OK, it’s dealing with Japan, but some of you might enjoy this recent column by Debito Arudou on “the everyday ‘microaggressions’ that grind us down” (HT to Hamel). Things like this:
Microagressions, particularly those of a racialized nature, are, according to Dr. Derald Wing Sue in Psychology Today (Oct. 5, 2010), “the brief and everyday slights, insults, indignities, and denigrating messages sent to (visible minorities) by well-intentioned (members of an ethnic majority in a society) who are unaware of the hidden messages being communicated.”
They include, in Japan’s case, verbal cues (such as “You speak such good Japanese!” — after saying only a sentence or two — or “How long will you be in Japan?” regardless of whether a non-Japanese (NJ) might have lived the preponderance of their life here), nonverbal cues (people espying NJ and clutching their purse more tightly, or leaving the only empty train seat next to them), or environmental cues (media caricatures of NJ with exaggerated noses or excessive skin coloration, McDonald’s “Mr. James” mascot (JBC, Sept. 1, 2009)).
Usually these are unconscious acts grounded in established discourses of interactions. Nobody “means” to make you feel alienated, different, out of place, or stereotyped.
But microaggressions are also subtle societal self-enforcement mechanisms to put people “in their place.” For NJ, that “place” is usually the submissive status of “visitor” or “guest,” with the Japanese questioner assuming the dominant position of “host” or “cultural representative of all Japan.”
Oh my. And I thought they were just trying to be friendly.
For what it’s worth, I do find these questions rather annoying, although I’m not really sure anyone is trying to “put me in my place” by praising my chopstick skills.
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I’ve been “waegookin’d” in my own house.
Do you think there are zainichis who wish they could have been told
“You speak such good Japanese, where did you learn to use chopsticks?”
sweet, a mircroaggression response by only the second comment.
No, I’m not angry at all, it was a genuine question.. ^^
Actually, when I was told I speak Japanese well by my friend’s friends I took that to mean I must work on it. Somehow I prefer the “Why (the hell) do you speak Japanese?” question. That means it’s good.
I would think this is a common experience for every racial/ethnic minorities in the world. A new co-worker is currently treating me like the Chang-wonder because I speak English with no accent, and yet have no idea who or what the Duran Duran is. (“Oh, come on! Everyone in America knows who they are!”)
Annoying, but I wouldn’t say it makes me feel alienated. I’m not sure it’s even denigrating.
“In China, ‘Ching Chong’ translates to: ‘I’m a racist American’.”
Laugh (at them if it makes you feel better), and move on.
With reference to the zainichi friends, it’s been my experience that “Koreatown Mike” Korean-Americans don’t come in for much praise at all when they visit Korea. Instead it’s all Why didn’t you study Korean harder? to go along with the Why are you so fat? questions.
Whereas if I, the White Prince, can gasp out Where is the bathroom? in serviceable Korean I’m a scholar as well as amazingly good-looking, like a movie star. Strangely, I haven’t been as annoyed by this treatment as poor Debito has been by similar experience in Japan.
Aren't you speaking English with an American accent… therefore speaking English with an accent?
uh, which amazingly good looking movie star do you look like? perhaps ernest borgnine.
@YotD
Is there any other kind of standard English?
^ I was thinking Mr. Bean.
Ernest Borgnine is the one I keep thinking of whenever I hear that, too. You must be a lot older than I thought. Don’t forget, there’s always DJ Qualls for the younger set.
nice, sixth comment completes the thought.
Slightly OT but still…a couple of weeks ago i was havin’ dinner (at a Chinese owned sushi bar ha ha ha) with my Japanese friend.
I had the not too-brilliant-idea to ask her if she ever encountered prejudice in Europe.
She told me how it was kinda shocking so many Euro guys ( she didn’t notice much difference between nations) thought of Japanese women as extremely easy.
She went on adding how Japanese women are “loyal and pure”.
“It would help if you didn’t churn so much dumb porn” i replied.
I meant it as a smug but harmless one-liner but i can tell she got kinda hurt by my comment.
