How Homogeneous Is Japan? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#171

Post by rayiner » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #151

rayiner wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatism is a lot more expansive than just "fiscal conservatism." The Republican Party as originally constituted wasn't even fiscally conservative. Most center-left people and center-right people just don't meaningfully disagree on, e.g., whether we should still have Social Security. Social and political conservatism are the flashpoints. For examples consider the 1619 Project. It freaks out social and political c…

If your dividing line is "who venerates history?" Then there are no differences between the lefties and the righties. It's just my observation, but the issues lefties and righties have with each other spring mainly from which aspects of history they venerate? Do you beleive the most important thing about the Civil War is the Confederacy and their right to self determination even on matters of slavery? Or do you think…

You’ve missed my argument. Almost all cultures venerate their history in the sense of socializing the idea that their country is basically good, and founded in ideals that are basically good. That’s very important to conservatives, because they believe 90% of everything is bad. If your society is successful, then you have to teach each generation to respect what came before, because whatever prosperity you enjoy is a product of those things. Moreover, teaching people that their country is basically good gives disparate groups common ground to stand on.

The traditional American approach (my education in Virginia) reflects that. We learned about slavery, the trail of tears, etc., as bad things that happened in the process of living up to fundamentally good ideals.

Calling the US a “slaveocracy” or the Constitution a “racist document” (as the 1619 Project does) is a radical departure from that.

To a conservative, its obvious you can’t build a functional society on the notion that the country and its shared history is fundamentally bad, and by reframing shared traditions ranging from Independence Day to Thanksgiving as “racist.” Maybe that’s wrong and liberals are right. But that’s why stuff like the 1619 Project causes conservatives to flip out.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#172

Post by redisman » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

refactor_master wrote: post #28

DC-3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To uproot racism, you need to rally your population behind common denominators and values. That's all very nice but how do you apply it to the situation where you have a minority group with little to no interest in integrating into the indigenous culture?

Vote for an overall better society with more equality. Don’t vote for populist parties who use minorities as scapegoats. Everything else follows as a natural effect of that. Immigration is hard , but politicians would like to see it all solved in their term period.

That’s a non-answer. National populist parties rise with increased immigration and a feeling of their society changing from what they’re used to.

How do you tell people who vote for these parties to not do it? I’m also an immigrant but it’s become very clear to me that telling people what they want is bad and they shouldn’t want it is not working at all

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#173

Post by travmatt » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #166

travmatt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

African-American culture is most certainly not Anglo-Saxon. It’s actual roots in the African diaspora and the Caribbean, and there are entire communities, like the Gullah of the Carolinian coasts, that have preserved their culture and language since the diaspora began. The most noticeable elements of African-American culture have been adopted into Anglo-Saxon culture, they don’t come from it. American culture predomi…

Well, I was born in the Caribbean and much of my family is actually culturally Caribbean, and I much disagree with that. The African-American does not eat Caribbean food; he does not listen to Caribbean music; he does not practice Caribbean traditional festivals, does not dress in Caribbean clothes. I definitely feel that you draw this association purely because you think of Caribbeans as dark-skinned; it is a very d…

I know expat Jamaican and Dominican communities in New York that celebrate festivals yearly. I ate jerk chicken with red beans and rice last week, I don’t think that was an Anglo-Saxon invention, nor was chitlins, collard greens or other dishes. And we don’t listen to Anglo-Saxon music, as African American music isn’t descended from anglo-Saxon music at all. The fact that it’s been widely adopted in Anglo-Saxon culture doesn’t mean that they claim it’s origins at all. Gospel music and hymns do not come from Anglo-Saxon culture at all, nor does jazz, rap or blues. Gullah culture isn’t Anglo-Saxon, nor is the creole language and culture practiced around New Orleans and Louisiana. Trying to label African-American culture as Anglo-Saxon erases most of the actual history, which again comes from the African diaspora. Mexican-American culture doesn’t become ‘Anglo-saxon’ just because they now live in America and can speak English.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#174

Post by CivBase » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

crocodiletears wrote: post #152

dragonwriter wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? Racial/ethnic/national/cultural (including religious) chauvinism has been an attribute of Conservatism/Right politics forever (also, class chauvinism, though over time that's become less pronounced, or at least less overt, faster than the others, probably because it's one of the things you can't really get away with out loud in sy…

'Neoliberal' has embedded assumptions about the ordering of society and role of the state on both domestic and international stages that many antiracist rightists would vociferously oppose (whatever Palladium Mag's smoking, or the boogaloo libertarians, for example - though they often pretend to exist outside of the left/right dichotomy). As easy as it is to reduce 'the right' into the buckets of proto-fascism, and t…

> As a result, the right-wing tends to be a hodge-podge of largely unaffiliated political factions whose antipathy to one-another is only constrained by their unified foe.

