zero sum game at work)
Priceless!
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There are probably a number of links your to your other posts that might be useful, eg,
I was just thinking something. I looked for the history book mentioned above on several websites and there were NO REVIEWS for it. Well, maybe, it has not been widely used for the past 15 years when online ordering and reviews started to become popular.
Would ordinary people be able to make an impact on the use of such material if we actively read the material and provided reviews? How impactful have authority figures like Loewen been in this regard?
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@ Kiwi, so much is taken for granted as “European” because it’s non-European origins are silent or invisible.
Take another example or 2 from India — geometry and trigonometry.
Both are branches of mathematics credited to Greece, rather than India.
Geometry and trigonometry are rooted in Greek words, after all.
Yet, India has thousands of years of maths history.
More than once, I’ve heard that the word “geometry” is from the Sanskrit gyaamiti meaning “earth measurement”.
Same with another Sanskrit word triknomiti, the study of triangles, which became known as trigonometry.
Both these fields of mathematics are credited to the Greeks (aka “Europeans)” for making both them into ordered sciences.
The explanation could be that the Greek language is a branch of the Indo-European language group, but why were these words being used in India to describe measurement and triangles long before the Greeks “invented” them?
http://www.quora.com/India/What-are-some-major-contributions-India-has-given-to-the-world
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Kiwi:
I just finished watching, “Wolverine” The movie and it was filled to the brim with Asian’s worshiping the white man. That movie wreaks of white supremacy.
The main Asian woman in the movie, sleeps with a white man, rebuffs a past love of a Asian man, over a white man.
She only cries for her past love, ( when he and she were pre-teens, they had crushes on one another ) , when he is dieing on the ground from a wound, being he had a change of heart and sided with her and not the evil, blonde haired and blue eyed, white woman, that he once worked for. ( the protagonist in the movie ).
She kills her very own flesh and blood, her grand father for this white man!
I tell you, there are so many movies that follow these white supremacist story lines, all minorities are to die for the white man and kill even their very own people for the white man!
This movie and others like it are nothing more than, propaganda for Asian people to worship with people.
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And throughout school, did we ever hear about the bad inventions of Europeans? The inventions that kill more people faster.
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[…] "Other cultures are valued only to the degree that they help white people. They do not have value in their own right." […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Abagond,
You forgot to represent Africa by including the Egyptians under Math/Algebra – “ancient African Egyptian mathematics” was what the Greeks studied first
the Egyptians developed mathematical formulas pre-Arab invasions… hence the Pyramids… The Egyptians back then were NOT “Arabs” – they were indigenous Africans
the Arabs (from the middle East) made contributions, such as coining the term “Algebra” after they made contact with India (through Trade and mini-invasions) and they invaded Egypt (mid 600 AD) — so please,
don’t give all the credit to the Arabs just because the Europeans got it wrong from jump and like to apply Cool trick #1 in order to not credit “Africans” with making major contributions to math and sciences.
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/numbers.htm
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Kiwi, have you ever been to Singapore? There, English is the lingua franca among the ethnic groups and treated as the “ethnically neutral” choice to use when engaging in public discourse. Any other language is regarded as having ethnocentric undertones and are generally not used esp. in mixed ethnic
company in case that it might offend someone.
Not only that, English is the politically neutral language to use when crossing borders. It is the language of ASEAN. It is what Koreans, Japanese and Chinese use when speaking to each other – countries which were not colonized by an English-speaking power. It has a prestige and politically neutral aspect when used among the countries in South Asia as well. About the only place where people get blasted for using it is in Hong Kong, when Mainlanders accuse them of being unpatriotic.
In some sense, the English language is an ethnic contribution to non-Anglo peoples across the world. But I am not sure it should be viewed as a source of pride or achievement.
Recently, however, Mainland Chinese are descending across the world, spawning a new epithet “Ugly Chinese tourist”. I started drafting materials for a guest post on that (if anyone is interested). More and more, they are feeling less need to speak in English when overseas (esp. if they are carrying money), so certain industries in certain locations are scrambling to keep up.