The thing is sensitivities really change across cultures and what might seem harmless or even funny to group of people may sound downright crass and offensive to another
But, but, but you’re telling me you were never exposed to this pillar of Western civilisation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B__8N5d_LA&ob=av3e
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
** DISCLAIMER**
Duran’s Rio and the Flashdance soundtrack were the first 2 tapes i ever listened to back in 1983 at the age 9. My parents never exposed me to rock n roll, so that’s where my pling plong music imprinting comes from
Hey child, stay wilder than the wind.
@ 8 and 11
I was thinking more along the lines of Gilligan – with a little pot belly.
Still nautical.
Bibimbong and YotD demonstrating passive aggression rather than microaggression. I wonder if Jeremy Lin considered it microaggression when the media marveled over his basketball skills.
Pawi come on, Brendan looks nothing like Borgnine, he looks like Jeeves – Stephen Fry.
“For what it’s worth, I do find these questions rather annoying, although I’m not really sure anyone is trying to “put me in my place” by praising my chopstick skills.”
The point is that they are putting you in your place in terms of social interaction, even though they don’t know it. So you’re on the right track, according to the author. You can’t be sure because it’s the norm.
Yes, it’s better than berating you.
To a non-Korean man who was struggling to pick up dotori-mook (acorn jelly) with a chopstick (which by the way is no mean feat even for someone like Mr.Miyagi), my father said “Ah, you must use your head” – he meant ” 머리를 써야지, but not in that rude way it sounds in English.
just to be clear, “with a chopstick” -> “using a pair of chopsticks”
With a chopstick would just put him in the pabo category.
sorry…
just can’t stand the Americans who think that everyone else EXCEPT THEM has an accent speaking English. (when really they are the ones who have 1001 different accents to speaking English)
sorry…
just can’t stand the Americans who think that everyone else EXCEPT THEM has an accent speaking English. (when really they are the ones who have 1001 different accents to speaking English)
That Debito guy has made a career of being the gaijin victim and a lot of us who live or have lived there are a bit tired of the guy. Most gaijin in Japan are too busy trying to pull chicas from bars to worry about comments on their Nihongo or dexterity.
#24, because an Englishman from Bristol sounds exactly like one from Southampton or York?
Surely no one in your Albion Fantastique has an accent…
Surely everyone has an ‘accent’, it should be about speaking clearly. A Briton from Somerset certainly doesn’t sound anything like someone who is Welsh, Scottish or even most of England. Someone from Arkansas doesn’t usually sound like they’re from New York, Chicago or California. Someone from Seoul doesn’t sound like they’re from Seoul. Everyone has an accent.
If you speak clearly in English then I can understand you. It doesn’t matter if you’re from Mexico city or Manchester.
I’d guess she insisted Japanese women could be “loyal and pure” while public display of “naked truth”:
Other than men-women-together bathing culture, traditional Japan has Yobai (夜這い, Night Crawling) culture. The heritage might have led to the Waseda Univ. incidence.
Accidental submittal. I meant to add. My mum is from Edinburgh (you’d never know it by her accent as she has lived in England most of her life), she and most of her relatives from Scotland are easy to understand. You drive a little bit west from Edinburgh to Glasgow and not even the Edinburgh folks can understand what most of those lot are talking about.
I think his point is that everyone has an accent.
I’ve had this conversion with my wife many times, who claims she doesn’t have one. Apparently North Americans (read: west coast US and Canada) speak in the world’s default mode of pronunciation, which is exempt from phonemic categorization.
Which, of course, is balls.
(Sorry, that was meant in reply to Setnaffa)
I hope he doesn’t have any success with his attempt to stop people from leaving the only empty train seat. Sometimes I’d pay money to have a free seat next to me and if that happens just because of my race, which comes free of charge, then I’d consider it a result. Let the suckers stand.
Different people want different things. If you’re a long term resident, born there or citizen then you might feel a strong need to be accepted by the group. I expect a lot of expats are just happy to be different and find it hard to take offence. Not so much because they haven’t experienced microaggression or are in denial, more because they don’t care.
@Yuna #21 & 22:
Wow! You use articles and plurals very well!