That is the best description I've ever heard for the US political right.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#175

Post by Blikkentrekker » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #173

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I was born in the Caribbean and much of my family is actually culturally Caribbean, and I much disagree with that. The African-American does not eat Caribbean food; he does not listen to Caribbean music; he does not practice Caribbean traditional festivals, does not dress in Caribbean clothes. I definitely feel that you draw this association purely because you think of Caribbeans as dark-skinned; it is a very d…

I know expat Jamaican and Dominican communities in New York that celebrate festivals yearly. I ate jerk chicken with red beans and rice last week, I don’t think that was an Anglo-Saxon invention, nor was chitlins, collard greens or other dishes. And we don’t listen to Anglo-Saxon music, as African American music isn’t descended from anglo-Saxon music at all. The fact that it’s been widely adopted in Anglo-Saxon cultu…

> I know expat Jamaican and Dominican communities in New York that celebrate festivals yearly.

And I would not call those Anglo-Saxon as they are actual expats of a different ethnicity and recent-generation immigrants?

That you even consider those comparable to Anglo-Saxon African-Americans that are not recent immigrants but have lived in the U.S.A.. from six generations back is baffling to me.

> nor is the creole language and culture practiced around New Orleans and Louisiana.

Nor would I call those Anglo-Saxon.

You seem to cast very different populations, that speak very different languages and have very different cultural practices, in the same bucket, simply because of a shared skin color.

There are indeed populations of any color in the U.S.A. that are decidedly not Anglo-Saxon. I would no more call recent black Jamaican immigrants Anglo-Saxon than I would recent white Italian immigrants, but the vast majority of population of any color in the U.S.A. is decidedly Anglo-Saxon and has been nurtured within an Anglo-Saxon milieu for generations.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#176

Post by oxfeed65261 » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

DC-3 wrote: post #11

csomar wrote: post #10

Landing in Japan, I was surprised to find that people did not look that similar. I mean, this is Asia and all Asians look the same. But Japan had some yellowish, whitish, brownish people that were all, euh, Japanese. In a sense, they were Japanese because they behaved like Japanese. It seems that behavior plays a big role in how people can identify another one as being one of them. Robert Sapolsky has a great series…

> To uproot racism, you need to rally your population behind common denominators and values. That's all very nice but how do you apply it to the situation where you have a minority group with little to no interest in integrating into the indigenous culture?

My understanding is that the Yamato are not indigenous to Japan. For example [1]:

> Now [1997], in two landmark actions, a court and Japan's national legislature have taken the first steps to recognize that Japan's Ainu (EYE-new) people predated the Yamato race that conquered its land and systematically attempted to stamp out its existence. For Japan, a nation with a near-religious belief in the homogeneity of its people, these decisions mark the first time it has ever formally acknowledged a minority group living in its midst.

[1] Apologies for the AMP link, but trying to open the article URL directly redirects me to the Baltimore Sun home page.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xp...

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#177

Post by africanboy » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

Cederfjard wrote: post #35

africanboy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: ethnicity is not citizenship Switzerland has never been homogeneous and the recent immigration to Switzerland is very different from regular immigration elsewhere. It is an exception in the west, mostly due to low taxation for rich people or political reasons. for the same reasons in Lichtenstein 33℅ of the population is non-citizen and not surprisingly in Monaco an astonishing 75℅ of the residents are foreign…

Sorry for the irrelevant comment, but I’ve never seen anyone use ℅ instead of % before. If it’s a typo, how did that happen?

I did not realise it until you pointed it out

I'm using openboard on my mobile and it is probably mapping the wrong UTF-8 character for that symbol.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#178

Post by _ezkx » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #168

jberryman wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A conservative might point out... I wonder who is this platonic Conservative you're describing in these comments; the ghost of William F. Buckley?