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Absolutly spot on about the music, Abagond, its cronic and plays out in differant countries,
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I don’t often say this but Great Post Abagond in attempting to place into perspective the equally (if not more so) just as valid contributions of the majority ethnic or indigenous peoples of this planet. It serves to remind us of what was going on before the “johnny come lately” ethnic Europeans arrived on the scene!
I also hope you take on board Linda’s comment about African not necessarily Arab contributions too…
Also, like say great observation about the white supremacist agenda of Hollywood too Sondis!
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@ Linda, you said to Abagond:
“You forgot to represent Africa by including the Egyptians under Math/Algebra – “ancient African Egyptian mathematics” was what the Greeks studied first
the Egyptians developed mathematical formulas pre-Arab invasions… hence the Pyramids… The Egyptians back then were NOT “Arabs” – they were indigenous Africans
the Arabs (from the middle East) made contributions, such as coining the term “Algebra” after they made contact with India (through Trade and mini-invasions) and they invaded Egypt (mid 600 AD) — so please,
don’t give all the credit to the Arabs just because the Europeans got it wrong from jump and like to apply Cool trick #1 in order to not credit “Africans” with making major contributions to math and sciences.”
Abagond DID forget the whole continent of Africa.
But in fairness to him {Bulanik coughs} , he only cited a few examples to illustrate his point, rather than making a definitive and exhaustive list.
Agreed, far too little is attributed to indigenous Africans, and far too much to a non-African Egypt.
Compare that to the silence about India.
This too: when Abagond mentions “Arabs” he also doesn’t mention Persians,– btw — many inventions/contributions that are attributed to the Arabs today are actually Persian ones, but it seems no one ever talks about that either.
(They invented coins, insurance, the postal system, batteries, windmills, the first charter for human rights, guitars, wine, fridges..)
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@ Jefe said:
Interested? Well, of course!
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@ Linda, Bulanik, Kwamla, etc
The list at top is meant only as an example so people would know instantly what I was talking about.
The list is certainly not meant to be complete – I have a 384 page book on just American Indian contributions alone. I have a book on 1,001 inventions. Etc.
The list is not even meant to be accurate – the post itself pokes holes in it (Chinese printing, Arabic numerals) – to make the point about how contributions are heavily distorted by a Eurocentric lens.
I left off blacks and most of Africa on purpose because I did not want that to become the main point of dispute. I was afraid that a) I would be constantly asked why I did not put x on the list and b) the thread would degenerate into a White Inventor argument.
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I’ve heard these ideas of government were also admired and borrowed by Karl Marx. According to Bob Goupillot, a Republican from Scotland:
“Marx saw aspects of these ancient societies as progressive and worthy of preservation during the socialist transition to Communism. He felt that they were in some ways superior to societies based on alienated labour and commodity production. Iroquois society, in particular, impressed him. Marx admired not just their democratic culture but also their whole way of life: egalitarianism, independence, reverence for life and personal dignity.”
However, Marx also believed the Iroquois to be racially inferior and therefore only practiced a “primitive” type of socialism.
http://p2pfoundation.net/Iroquois_Confederacy
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And,Marx is a perfect example of Europeans screwing it up, with more than 100 miilion deaths in the world due to communism, it takes its rightful place next to Western slavery and genocide in the americas as one of the blights on humanity
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The crops from the Americas are staples in many countries outside the American continents — where would Italian cuisine be with tomatoes, Irish cooking would be lost without the potatoe and so on..
Last year I *read that a significant portion of food production and harvesting in the US is done by migrants, often by children as young as six years old (25 percent of all crops in the United States is harvested by migrant children).
The pay for their is so small, they can not afford to buy even the food they produce. This has been the practice for generations, it seems.
The trailer to “The Harvest”, a film about the people who harvest food:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYIZy3bHDZs)
(*the article was: http://www.economist.com/node/17722932)
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@Abagond
Abagond the above post IS NOT a sock puppet. I accidentally typed in my email address for my username. If you see this, please delete the post.
