u/Master_Ad6104

I fully acknowledge that there are racism and xenophobia issues in Japan. Sometimes I catch myself being part of one of those people who either dismiss or minimize the racist experiences I was thinking about why that is and I have a theory, not sure if there are others who possibly think the same.

It’s obvious that English teachers make up a huge portion of the online English-based platforms. I am a westerner myself from Canada living in Japan and I also know many people who are English teachers. I’ve always thought it was an inherently privileged position. It’s a low barrier to entry job, requires no language skills and there is generally very little pressure to assimilate or integrate. If we compare this to immigrants in Canada, it’s pretty much a position that many people would want to be into if this type of industry existed in Canada. So I think sometimes we see how vocal English teachers online get about complaining about Japanese society, and then we dismiss it because we just think “How can they experience racism when they are taking advantage of an opportunity due to their own race/nationality.” Many of them don’t speak the language and are being accommodated by Japanese people in English constantly, and 1 negative experience of being turned away for not speaking Japanese isn’t suppose to flip their privilege into being oppressed.

I guess there’s also the part where historically people immigrate to western countries from eastern countries. When people do the opposite, it’s because they have certain western privileges they can take advantage of. I mean if you look at the Philippines subreddit, even old white men who are pretty much exploiting young are also claiming they suffer from racism from Filipinos.

There are real issues in this country, but I think many of the groups raising this issue are not taken seriously, especially online due to how vocal specific subgroups are. Like other groups face way more racism, Indians, South East Asians, etc… westerners don’t even realize how privileged they actually are.

Waddya think?

I haven’t been back to Korea since I graduated college. I used to go every summer and had a lot of friends from school that would go back too. For the first time in years, i decided to go back and also meet some more people around my age. Ngl, Americans or like British people working as teachers in Asia are like the most lame people I’ve met. Like when I was a student, most people seemed chill or fun but the people who stay and work are legit not it.

I mean non-Asian westerners btw

Edit: I thought this was obvious but it clearly confused people, but I should have added quotation marks: “Taiwanese people aren’t actually friendly.” It was meant to be sort of a controversial title. Sorry for the confusion!

I’ve seen this kind of statement thrown around from time to time and I’ve always found it interesting and a little problematic, but for me, it kind of suggests there’s some sort of deception or like a “hidden truth” to what Taiwanese people are. I don’t know if anyone agrees, but I often get the sentiment that Taiwanese people are almost being evaluated and once something negative happens, people don’t view them as individuals, but view them as a sort of object used to evaluate someone’s experience in Taiwan. Taiwanese people are just like anyone else in the world, there’s good and bad people. The social-economic pressure is different in Taiwan than from western countries (speaking as a Canadian) so things may be done differently, worklife balance and workplace behaviour will be fundamentally different.

A prime example I see is when people say it’s difficult to connect with Taiwanese people, and then you learn that they still have basic Mandarin after 3 years of living here. Then it becomes some sort of sweeping judgment about Taiwanese people and how it’s all some sort of social facade.

Or they don’t realize Taiwan has a brain drain problem so they come here to work and complain how bad it is and think it’s some revelation that it sucks to work here. Local people feel privileged if they they can work or immigrate to western countries, if you’re coming from let’s say Australia to work in Taiwan, it’s kind of obvious that you’ll hate it if you’re doing the opposite, no?

I hope to keep this civil but I know lots of people here are a bit transient by nature, so I get that once Taiwan does provide someone what they want as a foreigner, then it’s natural to think Taiwan is the problem, but still I guess my goal is for people to be a bit more aware of their line of thinking

Anyways, what do you guys think?