Unwelcome similarites
Melody Diskison, who referred me to the articles about Chinese food and agriculture, also pointed out a blog entry by David Dayton at Silk Road International. Dayton, with a masters degree in cultural anthropology, has been a business consultant in China since 1989 ("... helping clients find the right factories as well as coordinating and supervising production.").It seems he recently ran into a badly disguised brick wall of ethnocentrism and racism in China (in the same way that some of Barak Obama's campaigners have run into a bedrock of racism while campaigning in the US).
We don't have to go far to be reminded of racist attitudes toward the Chinese.
Is there any reason we should expect other cultures to be less infected with this kind of virulent ethnocentrism?
Dayton's thoughts are worth reading -- if only to remind ourselves of the complexity of cultures, the diversity of cultural values, the effects of history, and similarities between greatly different cultures.
Foreigners not Welcome
"So yesterday afternoon I took my two boys, ages 1.5 and 3, to see the [Olympic torch] relay as it was passing just a few blocks from our home here. We lined up along the main street along with everyone else. As it drew near I was very distinctly told (in Chinese): 'Effing foreigner. Go home. This 0lympics is ours.'...
"I can honestly say that I have rarely if ever been mistreated in China...
"But that changed this last week. Three separate experiences have really damaged my opinion of the depth of Chinese hospitality. First is the excoriating, racist and downright scary language that is being thrown around in China right now towards foreigners...
"I’ve been saying for almost 15 years that China has national-size insecurity complex. They’ve had it for at least 30 years (if not 100 years), but now you see it daily... They want the world to think that they have arrived, but expect a free pass for their xenophobic view of domestic and world history...
"If you want racism all you have to do is quote the Chinese President on T!bet—to paraphrase, he’s basically said that without the “parentage” and protection of the Chinese the other 55 minorities in China would be lost to feudalism..."
Labels: China, political culture
posted by Ken Wedding @ 11:53 AM
1 Comments:
Taelspin: The Spirit of May Fourth
"This past week marked the 89th anniversary of the May 4th demonstrations, the defining event of a decade of intellectual vitality and ideological debate as teachers, students, authors and scholars drew on a panoply of ideas to make sense of the world, their nation, and how best to build a strong and vital society.
"At the heart of this movement was a true marketplace of ideas...
"In the PRC, May 4 is celebrated as “Youth Day” and as this important anniversary approached this year... the self-conscious heirs to the May 4th generation organized their own series of demonstrations and boycotts to mixed success.
"Like their May 4th predecessors, the young people of China today write espousing a strong Chinese nation and their rhetoric is filled with pride and optimism for their country’s future...
"But something is missing: The marketplace of ideas...
"The actions of... “Pro-China” protesters along the Olympic torch route around the world are strikingly antithetical to the spirit of May 4. For too many, it is no longer about expressing one’s own views, supported with the best argument and the most relevant available evidence; it is about using mob psychology, ridicule, intimidation, ad hominem attacks, and a variety of other means to silence those with whom they disagree. And the reasons for their disagreeing are for the most part anti-intellectual: I don't like you, what you say is not what I've heard or learned, and those ideas make me uncomfortable--ergo, you're wrong..."
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