Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Homogeneous Is Japan?

noahpinion.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 232 posts

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#141

Post by Spinnaker_ »

coldtea wrote: post #94

I think this article goes through a lot of micro-exercizes and micro-corrections and semantics to avoid the obvious conclusion that Japan is mostly honogenous, and to a far more degree than the US or a lot of European countries. Counter-examples don't refute a general observation. They can only refute an absolute statement. But when it comes to actual numbers and breakdowns (which would put a general observation into…

It's really remarkable visiting Japan as someone who grew up in Toronto.

Outside of major cities people stopped my very tall and very blonde family on the street and asked to take pictures with us. It was all done incredibly respectfully, but was still quite surprising. I should say this was a over a decade ago.

I've traveled a lot of the world and that just doesn't happen in first other world countries. Nowhere else do you stand out so much. The only other place I've had that happen was in Tanzania.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#142

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

alisonatwork wrote: post #124
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s another large Muslim minority group called the Hui, who aren’t included in the Xinjiang camps and are generally treated well by most accounts I’ve seen.

The Hui also got caught up in the "war on terror" (read: anti-Muslim policies) that supposedly only targeted Uighur separatists. Example from Chinese state media: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1092308.shtml Now, arguably the anti-halal policies were about trying to ban misleading advertising, because it's a bit silly to claim halal status on everything. Malaysia is another country that also has a bit of problem…

I think that's a fair summary of the attitude.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#143

Post by jberryman »

rayiner wrote: post #128
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #92

"To some on the Right, Japan is a paradise of racial purity..." Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? If not, why bring up the Right in this sentence? When I was growing up, Right overlapped with Conservative, but racists were a discrete group of people. If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racis…

> If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist? There isn't one. Many liberals consider conservative beliefs to be inherently racist. Opposition to the ACA, for example, was decried as "racist": https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2013/11/21/is-opposit... . A lot of this worldview isn't unwarranted. Conservative opposition to the federal gov…

> A conservative might point out...

I wonder who is this platonic Conservative you're describing in these comments; the ghost of William F. Buckley?

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#144

Post by Blikkentrekker »

ithkuil wrote: post #134
ksm1717 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not know that Polish was spoken more in Ireland than Irish, and I still don’t know it. Also Anglo Saxon is probably the whitest descriptor imaginable. The fact that the differences are minute to you means you probably don’t have the authority to speak on this.

> and I still don’t know it What do you mean? EDIT: FYI while Irish is one of the two official languages of the republic of Ireland, it's a minority language, with less than 100k native speakers

It is not merely “one of the official languages”; the Irish constitution grants it status as “the first official language”, and English as “the second official language”, obviously granting primacy to Irish.

The reality, however, is that indeed Polish is spoken more than Irish in modern day Ireland, and the former is in decline and will probably be near extinct in a generation or two.

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/irish-now-the-third-most-s...

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#145

Post by ta1234567890 »

As always, it depends on the point of view.

When you look at a country from the outside (or as a whole), you'll mostly compare it to other countries and thus will focus on what makes that country similar to itself (and different to other countries).

When you look at a country by itself, or internally, then you'll start making divisions to see what different groups there are.

Homogeneity is mostly a relative measure - the article seems to be trying to make (Japanese) internal homogeneity a universally (between countries) comparable measure.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#146

Post by aidenn0 »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #92

"To some on the Right, Japan is a paradise of racial purity..." Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? If not, why bring up the Right in this sentence? When I was growing up, Right overlapped with Conservative, but racists were a discrete group of people. If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racis…

The key word in the quote is "some"

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#147

Post by throwawaygulf »

627467 wrote: post #2

Racial stats and forms asking about it are an underestimated force that perpetuates systemic racism, increases segregation, discrimination and undermines social cohesiveness. Change my mind.

"Facts about races make people racist."

Above is a perfect example of "soft bigotry of low expectations" from racist leftists.

Leftist are obsessed with race because they're projecting racists. Change my mind.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#148

Post by treeman79 »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #92

"To some on the Right, Japan is a paradise of racial purity..." Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? If not, why bring up the Right in this sentence? When I was growing up, Right overlapped with Conservative, but racists were a discrete group of people. If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racis…

Disagreeing is racist, homophobic, sexist, etc.

If you have any opinion not belonging to the loudest angriest group, then you get all the labels and worse.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#149

Post by bigpumpkin »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #113
coldtea wrote: post #94

I think this article goes through a lot of micro-exercizes and micro-corrections and semantics to avoid the obvious conclusion that Japan is mostly honogenous, and to a far more degree than the US or a lot of European countries. Counter-examples don't refute a general observation. They can only refute an absolute statement. But when it comes to actual numbers and breakdowns (which would put a general observation into…

> I think this article goes through a lot of micro-exercizes and micro-corrections and semantics to avoid the obvious conclusion that Japan is mostly honogenous, and to a far more degree than the US or a lot of European countries. It depends on what one looks at. The U.S.A., culturally, most famously treats race as if it be an ethnicity. As such, in their perspective what they call “African-American" and “European-Am…

I wouldn't call the distinct African-American culture "Anglo-Saxon". It is instead rooted in the historical experience that black people have had. The black identity was already formed during the slavery period and incorporates elements of African, European, and Native American culture.

Similarly, just because people speak English does not make their culture "Anglo-Saxon". There are many different cultural practices that coexist in America whose origins do not originate from North Western Europe.

Post reply on HN