Quote Originally Posted by Silverpoint
Who, in whatever line of professional work they do, has the time and the resources to cross-reference every foreigner they see, with a set of 'easy to hand' statistical data to judge how to treat them. And then even if they did have this data, what possible purpose could it serve?
You have misunderstood me here. There shouldn't necessarily be a st of statistical data for people to browse. Most people have experienced meeting foreigners, and if not, they all have some kind of opinion about them anyway. What annoys me in Japan is that all the foreigners are encompassed under the term "gaijin", as if there were no more difference between them than between the Japanese people as a whole (same culture, language, ethnicity, and if you believe the Japanese, mostly the same social class). What I meant is that the Japanese (or anyone on earth) should not have an opinion of "all foreigners" as a single, relatively uniform entity, but differentiate people according to their nationality (i.e. culture), ethnicity or language (depending on the country, but it is usually linked, except in immigrant countries like the USA), and social class.

Why ? Because people are already different enough in such a uniform society as Japan to generalise, so it misunderstanding and false stereotypes will only increase as one broadens the generalisation.

Don't misunderstand me, the best is to judge people as individuals, but many Japanese can't because they live in a deeply collectivist, conventionalist and uniformist society, and therefore like stereotypes and generalisation (e.g. they always ask what foreigner think of "Japanese people" as if all were the same).

In fact, the longer I stay in Japan and interact with Japanese people, and the more I feel inclined to generalise myself (I didn't used to do it much in my first one and half year in Japan, but found it convenient to do it about the Japanese, as they claim to be so homogenous).

So, if the Japanese want or feel the need to generalise about non-Japanese people, they should try to at least talk about "the Americans", "the French", "the Chinese", etc. everytime they normally say "foreigner". I am not sure about the USA, but I have hardly ever heard European people talk about "foreigners" to describe their behaviour or mentality. But the Japanese do. They ask me things like "Do foreigners like ramen ?", so I am forced to ask "Who are you talking about ? Me ? The Chinese ? The Zimbabweans ?"

If they were a bit more accurate that would faciliate communication, and that would decrease the incidence of racist stereotypes in Japan. You can't say "foreigners commit a lot of crime" if you are forced to replace the word "foreigner" by specific nationalities, ethnic or linguistic groups, and even less if you have to care about their social class. There is so much data that one cannot simply generalise, or the data may not be available at all (esp. for social classes, as it is mostly subjective).

It always makes me laugh when I see, for example, a NOVA ad that says that one can improve their language skill if they are taught by "gaijin" (I have seen the word used this way in an ad in the metro recently), without any specification on the nationality or mother-tongue of those "gaijin". That is why it is so easy in Japan to teach a language without qualification or without even being a native speaker. People don't really care, as long as you "look" foreign. In fact, many people truly believe that any Caucasian can speak English.

If only the Japanese had a greater awareness that people can be very different (regardless of the personality) according to their nationality, mother-tongue and (I insist) social class (as I define it, so watch out that the meaning could be quite different from how you define, especially if you are not European. For me social class is not at all defined by money, but by how one thinks and behaves !). In fact, I have realised from my international experience that people are usually more similar or compatible if they belong to a similar social class whatever the culture. It is also true for Japan.

So, in short, no need for ordinary people to study statistics (the police, though, should know about their own crime statistics as it is part of their job).
What I wanted to say is that it is more racist to put all foreigners in the same bag than to clearly differentiate between their nationality, language and social class. Once people realise that, they cannot really become racist, as they see that English Japanese-American will think and behave very differently from true Japanese, or that an Arab, a German, a Indian and a Japanese from the same social class may have more in common than a lower-class and an upper-class Japanese.

So people should judge other people based on their individual characteristics, and if need to be to generalise, be as specific as they can to avoid saying things that aren't true at all for a specific group of people. I know it is sometimes difficult. I tend to view American people as mostly Christians, although about 15% are non-religious and 5% belong to other religions. In this case, there is a clear majority that makes the stereotypes mostly true. But stereotypes are never 100% true, otherwise they would be called hard facts. Anyway we cannot talk about millions of people without generalising a bit. The important is to try being specific when one can.

Even if you have some kind of information that suggests that this or that person comes from a country more likely to 'behave badly', do you really think you should judge every person from the same place in the same way; based on your general impression of their national character? Or is that not the very definition of racism?
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And do you use your statistical superpowers frequently? Do you judge people from other countries that you meet, based on their statistical likelyhood of being an undesirable character? If you don't, you've undermined your entire argument. If you do, you've basically shown that rather than judge people as individuals, you'd prefer to grossly discriminate based on someone's nationality without having the slightest idea about who they are or how they will actually behave.
Hope you understand better what I meant now. Maybe it is difficult for you to understand things exactly as I say them. If I say 3 critera, just 1 doesn't count. To make pancakes, you need eggs, milk and flour. If you only have one, well, you only have that and no pancake. So, I don't understand why your remark was almost only about nationality (e.g. when you said "do you really think you should judge every person from the same place in the same way; based on your general impression of their national character?" => No, I don't think so and that was the point of my argument !)

I'm surprised at you Maciamo. For someone who is constantly impressing on us how well travelled and culturally experienced you are about the world, a number of your comments in this debate have skirted very close to sounding like a sequel to Mein Kampf.
Well, now I hope you understand that reading properly is often more important than judging people from what you think they have said, or reading out of context. My starting point was "The Japanese generalise so much that they do not even differentiate between nationalities". My advice was for them to try to classify people according to my 3 criteria (3 criteria for every single person they meet). If after that they see a trend, they it could be interesting to analyse that trend on a bigger scale to prove or disprove it as a stereotype (stereotypes usually need a majority of the specified group to match the descripton, so 50% or above). So, if I were to say that over 50% of the middle-class Tamil-speaking Indians I have met (I spent 5 months in India) were vegetarian, the there could be so truth is saying that most of the people in this group are probably vegetarian (if I have met enough of them to have a representative segment of course).

I did mention crime statistics, because I found it interesting that over 80% of the foreigners in Japan arrested for robberies were Vietnamese. In fact, it was an organised gang that robbed hundreds of houses. For prostitution, the Chinese and Filipinas made up most of the arrests in the statistics. There are some trends by nationality sometimes. That is why the police makes statistics. Unfortunately not precise enough to my taste.