… Fantastic post.
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The problem with focusing on “ethnic contributions” in their own right is an issue of time. We have to privilege Western history post-Columbus. Once we get to the mid-twentieth century, or maybe with the modernization of Japan, we can shift focus. Different societies are historically significant in different eras. Science and technology are significant in the 18th-20th centuries because of the rapid, fundamental changes in human life due to the scientific revolution and industrialization.
With that said, I try my best to avoid this sort of presentation.I feel like I do a pretty good job overall, treating developments as belonging to their own historical context.
Finally I guess it boils down to why we teach history. From my perspective we teach history to explain the way the world is now. Thus “historically significant” is primarily going to apply to factors that most created the current global situation.
If there was one ethnicity I felt was the most under-studied in history relative to their accomplishments, I would say that title belongs to the Turks. The Ottoman Turks of course, but not just the Ottomans- the Seljuks, Mamelukes, Mughals in India, Safavids, Ottomans, Empire of Tamerlane- all the various groups of Turkish elites who shaped history.
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Abagond I think you present some “Cool Tricks” of your own.
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Asplund,
“Finally I guess it boils down to why we teach history. From my perspective we teach history to explain the way the world is now. Thus “historically significant” is primarily going to apply to factors that most created the current global situation.”
Yes we do teach history that way and it’s precisely what’s wrong with the way we teach history today (other than the Texas textbook mafia). Essentially, we start from “now” and backfill. Instead of teaching what actually happened, aka real history, we teach narrative history or national mythology history. Anything that doesn’t fit the narrative either is downplayed or left out or both. The “Lies My Teacher Told Me” books do a great job of examining this issue.
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Ks- Did you even understand what I wrote, or are you “catching feelings?”
We have to explain the present. Explaining the present doesn’t mean “national mythology.” We can’t restructure history education to raise self-esteem or something. People have to be aware of why things are the way they are.
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I can’t believe I just read that. 😮
So, is “Lies my Teacher Taught me” a bunch of BS?
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@Asplund
How does focusing upon the Europe and America until the mid-twentieth century help us to understand modern Mexico, Mali, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and India, Korea and Vietnam? How can you understand Imperial Japan without exploring the Meji Era that preceded it? This is as ridiculous as trying to understand post-WWI America without knowing of the Revolution, Jeffersonian Democracy, the Civil War, and the age of Progressivism. Focusing on ethnic contributions in their own right is the only way to understand the global situation in full.
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Asplund,
” We have to explain the present. Explaining the present doesn’t mean “national mythology.” We can’t restructure history education to raise self-esteem or something. People have to be aware of why things are the way they are.”
And we often explain the present by distorting the past either through outright omission or half-truths. The way history is currently taught does just what you say it shouldn’t do and you don’t realize that because it promotes US mythology and our national narrative as opposed to what you are implying.
Also, the idea that the teaching of history should be focused on explaining the present is simplistic but can only be effective when you teach ALL of the history and not excerpted portions that conform to a pre-determined narrative.
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D-
I think it’s important to discuss the examples you’ve given. Everyone of those societies was colonized by a western power. Ironically, to learn about those modern day societies we have to study western imperialism.
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@Asplund
Without a full understanding of the history of other ethnicities, all you’re left with are shallow and inaccurate excuses for the present reality, like “Some cultures really are inferior”, or “Native Americans didn’t believe in owning land”, or “Black Africans never developed civilizations”.
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Ks-
I don’t know what you are talking about- distorting anything is always bad. I’m not sure if there is just one “way history is taught today.” Each professor is different, with different strengths and weaknesses. I’ve never known a professor who didn’t address most of the concerns raised on this site. For example, I spend one week on indigenous west african empires, one on East, one week on the middle passage. In my courses I never even discuss the United States until we get to the 20th century.
With that said, while its good to have a broad focus, not everything is equally relevant. I’d love to cover Choctaw history for six weeks. It’s not feasible though. It isn’t impactful enough.
