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How Homogeneous Is Japan?

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Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#221

Post by BrandoElFollito »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #220
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn't be actually able to define yourself as Afro-American in the US Please see https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html , and especially "An individual’s response to the race question is based upon self-identification. The Census Bureau does not tell individuals which boxes to mark or what heritage to write in." The "annoying BS" you mention is people's response to that self-identification,…

I don’t think everyone else is using the same definition of “define” as you.

I do not define anything, just use the US legal definition. Please see my other comment for the gov link and relevant quote.

We do not have in France any such legal construct (this is even forbidden by law).

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#222

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #62
kome wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The refusal to gather statistics on ethno-racial diversity is unusual" Not gathering racial statistics is the norm in continental Europe. It's mostly Anglo-Saxon people (us, uk) and their love for the idea of "race" that is the exception.

"Not gathering racial statistics is the norm in continental Europe. It's mostly Anglo-Saxon people (us, uk) and their love for the idea of "race" that is the exception." In the UK, statistics are collected on the ethnic origin of people in order to provide insights into important issues. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that deaths from COVID-19 are higher among black and South Asian groups. Without th…

I don't think the data couldn't be useful, I just don't think it's worth it.

The first problem is how will you collect this data? Self report? Assigned by the government based on your parents? DNA test?

Who will you give this data to?

What will you do with the conclusions? Say for Covid-19, will you make rules stricter for some ethnicities? Or prioritize them for vaccines?

How do you even know how correct this data is? There's a big correlation between ethnicities, wealth and social customs. Or do you want to give the researchers also information about that?

For me all the answers on those questions are negative. I see no way to do this in an ethical way.

We already know there are issues with equality, employment etc of some ethnicities, I think collecting statistics on it will only make the racists in our society believe stronger in their views. I don't believe we can stop racism by introducing more (positive) racism.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#223

Post by coldtea »

travmatt wrote: post #162
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

>African-American culture is most certainly not Anglo-Saxon. It’s actual roots in the African diaspora and the Caribbean

Roots lost in time and declining though. In modern times it's Anglo-saxon, or African-American-Anglo-Saxon, but have little to nothing to do with Africa or the Caribbean.

If you put an African or Carribean and a African-American there are little cultural traits they share (cultural as in everyday life, outlook, worldview, etc. - African-Americans might still carry some traces of e.g. African music in the modern music they produce). But even eg. food is totally different.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#224

Post by coldtea »

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 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.

No, but those latter aren't carribean or african either. They are african-american, created in the US (and for specific historical circumstances, including food price concerns, and local food availability).

As for "jerk chicken" that's just an imported popular dish. Carribeans do eat it, but you aren't carribean for eating it any more than you're Mexican for eating mexican..

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#225

Post by coldtea »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #219
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I looked up t…

This is one of the make disappointing comments I’ve read on HN in awhile. You are literally admitting to being ignorant on the issues being discussed (“I looked up”) and justifying incorrect conclusions based on the results of immature, inaccurate research. Do you realize the depth of the topics you’re making these claims about?

>This is one of the make disappointing comments I’ve read on HN in awhile. You are literally admitting to being ignorant on the issues being discussed (“I looked up”) and justifying incorrect conclusions based on the results of immature, inaccurate research.

Do you have better sources? Because I'm quite well informed in those areas, and I mostly agree with the parent, as do all scholars.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#226

Post by coldtea »

megameter wrote: post #201
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I looked up t…

I detest this attempt to deny historical people of their creative capacity. You are acting as if the cultures of modern times are simple antecedents of cultures from the fall of the Roman Empire. To back up your claim of jazz being "European", please source a European that composed with blues scale, jazz chords, and swing before African Americans.

>To back up your claim of jazz being "European", please source a European that composed with blues scale, jazz chords, and swing before African Americans.

Those jazz chords are descended and altered from traditional european harmony though, themselves, not sole descendants some African musical tradition (which didn't use such harmonies).

As were the instruments themselves (trumpets, trombones, saxophones, pianos, etc.)

Jazz was a mix of African-American vocal music and musical idioms (with a US-localized trhough over African origin) with european harmony, marching band music, and other forms.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#227

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #216
rayiner wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said, “many liberals consider conservative beliefs to be inherently racist.” I don’t know if the opposition to the ACA specifically is widely perceived as racist, but the racial dimension was constantly injected into articles on the ACA repeal. (As if Republicans would want to repeal a big new entitlement only because the President who enacted it was Black?) More generally, it’s injected into pretty much every poli…

You keep citing things that aren't the ACA that someone at Vox or Politico reported someone said was racist. But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that. Clearly, there are people who believe everything is racist, but you set a hi…

> But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that.

Who is a normal person? The Forbes article I posted is from a Duke MD. The article appears to be based on Senator Jay Rockefeller’s contemporaneous claim that opposition to the ACA was because Obama was the “wrong color.” It looks like no other Congressional Democrat backed that idea, so you’re right in that respect.

