Don't go gor Stereotypes People--respect first hand experience and learn the language FIRST! - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15070430
Listen to this young woman. She has an interesting perspective. In cultural anthro it is about the emic and the etic.

If you want to get to know a society. Learn the language well. Don't give up your other national language and if you are smart? Add more over a lifetime.

Stereotypes don't work. Discrimination is something that has to be consciously dealt with.

Everyday.

And what this young woman says about Japanese society is absolutely truthful. Don't expect the rules and culture of the USA to be universal. It is not.

Differences doesn't mean that there is no human commonality. It can happen. But it is not easy to understand. Got to work on it all the time.

But the rewards are incredible. Flexibility, and a brain that is flexible and OPEN.

Here it is:

#15070433
I have a feeling that deep down Tainari is an ethno supremacist. I just have this intuition that she has a background of racism and hate. When are you going to let go of the hate, Tainari? You need to stop hating others and work on yourself. You are a very intelligent and wonderful person, I can tell. You just need to deal with your racist inclinations and maybe go back to school and make something of your life. You can do it, Tainari, you can rise above the hate and become the wonderful person we all know you are.
#15070435
Sivad wrote:
I have a feeling that deep down Tainari is an ethno supremacist. I just have this intuition that she has a background of racism and hate. When are you going to let go of the hate, Tainari? You need to stop hating others and work on yourself. You are a very intelligent and wonderful person, I can tell. You just need to deal with your racist inclinations and maybe go back to school and make something of your life. You can do it, Tainari, you can rise above the hate and become the wonderful person we all know you are.



You do know we can tell when you're projecting?
#15070438
Sivad wrote:I have a feeling that deep down Tainari is an ethno supremacist. I just have this intuition that she has a background of racism and hate. When are you going to let go of the hate, Tainari? You need to stop hating others and work on yourself. You are a very intelligent and wonderful person, I can tell. You just need to deal with your racist inclinations and maybe go back to school and make something of your life. You can do it, Tainari, you can rise above the hate and become the wonderful person we all know you are.


Wow, Sivad? You are mad at me for telling you something that you know is true. You have not worked on yourself.

Late nailed it with you.

I can't stop the voice in your head where it is bothered by the truth.
Deal with it.

You can do what you want to Sivad.

Just don't do anything crazy like you proposed doing in the TLTE.

I don't care how angry you are about anything.

You can troll me and be projecting all day.

It won't change the reality of not working on getting focused and doing something productive.

It is really your choice.

Adios! ;)
#15070444
In the middle of the video, she said she didn't mind being stared at strangely in Japan because she knew that the Japanese had not seen a black lady like her before. And she further said people who call it discrimination do not understand Japanese culture. I thought she is very generous about Japanese society probably because she is culturally well assimilated and she is very fluent in the language.
#15070445
If you don't like what I say Sivad? Ignore me.

I am not going to feed your need to do whatever.

You remind me of my kid Sivad.

My saying that is not insincere.

However if you think I am a phony?

Ignore me. I ignore phonies.

I am not going to talk about your moods.

It is fairly easy Sivad? You sound hurt? Why? I will hazard a guess and say you are hurt in some way.

But the reason you are hurt is something you got to be responsible for.

That is the only thing you got to do. Be responsible for what you write.

If you think I am bullshitting you and I am fake and my concern for you is fake? And that is truly what you believe?

Your choice is clear. You ignore me and move on....discard me and move on.

If you think you want to keep going with me? For what purpose? To disrespect me or to project your own issues onto me?

I got a choice as well.

My intent was never to hurt you. But what you write? You got to be responsible for.

if you are not responsible for what you write? Then it is basically spam and trash Sivad.

Just someone writing and never standing behind what he or she writes. That is trash Sivad.


I truly don't care if you get angry at what I say to you. If I think I am sincere and telling you the truth? That is all that matters to me.

If you don't know how to say I am hurt because this or that? Then I you need to be sincere about it.

Who knows if you will?

I don't know Sivad.

Do you have anything to say about the video?

If not? I have nothing left to say to you Sivad.

I really don't.
#15070446
ThirdTerm wrote:In the middle of the video, she said she didn't mind being stared at strangely in Japan because she knew that the Japanese had not seen a black lady like her before. And she further said people who call it discrimination do not understand Japanese culture. I thought she is very generous about Japanese society probably because she is culturally well assimilated and she is very fluent in the language.


Precisely ThirdTerm. She is fluent in the language, the culture and the rules.

Everyone has an insider/outsider perspective about a foreign culture. She has both perspectives and that is why I found her insights interesting.

