I realize that, yet the education system here does not emphasize these things in the way the US does. The US is a melting pot and if people were not educated about cultural and racial diversity open warfare would probably occur. I am not defending the system here, I am just pointing out that the system is different, including the language, and people here are starting to learn to be more PC but not in the same way that it is taught or preached in the US.That is because in many of our home countries, we have been educated to be extremely sensitive to any racially/ethnically motivated labelling. When we go to college, our housing associations and student networks tell us to "celebrate diversity", and encourage us to make as many friends as we can that are of different races, creeds, and sexual orientations. We have high school classes about the Holocaust, and every single American north of the Mason-Dixon knows about how evil slavery was, and how bad Jim Crow was, and how horrible the White Man was to the Native American.
Quite possibly so, but this isnt the US and comparing things here to there is not fair either as the backgrounds and history are so different as to trying to compare them to apples and snowballs.We've been taught to be sensitive to this. It's been bashed into our brains since we were children. That Japanese kid pointing and yelling "gaijin da!" would get suspended from school in the U.S., especially if he was a white kid yelling, "Look at that slant-eyed kid!"
Not saying that it is right yet I am not saying that it is wrong in the sense that the people are consciously discrminating against people.
No I am not surprised at all. I would however be curious to know just how many Japanese fall into that category. I am not talking about anyone other than the Japanese.You'd probably be amazed at how many Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese students I tutor who are very quick to claim they've been discriminated against. 9/10 of the time they think someone is discriminating against them because they are Asian or foreign, it is really simply that someone is being an *******.
Once again I would be courious to know how many Japanese are included in this statement? Also would you be willing to ask them how they would feel being called "gaijin" whilst they are in the US in your classroom? I would be willing to bet that some of them would actual look at you incredulously, only because of the fact that to them the word only has the meaning of foreigner when they are talking about or discussing people that are not Japanese.I'm not sure if it is because they are in a foreign land, or if they know a little about racial difficulties in the U.S., or if they expect the same sort of treatment here that they'd give foreigners to their own lands, or if it is something else. But it definitely seems like my students are coming to the United States expecting to be discriminated against, and take even the slightest incident as a personal attack motivated by racism/ethnocentrism/xenophobia.
I do not doubt that you have faced people like this in your classroom (?) Yet I have lived with this for over 20 years now and have come to the realization that the impact of the word gaijin only affects those that let it.
Now this is a question I have for everyone here, if the word "gaijin" holds such a negative connotation to people what word in Japanese would you want the Japanese people to use when talking about a foreigner?
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Originally Posted by Hachiro
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