;-P
I tend to press submit comments without reading it through, but don’t worry, I have other skills.
Another thing is that I was surprised and then pissed off at people speaking Swedish to me in Denmark, whilst speaking in English to the white guy I was sitting next to on the plane with whom I was speaking in English.
I guess I didn’t want to be mistaken as an adoptee, that that fact that there are so many Korean adoptees in these countries made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. I think it all depends on the context, which group you want to perceive to belong to, which you do not want, etc.
Sorry, again I meant to say Swedish to me in Sweden and Danish to me in Denmark.
Lol yuna that kinda reminded me of my own experience in Scandinavia. When i arrived at the id check in Norway the cops told me something in Norwegian, assuming evidently i was a local. When i handed them my Italian passport then they really stared at me in disbelief…it was written all over their face: mmmh some fuckin tallish, blue-eyed, pale wopper ??????
I’m sure they thought i was some Eastern European trying to sneak into the country with a fake EU passport
I can muster a micro-violin for this micro-aggression victim.
Why wouldn’t adopt human being than adopting pet animals? I’d assume human adoption would be more ‘humane’ than animal adoption. Just passed parents day (May 8th) in Korea, I’d like to remember the hearts of birth moms who have given away their kids to adoption. It must not be an easy decision for them. Have you thought about birth mother’s and adopting parents’ heart?
I mean birth mothers’ and parents’ hearts. Plural.
I mean the way that Korea is still a baby-exporting nation, in this day and age.
In all fairness i find it a bit disconcerting myself
shameless link posting to the article I wrote about this last week.
http://f5waeg.blogspot.com/2012/05/microaggressions.html?m=0
I do not think adoption issue could be so simplified in a word of “baby-exporting,” as if ‘adoption’ itself is a sheer commercial transaction or human trafficking.
I think the odds are your friend doesn’t know that Duran Duran is a person either, he probably thinks its just an aging band.
It’s not human trafficking, it’s child abandonment. Here’s another article on the subject.
Personally, I don’t think the problem is so much the number of Koreans abandoning their children, it’s the relatively small number of Korean families adopting them. I think it all ties back to the importance of blood relations in Korea. Nobody wants to look after a kid from a different family, from different blood. The same reason why Koreans look after their own grandparents so amazingly well, but have no problem walking past a 90-year-old towing garbage in the street.
Steve Jobs’ father was a muslim Arab-American and his mother was a conservative Christian German-American family background. The cultural pressure would not allow the fruit of their love to grow up with his birth parents. Anyway, whatever absurd cultural reasons the children were given up, it’d be ‘inhumane’ to brand them as if embarrassing and uncomfortable exporting (waste) products.
#29, 30… The correct expression is “Bollocks!”
And if he only meant everyone has an accent, he needn’t have used the North American examples… So your defence of him is bollocks as well…
Sorry Keith! The previous should have been directed at #30 and 31…
And it should have used an emoticon to denote sarcastic humor, since I can’t imagine myself actually being serious in this conversation…
The American “accent” (think news reporter) is, however, the flattest, tonally speaking. And so relative to other “accents” it’s a non-accent.
So fuck off, poseurs.
Come to my country, you have an American accent.
It sounds the “flattest” to you (whatever that means), because that’s what you’re used to hearing.
Come to your country, I’ll wonder why the fuck you pronounce “wave” as “wive”.
Cheeky buggers, trying to come up with another Great Vowel Shift all by yourselves.
“Flat” as in uses the least amount or degree of intonation. I can’t imagine, say, a snooty-ass, self-loving Brit who loves to hear himself speak (you know the type) speaking without redonkulous amounts of intonation. Take that aspect away and you get an American accent or an American pronouncing words in funny or only slightly different ways.
In the converse, if you take a paragraph from any post by an American in this thread and give it redonkulous amounts of snooty intonation, and then no matter how the words are said, it’ll sound Brit or non-American. Truth!