My father learned Japanese as a young man stationed in Japan long ago. He sort of liked the idea of learning it and he loved reading about all the cultural traditions. He was there post WWII and said he had seen many faces of people in emotional turmoil after the war...

It is interesting that many people learn so much from leaving their home cultures and nations and experiencing life in other countries.

It is very interesting ThirdTerm.
#15070461
Donna wrote:Are we seriously surprised that a country that went fash has lingering problems with racism


I think part of the problem is that people apply a universal cultural influence to their home culture. I used to teach English to people who needed to learn it to become USA citizens. One of the most interesting parts of teaching people English to Speakers of Other Languages is that they assumed their culture and language rules were universal. And they aren't.

There is enormous variation in how to interpret a home culture for someone. Usually having left the home culture is when you are faced with the issue of? Who are you? What are you? Have you worked on your identity as an individual? As a nationality? As a socioeconomic class?

It tests you being present in a culture that is not yours. It tests you.

I think you grow. When you are tested.

It is great.
#15070466
Tainari88 wrote:Listen to this young woman. She has an interesting perspective. In cultural anthro it is about the emic and the etic.

If you want to get to know a society. Learn the language well. Don't give up your other national language and if you are smart? Add more over a lifetime.

Stereotypes don't work. Discrimination is something that has to be consciously dealt with.

Everyday.

And what this young woman says about Japanese society is absolutely truthful. Don't expect the rules and culture of the USA to be universal. It is not.

Differences doesn't mean that there is no human commonality. It can happen. But it is not easy to understand. Got to work on it all the time.

But the rewards are incredible. Flexibility, and a brain that is flexible and OPEN.

Here it is:



American blacks are happier in Japan because they do not have racial PTSD related to being around Anglo-Americans. Furthermore, the woman the woman in the video was not trained to feel like a victim by the media and black leaders. Victimhood is HUGE in America. Look at Tainari, she thrives on victimhood.
#15070537
Tainari88 wrote:Listen to this young woman. She has an interesting perspective.

Ha! You found Nobita's channel! Have you listened to his other videos? He sees the problems in America's black culture, and pointed them out. He apologized for his videos and took them down. He has some clips in his My Apologies to Black People video.



#15070561
Tainari88 wrote:Yes Julian you thrive on not acknowledging the issues with being part of a racist mentality. lol.

i don't live in America Julian.

They don't have racial PTSD? Who gives it to them? You?

The race PTSD is well documented among black Americans. For example when they see a police car they get very stressed and symptomatic. They relived the symptoms of racism where there is none. These symptoms go away when they are in Japan. They do not have racial PTSD over there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D7cNvUmTM
#15070570
blackjack21 wrote:Ha! You found Nobita's channel! Have you listened to his other videos? He sees the problems in America's black culture, and pointed them out. He apologized for his videos and took them down. He has some clips in his My Apologies to Black People video.





One great thing BJ about being an outsider to a culture you never grew up in? Is the perspective it gives you. You know that saying "You don't see the forest for the trees?" That is very true. You are so immersed in your own cultural bubble and reality that you stop seeing how it can be totally false or there are problems with your view of it. That is why debate in politics is wonderful. Someone who is totally different from you comes in and says, "Wait a minute there....that is not the truth and only the truth. My truth says this is what that is all about." Incredibly useful it is to be challenged on all levels BJ.

Unfortunately many people only go for echo chambers where they only get the same agreement on all concepts.

I read a very interesting book when I was 21 years old. Written by a New York raised Puerto Rican. Piri Thomas. Down these Mean Streets it was called. He came to a party in San Francisco at a friend's house and he and I spoke for hours. He had been to many nations. He was in the Navy BJ. He also was a light skinned black man. And he talked about the universality of prejudices against Black people. At the same time he said, "My culture. The Puerto Rican culture? Has the mothers one color, the fathers another color, the children all kinds of colors....and this is in the 1940's. And the mixing wasn't recent. I thought about class, maybe it was about working class people? Maybe it is about lack of education?" He was an interesting man....

Japan is not culturally diverse compared to Brazil, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and many other nations. But it is a place where since there weren't massive amounts of Africans and other somatically different groups there? And did not have that history of having once been slaves? And all that emotional baggage? Their perspective on what is wrong with African American culture is very interesting. It is a Japanese perspective. Etic. Outsider perspective BJ.

Japanese people enjoy imitating other cultural traditions they find beautiful. Salsa dancing, salsa music and Puerto Rican music is one of them. Latin music is one of them. Manzanero is famous there with his boleros, so is Tito Puente, etc.

