Is Gaijin a Racist Word or are N*ggers Over Reacting?
There has been much debate on the terms “gaijin” (foreign/outside person) and “nigger” lately in Japan among the foreign community. In a series of articles published in the Japan Times, professor, activist, and coauthor of the “Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants, Arudou Debito comes out swinging. Here is his latest article: THE CASE FOR “GAIJIN” AS A RACIST WORD: THE SEQUEL – LET’S COME CLEAN ON “GAIJIN” [Published September 2, 2008 as “The ‘gaijin’ debate: Arudou responds”]
Last month’s column (JBC August 5) was on the word “gaijin”. I made the case that it is a racist word, one that reinforces an “us-and-them” rubric towards foreigners and their children in Japan. It generated a lot of debate. Good. Thanks for your time. Now let’s devote 700 more words to some issues raised.
Regarding the arguments about intent, i.e. “People use the word gaijin, but don’t mean it in a derogatory way”. The root issue here is, “Who decides whether a word is bad?” Is it the speaker using the word, or the person being addressed by it?
Ditto for the word gaijin. People like me who have lived here for many years, even assimilated to the point of taking citizenship, don’t want to be called “gaijin” anymore. We can be forgiven for taking umbrage, for not wanting to be pushed back into the pigeonhole. Don’t tell us who we are–we’ll decide for ourselves who we are, especially in our own country, thanks. So stoppit.
Now for the more controversial claim: my linking “gaijin” with “n*gg*r”. Although I was not equating their histories, I was drawing attention to their common effect–stripping societies of diversity.
You can read the rest of the article and numerous comments here.
Here is the response that I (Zurui) sent: (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Do Japanese Women Make Better Wives?
That was the question posed by Jet Magazine in 1953. Many know that the most tenacious form of legal segregation in the United States (US), the banning of interracial marriage, was not fully lifted until the last anti-miscegenation laws were struck down in 1967 by the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia. At that time, inter-racial marriage meant marriages between blacks and whites.
Changes in racial attitudes in the US over the last 30 years clearly played a major role in the mushrooming of inter-racial marriages, which were illegal in most states at the end of the 19th century. As recently as 1945, the legislature of California which, next to Hawaii, has become the country’s multi-racial state passed a law that banned marriage between whites and Negroes, mulattos, Mongolians (which included Chinese and Japanese), and Malays.
US Servicemen and Japanese Women
After World War II, however, the law began to change as U.S. servicemen married Japanese women, and as the civil rights movement began challenging anti-miscegenation laws in the courts. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all such laws were unconstitutional, although it took Alabama until 2000 to repeal its ban. (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )New Videos from “Dear Life Japan”
Check out the new updates from Dear Life Japan. The vlogger has finally arrived in Japan!
I look forward to learning more about her experiences in rural Japan. Please be sure to send her your questions and feedback!
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Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )USA Upsets France in 4 x 100 Freestyle Relay
I rarely get excited about swimming but I love competition! Well, Team USA’s 4×100 Freestyle captain, 32-year-old Jason Lezak (he’s oldest man on the U.S. swimming team), showed great competitive spirit and pulled off one of the great comebacks in Olympic history. He saved the day in the men’s 4-x-100 freestyle relay as the U.S. team beat the French (a.k.a. “We will smash the Americans”) swim team in a neck-and-neck race. His teammate Michael Phelps has a shot at breaking the all-time record for gold medals in a single Olympic Game.
The victory also marked the first time an African American (Cullen Jones) swimmer has claimed gold in the 4×100 freestyle at the Olympics. Jones is the SECOND African American swimmer to win an Olympic medal. An ambassador for African-American swimmers, Jones wanted to shatter stereotypes one lap at a time, eager to spread his message that, yeah, black kids can swim too.
Gold medal winners pictured above: Cullen Jones, Jason Lezak, Michael Phelps and Garrett Weber-Gale. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle / August 10, 2008)
Note: Anthony Lee Ervin (born May 26, 1981 in Burbank, California). In 2000, he became the first swimmer of African American descent to make the US Olympic team. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, in Sydney he won the gold medal in the Men’s 50m Freestyle, finishing with the same winning time as Gary Hall Jr.Also at the Sydney Games, he won Silver in the 4x100m Freestyle.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Italian Vogue
Dear Life… Living and Working in Japan
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I discovered this video introduction by a new female J.E.T. and look forward to learning more about her experiences in Japan.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Black Tokyo Makes the Huffington Post
Black Tokyo’s post on the eMobile CM has made the Huffington Post. Mr. Earnest Harris in his article, “Mobile Phone Monkey Business: A Japanese Primate Plays Obama” wrote:
“The ethnic tensions stretched taut by the campaign and that have roiled U.S. culture for the last half year rippled across Japan when reports surfaced that a television ad for Japanese cellular telephone provider eMobile starred a monkey as Barack Obama.
“The response from black people in Japan and others, once news of the ad spread, was swift. Cries that the depiction was raw racism and an insult to Obama and all Blacks drew a denial of any knowing wrongdoing from eMobile. Spokespeople for the company assured the press that there was no racist intent on the company’s part and it meant in no way to demean Obama or Black people. The company pulled the ad within hours after the story broke.
One of the first outlets to key on the ad was the website and blog Black Tokyo, which is edited by Zurui, a Black American who has lived in Japan for many years. “While change is good, having the candidate depicted as a monkey is not!” he wrote soon after the ad first aired:
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Click here to read the Huffington Post article.
E-Mobile Pulls Obama Inspired Advertisement
The Guardian and other newspapers have reported that the E-Mobile CM showing a monkey in a suit addressing an election rally was pulled. E-Mobile denies accusations of racism but has decided to pull the advertisement.
E-Mobile stressed it had used the macaque mascot in several other adverts and never intended to insult Obama but had decided to pull the “Change” ad in response to criticism in the blogosphere.
We at Black Tokyo applaud E-Mobile’s decision to remove the culturally insensitive advertisement. No matter what others think, this is not only a Japan issue nor is it an issue that is only important to Black Americans.
Some bloggers strongly disagreed with Black Tokyo’s decision to question E-Mobile’s advertisement. Sites such as Japan Probe believed that the average Japanese viewer could not make a connection between the E-Mobile CM and Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for Change. Instead, it was felt that the Japanese would draw a parallel to the Japanese television drama, Change, starring Kimura Takuya (Kimutaku).
According to UPI Asia Online, “83 percent [of the Japanese] were closely following the election coverage – slightly more than the 80 percent of Americans who took the same survey. Japan’s expat community on a popular blog mirrored the poll’s results: “Interesting how Americans could care less about who’s running for Japanese offices, but Japan is all over American candidates,” wrote one blogger. “America is the focus of attention quite frequently.”
E-Mobile’s chief executive, Sachio Semmoto, told Reuters: “We had no bad intentions, but this is a cross-cultural gap issue and we have to accept it. There are African-Americans in Japan, so we decided to take prompt action and shut down the ad.”
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Black Scholars Who Make a Specialty of Asian Studies
Posted on 9月 14, 2008. Filed under: Blasian, Commentary, Culture & Society, LEARNING & STUDY (Gakumon) | タグ: Africa, African American, black, books, japan, Japanese, multiculturalism, obama, race, relations, research, video |
Black Scholars Who Make a Specialty of Asian Studies
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