Your rank-and-file conservative doesn’t articulate it in those terms, obviously. But my family in Oregon doesn’t like the federal government ruling them from 3,000 miles away for concrete reasons. (In their case it’s long-standing family bitterness at the government seizing their homestead to build the pacific coast highway.) Those same social and political phenomena are present the world over, and are the reason fed…

That's all fine. But I don't think social science research supports the idea that rank-and-file (or self-identified, if you prefer) conservatives in the US are actually motivated by a devotion to, say, Federalism (as opposed to, say, hegemonic masculinity, white nativism, etc).

> The Buckley type is just articulating and explaining concrete social phenomena on the ground.

"Explaining", or "dressing up"? You're speaking in good faith, but personally I don't think that's the case for most of the rank-and-file, or the people who represent them.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#179

Post by bilbo0s » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #171

bilbo0s wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your dividing line is "who venerates history?" Then there are no differences between the lefties and the righties. It's just my observation, but the issues lefties and righties have with each other spring mainly from which aspects of history they venerate? Do you beleive the most important thing about the Civil War is the Confederacy and their right to self determination even on matters of slavery? Or do you think…

You’ve missed my argument. Almost all cultures venerate their history in the sense of socializing the idea that their country is basically good, and founded in ideals that are basically good. That’s very important to conservatives, because they believe 90% of everything is bad. If your society is successful, then you have to teach each generation to respect what came before, because whatever prosperity you enjoy is a…

I think you may have missed my point. Whatever people you disagree with believe, is the business of people you disagree with. There is no need to "flip out" about it. Someone wants to take a knee, that's his decision. Someone wants to fly a nazi flag at his own home, that's his decision.

If a group wants to believe that America is fundamentally "good", that is the decision, and the right, of the people in that group. If a group wants to believe that America is "bad", that is the decision, and the right, of the people in that group.

For instance, I believe the fundamental "goodness" of America is this ability to believe what you please so long as you don't bother anyone else and play well with others. As an example, people are free to dislike black people. That is what is "good" about the US. However, people should not be free to stop and frisk every black kid that comes along due to a bias stemming from that dislike. Why? Because that infringes on the rights of the black kid. Who, in turn, should be free to like or dislike you.

It's a "circle of like" kind of thing. Or a "circle of dislike" if you prefer. It can be whichever! That's the beauty of America.

I explained all that so that maybe you might have a better idea of where my belief that lefties and righties are problematic is coming from. You can believe that America is "good". You can believe that America is "bad". Where I part company with you is if you "flip out" and attack people who believe the opposite. As that is as clear an indication as any that you don't really believe in America as envisioned in the Constitution.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#180

Post by travmatt » Sun, Jan 24, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #175

travmatt wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know expat Jamaican and Dominican communities in New York that celebrate festivals yearly. I ate jerk chicken with red beans and rice last week, I don’t think that was an Anglo-Saxon invention, nor was chitlins, collard greens or other dishes. And we don’t listen to Anglo-Saxon music, as African American music isn’t descended from anglo-Saxon music at all. The fact that it’s been widely adopted in Anglo-Saxon cultu…

> I know expat Jamaican and Dominican communities in New York that celebrate festivals yearly. And I would not call those Anglo-Saxon as they are actual expats of a different ethnicity and recent-generation immigrants? That you even consider those comparable to Anglo-Saxon African-Americans that are not recent immigrants but have lived in the U.S.A.. from six generations back is baffling to me. > nor is the creole la…

I’m telling you that black people in America have a culture that is descended from a lot of sources, and you cannot just simplify it as Anglo-Saxon, again because such a wide swath comes from the African diaspora that ignoring that means ignoring its most noticeable aspects. Gospel, jazz, blues, and rap are not descended from any Anglo-Saxon musical tradition, nor are our dances, or many of our foods.

American culture is largely descended from Anglo-Saxon culture, but that doesn’t transitively mean that all American culture is now Anglo-Saxon. The pockets of non Anglo-Saxon culture are not recent additions to black culture, they’ve been intact and distinct throughout their history. The Gullah people are American, not an expat community.