Month: March 2010

Normally, I try to change themes with each new post. But this racism thing seems to have opened a can of worms – not so much among others, as in my own mind – although I’ve received some feedback, too.  

My friend Christine wrote a long comment in an email to me, which she sent to me right as I was posting my first “nevermind” (previous post). She said things that surprisingly matched what I wrote in that post, but one thing she said that I didn’t address stands out.  I will quote the relevant paragraph:

I would never defend racism, especially after my own experiences with them. But honestly, after all the racial slurs / comments I’ve heard in America towards non-whites (and many directed at me), I don’t feel like Koreans’ racist views are all that unique, only disturbing in how comfortable they are in them. But you know…if you want to see things as cause and effect rather than good or bad, Korea’s own idea of race will probably change as they become economically wealthier, better known globally, thus inadvertently attracting other races to move to Korea. 

I think this is a very important perspective, and it’s surprising to me that I didn’t include some mention of this before, in either my original post or in my subsequent apology. Surprising to me, because, in fact, I’ve talked about this idea very often with friends (probably with Christine, more than once, last year): Korea is changing rapidly, including in its attitudes about race. I’ve said before that actually, I believe Korea may be better positioned, culturally, to become a country that welcomes immigrants than any of its neighbors, e.g. especially Japan or Taiwan, which are the countries it most resembles socio-economically at this point.

And if Korea is going to be welcoming immigrants, that implies strongly that it’s going to be dealing with its blatant racists in some way or another… much as Europe has been struggling, not to mention the U.S., over its long historical cycles of immigrant-welcoming and immigrant-bashing.

What I most want to make clear is that even in my anger, in my original post, I realized that the racists in Korea are not the majority. And my conclusion, now, is that they’re really no more numerous than in other places. They’re only more visible, because of the lack of social constraint on the open expression of such ideas.

Perhaps the same analysis could be applied to one of my other personal conflicts with Korean culture: ageism. This is one which negatively affects me much more directly than the issue of racism (which, given the bias toward people of northern European descent, actually favors me, in a majorly guilt-inducing way – see also the “charisma man” phenomenon, from Japan). I wonder if, like what I’m saying about racism, Koreans are only more open about age-related biases that, in fact, exist within and across most world-cultures, these days: the youth-worship, the superficial-beauty-cult (with respect to both woman and men), etc.

These tendencies are deeply embedded in the output of the world media machine(s) (i.e. Hollywood) , which Koreans happily consume, just like Americans. If anything, we should be looking for the origins of Koreans’ worship of youth, superficial beauty, as well as their preference for pale skin and blue eyes, not in Korean culture, but in the Western paradigms they’re avidly consuming.

More later.

Well, somewhat. In my previous post from earlier today, I was angry, and so I ranted about Korean racism. Riding the bus back to Suwon, I had an insight: maybe Koreans are no more racist than Americans. Which is to say, I would guess that there are probably just as many racist Americans as a percentage of total population as there are racist Koreans. Not a majority, but probably a scarily large subset of the total population.

The difference is more subtle. Americans who happen to be racist are raised, nearly from birth, to be circumspect about their racist attitudes. They come to understand that there are real consequences for openly expressing their feelings, from ridicule to lawsuits to criminal prosecution. So they learn to be circumspect. Koreans, who live in a largely homogeneous culture, have little reason to be circumspect about such attitudes. “Good” race or “bad” race, it’s all the same, mostly: just a bunch of foreigners – so openly expressing one’s positive or negative opinions about them is no big deal. So racist Americans are stealth-racists, while racist Koreans are in-your-face racists. Maybe there’s actually something positive in that, as there is in any kind of transparency. Certainly, at the least, it’s clear whom to avoid.

That doesn’t change my feeling that it bothers me. A lot. But I need to be careful about what I allow to annoy me about Korean culture, lest I fall into a trap of hypocrisy. So… nevermind about the rant – at least on the charge of racism. The other comments can stand, for now. But I’m over being mad about it, I think. Sorry.

This is one instance where the “caveat,” above, is “real” – I really mean that as a caveat to what I am about to say.

I have been feeling a bit annoyed with some aspects of contemporary South Korean culture, lately. The issue that came up yesterday was perhaps just a “final straw” that pushed me into outright anger. Many Koreans are unabashedly racist. This is not the same as the mild xenophobia that I often comment on.  Korean xenophobia is something that is both historically understandable given their repeated subjugation over the centuries to the Chinese, Mongols or Japanese, as well as being something that I would characterize as essentially more naive and reflexive rather than somehow premeditated or unethical.

But many Koreans also have openly racist attitudes, which are more complex than simple xenophobia, because there are hierarchies of “good” and “bad” races. I see these as having been “imported” at some point from both Japan and the West, and more specifically, from 1930’s Japan and 1950’s America – which were the “occupiers” at those specific times. Pale Europeans, whether from Europe or North America, are near the top of the hierarchy. Koreans and Japanese are, too – although since the Japanese are the “enemy,” they get disqualified from Korean respect for different, non-racist reasons… if that makes any sense. More like a hated sibling. But to be a non-European, non-East Asian in Korea must be utter hell. That’s my speculation.

Um… I’m being disorganized, here. I’m ranting. Yesterday, talking about student exchange programs with a Korean, he mentioned something about the difficulty of placing minority American kids with Korean host families. And something like, “hopefully we can convey this sensitive issue to the Americans.”

I thought about this a bit, and felt only outrage. Why should Americans bear the responsibility for accommodating Korean racism? If Koreans want to participate in a student exchange program, it should be their sole responsibility to cope with making sure their attitudes can accommodate any possible American. That’s the only possibility that looks ethical, from my point of view.

OK. Back to the “caveat.”

I have always felt a great deal of ambivalence about some aspects of Korean culture. There’s the low-grade disrespect for rule-of-law: the never-ending stream of offers for illegal employment being just my own personal brush with this phenomenon. There’s the xenophobia, already mentioned.  There are the in-group / out-group distinctions, which can sometimes make one feel that one is living in a country inhabited exclusively by people suffering from a mild form of autism.

Then there’s the ageism. Ostensibly, Korea is a culture that honors elders. But there’s a caveat there: elders are only honored as long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to – they need to be fulfilling age-appropriate roles. Thus, I have actually been refused two interviews for teaching jobs, solely because of my age, and I was openly told that that was the reason – it’s not illegal, here, to discriminate because of someone’s age.

My love affair (if you want to call it that)… my interest… my focus… has always been an unabiding fascination for the Korean language. Unless you’re some kind of unreformed Whorfian, you will understand that culture and language aren’t the same thing.

So, I reserve my right to love the Korean language, and nevertheless harbor serious misgivings about parts of Korean culture. Which isn’t to say there aren’t parts I like, also. The food is incredible. The entrepreneurial spirit is stunning – though often repressed by the neo-confucians in the bureaucracy. The genuine generosity and kindness of most individual Koreans is undeniable.

I feel thankful that language and culture are not, in fact, the same. Otherwise, I’d feel compelled to leave, just at the moment.

Well… that is a really poorly-structured rant. But… such as it is. More later.