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Except that their history doesn’t begin with western imperialism, which is when it seems that you believe they become relevant. Likewise, you can’t start American history with the Presidency of George Washington, that’s insane. Western imperialism did have a significant impact on these societies, but when you look at, say, India and Pakistan, Imperialism alone doesn’t explain the hostility between the two. Rather, one must understand the conflict between Hindu and Muslim populations in the region that are much, much older.
Likewise, you can’t understand Tuareg uprising in Mali without knowing the history of that region. The MSM pegs it as being related to Al Qaeda, but that’s only part of the story. In truth, it was only the latest incident in a long history of violent conflicts between the Tuareg and, well, everyone who isn’t Tuareg. They are a Nomadic-Warrior society, always have been.
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Sure there’s much more to it. I try to cover The Mughal era regarding India, and I even covered the Tuareg this semester. But there is a limit to how inclusive you can be in a general survey.
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Asplund,
I’m talking about the way history is broadly taught in the US. That’s why I mentioned the Texas textbook mafia. The vast majority of people, most of whom will never step foot inside a college level history course, will get taught history as its presented in HS textbooks. They’d be better off tossing them into the garbage and picking up Howard Zinn who, despite the carping from establishment historians, was way closer to the mark than any of those books that often don’t even get “mainstream” history right much less any ethnic contributions.
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@Asplund
I think the Choctaw would disagree with you. By proclaiming their history irrelevant, you proclaim their modern existence irrelevant. That’s not exactly going to help them solve the contemporary problems of their society.
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@ Asplund
Well, to my surprise, Asplund, you have a point, although I don’t think this is some kind of ethnic “contest” on which ethnicity’s achievement is most under-recognized.
Ottoman history written from the TURKISH side is thin on the ground.
I wouldn’t normally share my interest in the subject on this blog, but there’s one history from a Turkish perspective that I’m reading that references Turkish sources directly, rather than using the distorted and sometimes racist, second hand European ones — so you’re in for a surprise! LOL!
It’s this: “Osmanli History and Institutions” by Mehmet Maksudoglu.
(http://www.idefix.com/kitap/osmanli-history-and-institutions-mehmet-maksudoglu/tanim.asp?sid=BKWOKS202H4HTBVNO4LL)
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@ Asplund
What do you mean “restructure”? It is already structured that way. For example:
We do not get real history because white self-esteem must be constantly coddled and therefore Western power is mystified.
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D.
I don’t think the Choctaw are irrelevant. I’ve been petitioning to have a S.E. Anerican Indian history course, since that’s mostly my home culture. There is a big problem fitting it on though. One solution would be to force more history on students. That would not be well recieved though.
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Abagond
I actually agree that that can be the operative dynamic in some environments. Which is a very bad thing in my opinion.
One particular example of this I experienced came when we had to produce a pamphlet for a womens’ history program. I suggested a section on Murasaki Shikibu that was instantly shot down. She was replaced with a very minor British author from the eighteenth century. Granted one of the collaborators had semi-specialized in her work, but still- being a minor novelist is not comparable to inventing the novel itself, in my opinion.
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Cool trick #1: Make the people of nearby regions members of your “race”, honorary or otherwise. That way you can claim your race Invented Everything Important, even if your people were unlettered barbarians for most of history.
Arabic numerals are called Arabic because Fibonacci obtained them from Arabic sources. It makes sense that ideas would be learned from neighboring civilizations even if they were developed further away. I doubt there was any conspiracy to obfuscate their origin. Especially considering Europeans, Arabs and Indians are all Caucasian. Even more, Europeans had better relations with India. If anything, the preference would have been to credit India as the origin. Finally, the implied slur suggests your true motive for this post — invention envy.
Cool trick #2: By reducing people of other races to their contributions, you can put a smiling ethnic face over the ugly parts. Like make it about George Washington Carver, not Jim Crow. Or Squanto, not the Mystic massacre 16 years later.
Whites go out of their way to find something to credit others with and you still find fault. Nothing would satisfy you.