You know, I was listening to the BBC History Magazine Podcast recently, and they had on some professor being interviewed by two of her grad students. One of these grad students happened to be American, and every time she opened her mouth, it was like scrapping your fingernails on the blackboard. It wasn’t that she had a particularly annoying voice, mind you. She didn’t. It was just that in contrast to the accents one ordinarily hears on that show, the accent was so jarring as to make it decidely unpleasant.
Of course, Brit (and Aussie, for that matter) accents always go over well with us. I can’t imagine the reverse is true.
Think of Darth Vader with a British accent telling Luke Skywalker, “If you only knew the power of the Dark Side” with tons of obnoxious British snoot. The essential characteristic of that would be the intonation, I think. I could be wrong. But that’s my theory.
Darth Vader wouldn’t even be able to say that famous sentence in less than twice the time if it were said in a British accent, considering all the frikkin intonation he’d have to waver through. But that’s just my feeling. I have nothing against Brits, though.
Hmm, I always thought James Earl Jones was using some sort of an accent, and assumed that it was British. It’s definitely not American, what with the “You underestimate the PAWAR of the dark side.” and “I find your lack of faith distur-bing.”
Na, braw. He’s definitely speaking American English. Clean and simple. But he’s speaking as a character unbound by the intonation characteristic of certain venaculars one associates with non-American “accents”. In other words, he’s speaking as Darth Vader! Or better yet, he’s speaking as James Earl-Motherfucking Jones!
Flat languages or flat accents allow for customization or personalization. One is allowed to be more of an individual than otherwise.
My motivation here, anyway, is that I think the American accent tends to be underrated, aesthetically. And of course I’m oversimplifiying since Americans speak with all kinds of local accents. From Boston to Tennessee, from Brooklyn to Dallas, from Miami to Los Angeles — and that’s only still considering the white ones.
James Earl Jones was a stutterer, and got over it by public speaking and the recitation of poetry. I guess that’s where he honed his marvelous elocution. Incidentally, Mr. Jones was an Army Ranger.
Brendon,
Unlike Ernest, though, you’d never allow yourself to be knifed in the back alley of a Hawaii sailor’s bar.
And are you also a JEJ groupie, or is it just coincidence that you’re both dazzling?
αβγδε,
I have some homework for you.
Dogbertt,
I’m also confused as to why people with General American accents pronounce pen and pin the same, as well as cot and caught, and why you say the vowels in father and bother like they’re the same letters. I do appreciate your rhotic pronunciation though, even if it sounds like awfully hard work.
Robert,
You might be surprised. I had an American friend who came and visited and found the local lasses very, um, welcoming. Girls like accents, American accents no less than any other (at least in Oz). The only negative aspect of speaking with a General American tilt is that it’s not actually that unfamiliar to most people, being on TV most nights, which takes away some of the novelty.
Is braw accent-deficient as well?
True story: a Korean man once told me the story of the time he arrived in Australia. A customs official looked him up and down and asked him if he had come “Today”. He replied, “No, to live!”
As an aside, while I acknowledge that my countrymen have one of the weirder accents in the world, my North American wife has no trouble with it, per se – her issue is with the local vernacular, which she claims is impossibly fraught with metaphors, riddles, slang and multiple meanings. I do sympathise. Blue, for example, might mean any number of things, depending on context: colour, a redhead, a fight and a mistake. Thus, I had a blue with a blue and that was a blue, roughly translates as: I had a fight with a ginger and that was a mistake. There are ten thousand other examples.
I’m pretty sure that every single ‘Merrikan, the ones who post here anyway, says pen different from pin and cot different from caught. I certainly do. Although, it’s true, father and bother rhyme when I speak it.
But these considerations diverge from my point.
Languages, dialects, use conventions of tones and intonations. They are like rigid sets or boxes filled with a limited number of tools used for communication. I will grant that all languages utilize these sets. But the one associated with American English – or General English – is the flattest easily, or relatively monotonal. But again that’s just a casual observation.
The other point is that if American is flat, it’s also versatile. Whereas, I don’t think you can speak with any British accent and diverge from its use of sound and its particular tonal markers without seeming to be speaking outside of that accent.