On the broader trend, Jonathan Chait, himself a liberal pundit, has clearly noticed it. https://nymag.com/news/features/obama-presidency-race-2014-4...

> One of the greatest triumphs of liberal politics over the past 50 years has been to completely stigmatize open racial discrimination in public life, a lesson that has been driven home over decades by everybody from Jimmy the Greek to Paula Deen. This achievement has run headlong into an increasing liberal tendency to define conservatism as a form of covert racial discrimination. If conservatism is inextricably entangled with racism, and racism must be extinguished, then the scope for legitimate opposition to Obama shrinks to an uncomfortably small space.

Though in the same piece he writes:

> America’s unique brand of ideological anti-statism is historically inseparable (as I recently argued) from the legacy of slavery.

Chait, at least six years ago, correctly observed that these arguments are fallacious:

> And yet—as vital as this revelation may be for understanding conservatism, it still should not be used to dismiss the beliefs of individual conservatives. Individual arguments need and deserve to be assessed on their own terms, not as the visible tip of a submerged agenda; ideas can’t be defined solely by their past associations and uses.

More recently, however, Chait has embraced the trend he was skeptical of in the above passage.

In August 2020 he wrote: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/senate-washington-dc...

> The Senate is a bulwark of white power.

A few months later he writes, without a hint of irony:

> Why Are Conservatives So Angry Biden Denounced White Supremacy?

Now maybe I read too much Jonathan Chait. But I truly find his rhetoric truly perplexing, for someone I perceive as being maybe solidly left wing, but within the Overton Window. I thought that anti-statism was something the left and right broadly agreed on. (During the Obama era, polls showed that even half of Democrats listed “big government” as the “biggest threat to America.”)

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#228

Post by claudiawerner »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #66
nvarsj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? The census considers anyone with Japanese citizenship to be "Japanese". Therefore it's useless as a measure of ethnic diversity.

I don't think it's useless at all in that Japan is one of the hardest country on earth to get citizenship. I've got family in Japan. All you need to do is to go to Japan to see that it's very "japanese". You can get residency semi-easily but getting citizenship is extremely hard. It's not the EU or the US where a huge lot of "foreigners" can become citizen.

>You can get residency semi-easily but getting citizenship is extremely hard.

As far as I can tell from the description of the procedures involved, it's actually easy - and certainly easier than the US, and it requires less time in the country to apply than some European countries. One reason why it's uncommon however could be because Japan does not allow dual citizenship, and it's harder to get into the country in the first place other than teaching English.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#229

Post by 55555 »

kelnos wrote: post #60
55555 wrote: post #6

A lot of words in this article in order to make a very weak argument. I assume he started writing before he started researching. From wikipedia: > Chinese people in Japan are the largest foreign minorities in Japan. They comprise 0.64% of Japan's population. So the largest ethnic groups in japan which aren't Japanese all comprise a percentage of the population measured in tenths of a single percent, at the most. Now…

> Chinese people in Japan are the largest foreign minorities in Japan. They comprise 0.64% of Japan's population. Does that mean what we think it means, though? Does that include people of Chinese descent who are Japanese citizens (who, as the author points out, are considered "Japanese" for statistical purposes), or (as I suspect) it only includes non-citizen Chinese people?

> Does that include people of Chinese descent who are Japanese citizens.

Yes. It does not include non-Japanese passport holding Chinese.

Re: How Homogeneous Is Japan?

#230

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #227
tptacek wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep citing things that aren't the ACA that someone at Vox or Politico reported someone said was racist. But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that. Clearly, there are people who believe everything is racist, but you set a hi…

> But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that. Who is a normal person? The Forbes article I posted is from a Duke MD. The article appears to be based on Senator Jay Rockefeller’s contemporaneous claim that opposition to the ACA wa…

I like Chait. I also don't think any of these people are wrong about the culture war issue you're talking about, and if that had been all you said, we wouldn't be 2000 words deep into this thread. But that's not what you said.

The article you posted is from a health policy "take machine" (check his Twitter, he's like a JV Ezra Klein) who concludes that opposition to the ACA is mostly not racist, and is using the idea as a framing device for a post summarizing a journal article about racial disparities in health care, which are obvious and real. The use of the word "racist" to describe the status quo ante of the ACA is counterproductive and stupid (see: "takes"), but it's also not part of the mainstream conversation.

You suggested otherwise. I suggest you concede the point, because, again: we're being held hostage by stupid things people say. Even smart people will say some stupid things, and we can let whole debates be defined by stupidity.

(We have another big health policy debate coming up, and as a liberal Democrat who opposes single-payer, I'm dreading the amount of stupidity we're all going to have to wade through to get to any kind of engagement with the real issues).

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