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@ Da Jokah
Cool Trick #1 went over your head.
As to #2, what would satisfy me is if they told the whole story. For example, at school it seems they always found time to talk about Squanto, and rightly so, but NEVER, not even ONCE, found time to talk about the Mystic massacre.
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I clearly remember learning of Squanto and the pilgrims in grammar school; The burning of the Pequot village (the “Mystic Massacre”), however, I only learned of for the first time by reading an accounting of the event in an anthropology / archaeology magazine a couple of years back. It was a horrific and shameful occurrence.
I’m not at all surprised, though, that it’s not typically covered in American history classes (none that I sat in on anyway), as it was only through the happenstance
of anthropology & archaeology being avocations of mine that I learned of this event in US history.
It leaves me wondering just how many events of this type in US history occurred and of which I’ll never hear about at all….
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@Kiwi,
You bring up so many things, I am not really sure what your point is. I guess that you are saying that in Asia, “Western” carries some prestige and there is no opposite counterpart in Western Countries (ie, “Eastern” does not carry corresponding prestige. In fact, at best it is something exotic; more often, it is something to be ridiculed or even vilified.) I guess your other point is {They equate “modernization” with “Westernization”.} In some ways, Asia has become so westernized that I think of many Asians as some sort of Eastern/western hybrid.
Western dress has been spreading across Asia for over a century, so much that it is now the norm in most places. Wearing traditional dress is now reserved for special occasions. But even in other parts of the world where wearing western dress is not quite as ubiquitous, I really doubt that people find it either exotic or offensive to do so. I am sure that we could come up with all sorts of analysis why that happened. Maybe in the beginning it was about becoming more global and doing business with westerners. But after 2 or 3 generations, I think the cultural origin of it has become lost in the minds of most people. If an Arab is having a business meeting with a Japanese in western dress, I doubt that the Arab is thinking that the Japanese is copying the West or glorifying the West in some manner.
The current use of “Western” faces in China is another issue altogether. On the one hand, China likes to castigate the West for all its doings, but they see a western image or face as something that carries prestige, and it somehow elevates the quality of the brand or at least makes the brand appear more cosmopolitan (and not strictly local in focus) and more modern. This contrasts starkly with the images that China displayed 35-50 years ago — about how Asia, Africa and Latin America would unite and rise up against the West. Those images were all replaced in the 1980s, maybe in an effort to attract more foreign investment.
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“Something I noticed about global white cultural status is that white people will dress up as us to go to parties and mock us. I once called out a white girl who dressed up “Oriental” for a costume party and had chopsticks in her hair like they were hairpins. She got defensive and tried to justify herself. She’s also an anime and manga otaku and is obsessed with learning Japanese just because of that. She dressed kinda like the girl in the middle, complete with makeup.”
Depends on the costume. In my opinion dressing up as a Geisha, Samurai, Ninja, etc. is no more “ethnic” than is dressing up as a princess, knight, or pirate. It’d be one thing if they were attempting to dress as an actual, real-life individual.
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@Asplund
“Depends on the costume. In my opinion dressing up as a Geisha, Samurai, Ninja, etc. is no more “ethnic” than is dressing up as a princess, knight, or pirate.”—Some people will see it as offensive and a mocking of their culture. Especially when a person is Americanizing it.
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I think you have to look at it in the context of historical oppression and bigotry. It’s for the same reason that Native Americans find the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins offensive, but no one is bothered by the Minnesota Vikings. The inheritors of that culture have never been the subject to comparable derision, suspicion, and violence in America. There are no wounds to salt.
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@Kiwi,
Actually, I don’t think it is as transparent and simplistic as that. Maybe for the past hundred plus years (maybe 400 plus years in the Philippines), whites were perceived as more powerful wealthier and represented something global, at least in image.