They are a society who likes to acculturate what they find beautiful about other cultures. But they guard their own. A lesson in balance to a certain degree. They are also the bearers of a fascist past. And paid the price for it.
#15071207
Tainari88 wrote:Precisely ThirdTerm. She is fluent in the language, the culture and the rules.

Everyone has an insider/outsider perspective about a foreign culture. She has both perspectives and that is why I found her insights interesting.

My father learned Japanese as a young man stationed in Japan long ago. He sort of liked the idea of learning it and he loved reading about all the cultural traditions. He was there post WWII and said he had seen many faces of people in emotional turmoil after the war...

It is interesting that many people learn so much from leaving their home cultures and nations and experiencing life in other countries.

It is very interesting ThirdTerm.

She's basically Japanese in terms of her outlook, manorisms, etc. Except, that she isn't. There's no naturalized citizenship in Japan for being born there, and also she doesn't have the right skin tone to be Japanese (your post seems to subconsciously allude to this, as you call her 'fluent in the language'. I am fluent in Japanese and I started learning when I was 15. She is a native speaker who was born and grew up for at least her first 8 years there.)

The funny thing was when she said that when she first went to the US she felt that people were looking for categories to put people in. I have said basically word for word the exact same thing about the scene in Japan; in fact it used to drive me crazy. A lot of people in Japan are very big on stereotypes, to an extent that would be offensive in the US or a lot of other countries (but is normal in Japan). Moreover, to mainstream Japanese society, there is a very big 'us and them' dynamic. To be an 'us', you have to be full Japanese--both parents are Japanese--and to have been born in and grew up in Japan. If these things don't all apply, you will be treated differently.

I am sure that as a black American-'Japanese', she has experienced this extensively (she says she grew up in a small town and everyone knew her and her family so didn't treat her strangely and I largely buy that, but in the general society it will be a different story. In fact, it is probably somewhat analogous to the treatment she perceives from black people in the US. In the one case, she is a black 'American' who speaks and acts like a Japanese person. In the other case, she is a black-skinned Japanese person and hence not a part of the black American society (according to mainstream black American society).

In addition, Japan has a lot of open misogyny--definitely more than the US or China (the other two countries I've lived in).

I agree with @ThirdTerm basically, she is very sympathetic to Japanese society. I am almost sure that she would not be considered for many jobs in Japan for being black (despite speaking Japanese fluently and being otherwise qualified). In Japan, you have to include your photo on your resume. Many a hiring manager will see her picture and throw the resume in the trash.

When you boil down what she was saying, it's basically that she wasn't accepted as a bonafide black American by black Americans. It sounds somewhat like a different flavor of what an American-born Japanese person might encounter in Japan. And maybe that's just the way it is. Her discussion of things like slavery though may give some indication here of why she finds it hard to be accepted as well (potentially). She doesn't share a common experience of growing up black in the US or a very deep understanding of the history of race relations in the US. She simply talked about the issues from a particular common mainstream Japanese perspective. I am sure there are many people--i.e. black Americans--who would be happy to converse with her about the issues and explain things from what is to her a foreign and rather alien perspective. However, that she doesn't in the first or in the present instance hold or bring forth such perspectives, one could say she does not share the ethnic (e.g. cultural) heritage of black America--quite aside from skin color.

It's a double-edged sword. When you grow up in a particular culture the manors and deep customs become ingrained at a subconscious level. Take a complex culture like, say Japanese culture, and there are many minute social obligations in how to approach particular situations, and these are very difficult to 100% learn and assimilate for people not raised in the culture. So there is a practical element as well, and this seems relevant to her experiences in the US, also.
#15071217
Crantag wrote:She's basically Japanese in terms of her outlook, manorisms, etc. Except, that she isn't. There's no naturalized citizenship in Japan for being born there, and also she doesn't have the right skin tone to be Japanese (your post seems to subconsciously allude to this, as you call her 'fluent in the language'. I am fluent in Japanese and I started learning when I was 15. She is a native speaker who was born and grew up for at least her first 8 years there.)

The funny thing was when she said that when she first went to the US she felt that people were looking for categories to put people in. I have said basically word for word the exact same thing about the scene in Japan; in fact it used to drive me crazy. A lot of people in Japan are very big on stereotypes, to an extent that would be offensive in the US or a lot of other countries (but is normal in Japan). Moreover, to mainstream Japanese society, there is a very big 'us and them' dynamic. To be an 'us', you have to be full Japanese--both parents are Japanese--and to have been born in and grew up in Japan. If these things don't all apply, you will be treated differently.

