Recently, I had a chance to see a website that published the rankings of “the most racist countries in the world”. The website is named “business tech”.
The most racist countries rankings published on this website is quoted from Economic and trading group, “Insider Monkey”. To be honest, I heard the name of this company for the first time and in some places, I feel doubtful if the provided survey has objectivity and is as worth as I can trust. But I try to consider what racism is through this published data.
Its survey method is based on telephone survey that collected over 85,000 people’s responses from 61 countries between 2014 and 2015.
There are two survey approaches to the responders. For the first survey, the responders were asked if they would like having people of other races as neighbors with answering yes or no.
For the second survey, the responders were asked if they had seen or experienced racism in more direct way. This website told that the first survey was conducted by the Washington Post.
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Things I feel strange to the survey
Anyways, what I feel doubtful to this data is that if the answers to these two questions are really trustful evidence that people recognize the situation where there is a racism around people’s community.
In terms of the first survey, if foreigners moving to Japan, who start settling in a Japanese community don’t make any efforts to understand unique custom or even rules and get used to it, rather, behave like self-centered way, how would original residents think about?
I know diversity of personal sense of value should be accepted more broadly in Japan. But there should be minimum rules at least set in a community to protect residents from being stepped into their territory by someone’s offensive behavior not only in Japan but all over the world.
If Japanese residents were threatened by these kinds of offensive from some foreigners in the past, it cannot be helped but they are sensitive and exclusive to the people from outside.
The result about people’s intolerance to other races has a lot of tangled factors in the background. Thinking about the sequence of events, there are so many cases that it is too rough to conclude that the answers to the question of wether the responders like neighbors of another races or not is directly connected to “racism”
In terms of the second survey, asking directly if people have experienced racism or seen it before is way too subjective.
How you can capture the happening in front of your eyes is influenced by the environment and culture that you were brought up. What is racism and what is not racism are quite difficult to judge by this direct question because even if the responders are in the same situation, what they answer are pretty much different depending on the nationality, social status and any other factors/
“Racism” is too subjective to prove
I want to make clear about what “racism” is which people talk about. Referring to Wikipedia, it defines like
Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another, which often results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity.
In the first place, what kind of behavior towards people concretely corresponds to “discrimination”. What kind of thoughts or feeling towards people concretely corresponds to “prejudice”.
As I said, things you can see as racism from outside is, happened simply by the cultural custom in the country where people don’t even feel like treating badly because of race.
Also things that people are exclusive to the people from a certain country, there might be some factors and happenings that have made them feel that way in the past apart from the case that people do expulsion movement proactively because of race superiority and inferiority.
The circumstances that a third person can externally observe can’t conclude what he/she thinks about directly no matter how he/she could see it as “racism” because mindset, custom and culture is really different depending on the nationality of the person. So many factors are in a tangle to generate one result which people from the western countries may think is “racism”
Even if non-Japanese person feel receiving humiliating disgraceful treatment from a Japanese guy, there are a lot of cases that what he/she feels bad way comes from misunderstanding Japanese tradition or custom that he/she doesn’t know in advance in the first place.
In homogeneous country like Japan, it is pretty natural for people to think others also know what people know. Concluding every single things as “racism”, which are responsive to your sensor by checking with your sense of value is really the same thing that you step back from accepting “diversity” mindset, I think
Only the first 3 sentences definition of “racism” is still too subjective to think about this deeply.
Racism is similar to cross-national dispute
There are as many viewpoints about Racism as the number of people in the world. However, I doubt if the disgraceful treatment that minorities think they might be offended is really caused by “racism”.
Rather than only people’s color of skin, appearance features and cultural differences have become the trigger for discrimination, I I think racial discrimination is generated in the process of warning each other between minority and majority over their identities of which countries they originally from to protect their territory domestically.
This is more individual level domestic “national security”. A melting pot country like the United Sates are 100 percent the state of immigrants. Every single nations in the US somehow get to know they are originally from another countries if tracing back their ancestors.
Settling in the United Sates for long time, Recognizing own identity as being an American takes root into people’s minds but the difference of appearance and thoughts that people can notice easily while living in the community, which they took over from their parents become the trigger to think about who they really are and come from.
People have ethology of being attracted to the similar thoughts and appearance and creating one community where people can strongly become conscious of their original identity.
This sense of belonging forms people’s community as “one state” which is led by people’s original identity. From my view point as a Japanese, there seem to be so many countries as a racial community mixed in the US and those communities warn each other to protect their territory.
In my sight, the circumstances of racial dispute in the US is no different than that of cross-national security problems. I always query if the essential of racial problem comes from cross-national dispute.
Advocates of racial discrimination are more intolerant towards accepting diversity and cultural difference and they conclude everything which are responsive to their sensors by checking with their criteria.
Mutual understanding of thoughts each other is only the way of solution for the time being
It is very difficult for every nations of countries to accept diversity perfectly because you can see the reason why when you see what the world is going on. If you see the world as every countries become united, you are really impressive person enough to become the savior like Ghandhi.
While each countries shake their hands on the table of meeting, they are under preparation for action to kick each other under the table. Compared to the period of WWⅡ, the cross-national relations has become somehow better, but thinking of all the countries united, it takes far more time than about 100 years after the big World War. I think the period of time that achieve every countries united as one state is maybe after 1000 to 2000 years later in the future. In that period of time, it will be finally possible to create a society which is free from racial discrimination.
In this period, it is impossible to eliminate the thoughts of “racism” and it cannot be helped that smallness of capacity to accept diversity develop people’s thought as racial discrimination because people are swayed by their identities in many cases. The most important thing is to make more effort to make the first step to understand and accept mutually between each countries about cultural difference and thoughts each countries.
Don’t conclude every racial problems as “racism”
Companies that published the rankings of “racism” seem to look the evidence of interracial conflicts is based simply on racial discrimination but I think the country that has stimulating disputes about racism doesn’t notice this rankings makes things difficult to see though to reach one evidence.
Stapling every interracial problems as racism is not good idea. We have an identity but we know this is not the thing to measure who is superiority interracially but the thing to be proud of our roots.
When facing up the problem that people think it as a racial factor, I think we should dig into the problem more deeply to understand the real evidence that brings the problem. For me, “racism” is just a fantasy that people create in their brain.