China might be trying to revise that. Even in Asia, many of the more moneyed tourists and businessmen are now Mainland Chinese. Places like the Maldives have reinvented themselves to serve the Chinese. Even hotels in Buenos Aires and luxury stores in Paris and Milan must have Chinese speaking staff. This has all been happening in the past couple years – hence why I have also been noticing the new “Ugly Chinese Tourist” syndrome. They say it has been usurping the Ugly American stereotype. Imagine when just 10% of them have passports. They are making demands on foreign countries which might overtake the USA. I don’t know how much the leverage the USA has will last in the next few years.
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Pretty much all of Asia has been colonized, if not in actuality, then mentally and culturally. The few parts that resist such colonization are the ones demonized in the West.
The West, esp. the USA, suffers from a “Yellow Peril” mentality. It invokes fear, and also aggressive reactions. There may be some Asian Americans who see themselves as more advanced or enlightened due to their cultural and educational upbringing (at least compared to Asians), but in a heartbeat, Western countries may perceive their citizens of Asian descents as demons, traitors, or at least subjects who need to know who is boss.
The Asian-American “overachievement” issue is another Yellow Peril problem. You have read the New York magazine article, no?
http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/
Yellow Peril will always find a way to rear its ugly head. I suggested to Abagond that he might want to address the issue of Yellow Peril – a mindset that has governed policies and actions affecting Asian-Americans since the mid 19th century. The late 19th century genocide, the Exclusion acts, WWII internment are all past tense, but the American concept of Yellow Peril is still in the here and now.
But this is more about how white society penalizes Asian-Americans, not how Asian societies admire the West. A post on that is sorely needed. And why don’t they do a TV show modelled after what actually is going on at Bronx Science or Stuyvesant and not some inane show like Glee, where non-whites are only props.
Also, I believe that your discussion about how Asians in Asia see the West is veering a little bit off from Abagond’s post here, which is about how the West (esp the USA) sees contributions from other people. Maybe we need a counter post about “contributions” coming from the West.
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Kiwi- the corollary for whites dressing up as geisha, samurai, ninja, etc. is an Asian dressing up as a fairy princess, knight, pirate, etc., not wearing a business suit.
Again you seem to want to invoke anger at Asian women who date non- Asian women. Is it really that offensive? In the case of Japan, of the very tiny number of Japanese women who marry Americans, those who do are often frustrated with Japan’s cultural mores regarding dating and marriage.
Having lived for a considerable time in Japan, I find the idea of the Japanese having a racial inferiority complex inaccurate. They see themselves as the divine race. They have an inferiority complex vis a vis Americans, but it’s a nationalistic one based on defeat in WWII.
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In Tokyo Disneyland, I remember seeing Japanese dressing up as Snow White, cowboys and pirates. Something did seem a bit bizarre about it – like a costume party feel. I still have not been to Hong Kong Disneyland. But I do remember seeing white people dressed up at the China and Japan pavilions at Epcot Center in Orlando and trying to speak Mandarin or Japanese to the tourists. Weird, but kinda cute, even if fleetingly.
I understand that another Disneyland is slated to open in Shanghai.
I do agree with Asplund on that point that comparing western business dress to geisha, ninja and samurai dress is not apples to oranges comparison. But I don’t get how he extrapolates that into an issue about interracial dating and marriage (which belongs on another thread). Looks like an attempt at derailment (no one brought up that topic here – please don’t say that it was merely a response to another commenter).
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Slaves kidnapped from the motherland (Africa) and made slaves through blood, sweat, tears, contributed to the economic growth of this country.
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Jefe-
It ansolutelu was mentioned in the comments. Kiwi stated that Japanese women often went to west to find white husbands, and that this was a symptom of an inferiority complex. I was just pointing out how rate or is for Japanese women to marry foreigners- to refute the idea they the Japanese have an inferiority complex. They see themselves as the pinnacle of humanity, for the most part.
Kiwi- when did I apply a stereotype to you? Please let me know because of I did Id like to apologize immediately.
Of course, I think it’s ironic that you’re dismissing what I say based on my ethnicity/ nationality, despite my extensive experience in the country were discussing.
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“Absolutely” and ” if I did.”
Again, u Dudbt being up interracial relationships. I’m no “derailer.” Just disputing something someone else said.