Na, braw. Braw must be said with all the curt, deliberate urban staccato one can muster, without which music, braw would not be braw, braw.
American English…
hahahaha – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tyzG_ZKVfU
http://tiny.cc/kb50dw
Ok, that first one was funny. The second one was a little bit cheap. Interview three hundred people and you’ll get a dozen morons to laugh at. Chirst, half my friends couldn’t answer those questions.
I have friends who are adopted so be careful and don’t put words into my mouth. A lot of them do express very complicated feeling towards Korea as a nation for “abandoning them”. I am not uncomfortable or embarrassed about them, but *for* them. Yapping on about lowest birth rate, still cannot take care of their own kids.
You said “exporting” not “abandoning.” You were “uncomfortable” and “embarrassed” about you being mistaken as adoptee. You were saying for yourself, not for adoptees.
Exporting, means they get money for it, and a lot of them do get money.
I was uncomfortable and embarrassed as a Korean, yes, especially when I wasn’t aware.
I have absolutely nothing against them – I tried to ask a really close friend to visit Korea who is an adoptee but he was too angry towards Korea – but against the people who cannot take care of them and the society who cannot take care of them, I would not want there to be many more of them, it’s not so hard to understand is it?
I’d appreciate your explication, though I am still not for branding them as “exported babies.” “Export” might be a word that describe interests of adoption agencies or government, but could not be a word for the children, birth mothers, and adopting parents. Would adopting parents be “comfortable” about their adopted children being called exported as if they were sheer purchased foreign product? What if birth mothers have never “abondoned” their children in their hearts and have felt lost more than they could gain by giving up their babies?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081001143915AAZVwMI
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4439761050204972345
#25 Re pulling chicas from bars
A friend who speaks a bit of Korean sometimes went out pretending not to speak Korean at all, and that he had just arrived, and noticed his success rate jumped up a bit. It makes sense actually. How boring it is for the ‘chicas’ to meet a dolt who acts like he knows everything there is to know about their culture.
Oh, then, nicely say to adopting parents “How much does your children cost?”, “Are you satisfied with your exported child?”
At 32:00 of the youtube.
So, nicely say to adoptees “How do you feel being exported?” “How much did it cost when you were bargained for money?”
32:00 of the youtube video, Q.
I watched, so I said.
There was once someone on this blog who was like a stalker in taking things personally only with a select few and getting offended often on behalf of people who would not without any base in order to win futile arguments.
I’d understand human perception could wander around the wonderland of paranoia.
I mean the paranoia that someone is stalking her.
This article has obviously been passed around a lot over the last few days, but I just can’t get behind it. The whole premise of the article requires that for the most part people do it without intent.
This might be fine for some people who are simply looking for an excuse to further the “US vs THEM” mentality that is very prevalent in some expat circles, but it’s hard to look at it objectively and buy what this guy is selling.
It’s further tailored by claiming it can only be done by the majority. So when the minority (the expats) use the exact same behaviour, it’s not microaggression at all. How can they do that? they’re the minority.
This is classic minority theatre, the kind that has been perfected in the west by certain groups and individuals.
While racism certainly exists in Korea and Japan and everywhere else, the the degree to which this guy is painting it is laughable.
“While racism certainly exists in Korea and Japan and everywhere else, the the degree to which this guy is painting it is laughable.”
- I haven’t even read the article, but I’ve already dismissed the guy. The whiny expat has not died, will never die!
by “movie star” i think they mean john travolta bro.
Japanophiles would not miss this great opportunity for winning money:
http://enenews.com/tokyo-officials-paying-for-bloggers-to-come-to-japan-and-show-its-safe-includes-editor-of-muslim-brotherhoods-website-bloggers-have-direct-channels-to-the-audience-to-whom-established-med
“- I haven’t even read the article, but I’ve already dismissed the guy. The whiny expat has not died, will never die!”
These are my favorite, which essentially boils down to: sit down and shut up. If you talk about how something, anything that irritates you at all, you’re a whiner. Just smile and eat your kimchi.
So productive.
Do you like Japan? Japan doesn’t like you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88fvKD6qJCY
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