I am sure that as a black American-'Japanese', she has experienced this extensively (she says she grew up in a small town and everyone knew her and her family so didn't treat her strangely and I largely buy that, but in the general society it will be a different story. In fact, it is probably somewhat analogous to the treatment she perceives from black people in the US. In the one case, she is a black 'American' who speaks and acts like a Japanese person. In the other case, she is a black-skinned Japanese person and hence not a part of the black American society (according to mainstream black American society).

In addition, Japan has a lot of open misogyny--definitely more than the US or China (the other two countries I've lived in).

I agree with @ThirdTerm basically, she is very sympathetic to Japanese society. I am almost sure that she would not be considered for many jobs in Japan for being black (despite speaking Japanese fluently and being otherwise qualified). In Japan, you have to include your photo on your resume. Many a hiring manager will see her picture and throw the resume in the trash.

When you boil down what she was saying, it's basically that she wasn't accepted as a bonafide black American by black Americans. It sounds somewhat like a different flavor of what an American-born Japanese person might encounter in Japan. And maybe that's just the way it is. Her discussion of things like slavery though may give some indication here of why she finds it hard to be accepted as well (potentially). She doesn't share a common experience of growing up black in the US or a very deep understanding of the history of race relations in the US. She simply talked about the issues from a particular common mainstream Japanese perspective. I am sure there are many people--i.e. black Americans--who would be happy to converse with her about the issues and explain things from what is to her a foreign and rather alien perspective. However, that she doesn't in the first or in the present instance hold or bring forth such perspectives, one could say she does not share the ethnic (e.g. cultural) heritage of black America--quite aside from skin color.

It's a double-edged sword. When you grow up in a particular culture the manors and deep customs become ingrained at a subconscious level. Take a complex culture like, say Japanese culture, and there are many minute social obligations in how to approach particular situations, and these are very difficult to 100% learn and assimilate for people not raised in the culture. So there is a practical element as well, and this seems relevant to her experiences in the US, also.


I quite liked this nuanced analysis you gave me.

I had a friend from Japan. Her name was Yukiko. She grew up in one of those rural, small Japanese towns in the province or prefector? Called Shikoku. She was my best friend in college in the states. We did a lot of adventures together. As friends. Her English was difficult to understand at times. She was very open minded and caring. Smart girl. Studious. Her father was paying for her studies at an affordable state run university in Colorado.

After some years she noticed cultural differences between us and asked me questions about it. She found the Puerto Rican culture extremely open and accepting of signs of affection, and said she loved her father but would never have told him so at all verbally. He would never dance with her and joke with her and be incredibly close emotionally with her. She found that aspect of Caribbean Spanish speaking culture extremely attractive. Other things made her uncomfortable.

In the end Crantag? Being able to belong somewhere to a group of people who accept you for who you are without forcing conformity is something that is rare. In human societies across the board. Some do the acceptance a lot better.

There are certain societies that do that well.

The Tiffany girl in the video? She is definitely an outsider to the culture. But at the same time she is really Japanese, because they shaped her language, her cultural processes and her thoughts. But physically she is not Japanese. American society says that to African Americans too in subtle ways Crantag...they tell them, "You aren't really American. Because being an American is about being middle class, white, and speaking a certain way...." It was easy for someone like Donald Trump to ask Obama to prove his citizenship rather than a Bernie Sanders or others....it was very racist. I was never fooled Crantag that as a Puerto Rican I was a mainstream white American girl with Protestant ethics and that English was my first language and I 'fit' in with the crowd. I did not. Most Americans when I was growing up did not even know if Puerto Rico was considered part of the USA and many thought you needed a passport to travel there...

The mob here lets you know if you fit in or you don't.

In the end choosing an identity can be tricky for people navigating two worlds. I have navigated those my whole life Crantag. So will that young woman Tiffany Rachel in the video. I hope people realize? If you are a human being and can learn and are in a society that is human? It will be obvious you are human because you adapted to that society and can speak the language and the cultural rules become part of your thought process.

The ones saying you don't belong are the ones who are having a hard time saying.....'my neat categories are getting messed up with this non-conforming to my idea of who they are supposed to represent...." I don't want that. It makes things messy.

Humans and their flexible adaptations should make us UNCOMFORTABLE. It should make us think hard about identity. What is it? It is not really skin color alone is it? It is deeper. They should think about what makes us who we are? What is the HUMAN part supposed to look like? Feel like? And be?

It is far from simple Crantag. It is complex. Because it is about human experiences. Tiffany was born and raised in Japan. She is Japanese in terms of culture. How black is she? Black like what? An African? An Asian? A Caribbean Black person? A person from Senegal or Mali? No.

People are not genes only at all. That was my basic point in this video. ;)
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