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“I didn’t”
Damn phone. Sorry for these typos. I will be off the road soon hopefully and my comments won’t contain these typos.
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Kiwi-
Regarding westernized dress- this has been the norm since the Meiji Jidai, when Japan was a rising imperial power. They could always go back to hitatare.
Japan is one of the hardest countries in when world for outsiders to adjust to. This goes for all gaijin, including Asian gaijin. In fact the Japanese are choosing severe demographic decline- refusing to allow immigration so that racial purity can be preserved.
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Kiwi, why is it ‘degrading’ for an Asian person to be married to a white person? I understand the point you are trying to make about the way that Asian people and cultures are exoticised/otherised in Western countries. But here you do appear to be expressing opposition to interracial pairings, at least where one partner is white.
Obviously I am very interested in this point. As I’ve said before, my husband is Vietnamese Australian. I think he’d be pretty surprised at the notion that I’ve ‘degraded’ him in any way. He’s 8 years older than me, well travelled and perfectly secure in his identity. Neither of us has a track record of exclusively dating outside our own race.
I think you also suggest at times that any white person with an interest in an Asian culture is fetishising that culture. I agree that this does sometimes happen – there’s a creepy level of fetishisation on this site for example: http://creepywhiteguys.tumblr.com/. But I think it’s unfair to characterise a woman (or a man) who is interested in, for example, learning Korean, of fetishising Korean culture.
Jefe, what do you think? I seem to remember that you have one white and one Asian parent…?
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Abagond why am I automatically moderated??
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@ wordynerdygirl
Your email address has a moderated word in it.
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@ abagond that explains it! My fault for having an embarrassing last name. Brings back memories of primary school.
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Kiwi- that doesn’t mean they are correct in asserting that they are more native than anyone else, it just means that that’s how they see themselves.
Wordnerdygirl- I don’t see people seeing Asian cultures as “exotic” as necessarily a bad thing. If they are asserting such about Asian Americans them yes it’s very bad, but Asia itself is on the other site of the world and the cultural norms in many Asian countries are complete opposites of Americam values.
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@ wordynerdygirl,
I am not sure why you are asking my opinion. Are you trying to see if I validate your viewpoint or Kiwi’s?
Anyhow, keep in mind
– Kiwi’s personal experience is largely anecdotal, something that he witnessed in his family and in his hometown. If he has experienced something, then he probably has. Your experience might differ.
– He has researched online and perhaps in books about others’ experiences, as well as interviewed a few people. Some of the information might be consistent with his experience, but perhaps some not. He might pay some more attention to those which validate his experience more than some of the ones that didn’t, but he has at least confirmed that his experiences are not just limited to himself. Others have experienced them too so he has told himself he is not imagining things.
My experience is not the same exactly, and it is mine alone. I don’t expect that others will have the same experience. In fact, unlike Kiwi, I have never met anyone that had an experience remotely similar to mine. I too, researched extensively on the subject (starting well before the internet was available) and have been doing long enough to notice that things changed. When my parents got married, it was a different era. There were still colored / white signs in public places. Their marriage was illegal in about 22 states at that time and Loving v. Virginia was still years away. It was during the lunch counter sit-ins before the Freedom rides. Neighborhoods and schools were completely segregated (even though it was after Brown v. Board), and many professions and trades completely excluded non-whites. My parents *NEVER* traveled together and we could never travel together as a family. My mother’s hometown was in the heart of KKK territory. My parents could never risk traveling together to my mother’s hometown. I witnessed personally how people manage to use the Bible to justify segregation and condemn interracial marriage and their offspring.
I don’t see how my personal experience would be able to validate or invalidate Kiwi’s experience. My parents insisted that they had solved the racial problem between them, but I saw my father suffer overt racism at work and the community and from intense internalized racism and my mother carry around a sense of “white privilege” (in fact, I think that it helped her maintain a self-image despite condemnation from the community). But, my mother did have some Asian fetishism. I did notice it. My father handled his internalized racism by taking it out on my mother (often violently). My mother retaliated by asserting her white privilege even more. Despite withstanding decades of maltreatment from family and the community, they could never work out their internal problem. Even after their divorce, the hostility followed them to their graves.
Another thing relevant for the USA was 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. Before that, Asians entered the USA at a very small trickle. Until WWII, they were pretty much excluded altogether. Together with the Anti-miscegenation laws, Asian men could not bring wives over from Asia, and they could not date and marry white women. Until the 1960s, Asian communities, esp. Chinatowns had a very large community of old bachelors. The sex ratio was highly imbalanced, and you would not see Asian women dating and marrying white men until at least the 1970s. I grew up near a military installation, so I saw a *few* children of white military men who brought back wives from Asia. That was about it.
But my, how things have changed in a single generation. Asians started marrying out at increasing rates in the 1980s and by the end of the century, those numbers exceeded all other interracial marriages. But it is exceedingly an AW / WM phenomenon. The USA has succeeded in completely emasculating the Asian-American male. Kiwi is right that there are simply no positive images of Asian-American males in romantic or leadership roles. Asian-American women don’t even have to bash Asian-American men. The society is already doing it for them. You see images of white men and Asian women in the media (just turn on your nightly news or watch any TV show or movie with Asian women in it), but Asian men, are well, absent, or at best are simply props with not so nice stereotypes attached. They are not “men”.
Yet Asian-American women still bash them on top of that — “The Joy luck Club” is all about bashing Asian men, both in China and America.
I attribute some of this about face to the Model Minority Stereotype. It has caused the generation who grew up post-60s think that if they try hard and act accordingly, they can be granted status of honorary white. It also gave them complete amnesia over the history and experience of Asian-Americans pre-1970. Adding society’s emasculation of Asian-American men, and Asian-American women seem naturally drawn to white men. This is not just anecdotal. AW marry WM in numbers that are not explained purely by interracial contact growing up. There is an Asian bashing problem in US culture and it is mostly the women who are bashing the men.
When I visited Australia, I was surprised that it reminded me of North America (much more than it reminded me of the UK). But it reminded me of Canada, more than the USA. USA has a very different experience with its African-American population and culture, and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Australia’s experience is a bit more like Anglo Canada’s ( overwhelmingly white, with a larger focus on the white / aboriginal interaction, a few Asians dating back to the Gold Rush, but with a contemporary society whose non-white population is mostly Asian).
It is ironic – Asian men in America suffered nearly a hundred years of bachelorism because they could not bring Asian women to the USA and were forbidden to marry white women. After fighting to bring women over and to marry who they want, it is Asian women who fled directly into the arms of white men and who bashed / emasculated the men. It seems like many Asian men face bachelorism for a very different reason now.
This has diverged into interracial relationship topics, but your point was about the west exoticizing Asia and Asians. I don’t think all whites interested in aspects of Asian cultures are always fetishing that culture. But, of course, many who feign (sorry, “express”) interest in a culture could be having a fetish, whether they realize it or not (Not all, but probably many). My mother denied having a fetish, but I noticed it. It would be different if the white person was actually raised and educated in the relevant Asian cultures, eg, not merely interested in Korean language, but raised and educated as a Korean.
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Kiwi-
I apologize for any discomfort I may have caused due insensitivity on my part.
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@ Asplund you said “… the cultural norms in many Asian countries are [the] complete opposite of American values.”
That statement there is the kind of ‘otherising’ that I was referring to. Having lived in Korea and spent a significant amount of time in Japan I can tell you that it’s not true. Of course there are cultural differences. But I would argue that a white American would have as much in common with a Korean person as they would with a French person, apart from race.
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@ abagond can I move the above post to the IR thread? Or would you mind deleting it and I will repost?
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@ Wordy
Repost and I shall delete.
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@ abagond thanks v much – done.
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Wordy that’s not true, in my opinion. As far as ” othering” people from other countries, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Japan is collectivist and homogenous. The U.S. is individualistic and diverse. Core values are different.
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