Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 13:59:29 MST
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Texas Southern University marching band in To^kyo^
Organization: Brigham Young University, Provo UT USA
Keywords: A self perpetuating phenomena
From: luke@newt.ee.byu.edu (David Luke)

In article <1gq77pINNcoe@agate.berkeley.edu> haniff@argon.berkeley.edu (Tariq M. Haniff) writes:

>I don't mean to try to justify what happened in Akihabara, but I think some
>ugly behaviour of foreigners in Japan is perpetuated by the existing racism
>against them.  What I mean is that there is a "damned if you do, damned if
>you don't" attitude, so why not? This probably was not the case with TSU,
>which sounds to me like the "opportunist" syndrome of the LA riots.

>When I was in Tokyo, I saw a bunch of Navy guys jumping the rail on the 
>subway. I thought to myself, "what a  bunch of a**h*les.  This is going 
>to do a lot for the American rep."  But on the train, I heard them
>complaining to each other about the racism they had faced there and how 
>they were going to "get back at them."

>When it came time to exit, they pretty much just walked right by 
>the ticket puncher.  The puncher held his arm out to stop one of them,
>but that fellopw merely shoved the arm out of his way and kept walking.

Right.  Like a "bunch of Navy guys" have spent enough time in Japan and
understand enough of what's going on to be able to tell racism from the
Japanese version of Ed McMann offering them a $1M sweepstakes prize.

Most military people spend 99% of their time on base associating with
other military people.  Excursions out are usually limited to hittin a 
close bar or the Hard Rock Cafe.  There are exceptions to the rule, but
most could spend years in Japan and still know essentially nothing about
the language, the culture, and the people.

People who do stupid things like shoplift in Akihabara or steal train
rides because they think they're bigger and stronger than the Japanese
so they can darn well do anything they please are the ones who create
and perpetrate slanted attitudes about foreigners among the Japanese
people.  They have no right to complain about any kind of racism, even
if it existed and even if they were clued in enough that they could
detect it.

Unfavorable attitudes towards people like this are not racism, they're
just considering and treating a first class jerk like a first class jerk.
If you act like that, you get treated like that.  If you act like a
normal, respectable, law-abiding individual, they treat you like one.

>The same phenomena exists in the employment of foreigners in Japanese
>companies (those in the US included).  The management attitude:

>"We don't want to give the gaijin too much responsibility since he/she
>will just jump to another job after a little while here."

>The employee attitude:

>"I'm not going to kill myself for nothing.  Chances are I can't advance
>here, so I better start looking somewhere else."

Same problem.  Show that you're capable and committed, and they give you 
significant work to do.  Act like you don't know how to do anything, and
you don't.  Act like you're just there because it will look good on a
resume in a couple of years when you quit, and they'll treat you like 
you deserve.

I'm sure there are exceptions, where even working hard to fit in gets
you nowhere, but the in the overwhelming majority of cases that I know
about, people have been treated like they deserved to be.  Just like
you would expect, in the US or anywhere.
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  David Luke                      "There's nothing worse than a brilliant     |
|  luke@wombat.ee.byu.edu           image of a fuzzy concept."                 |
|                                                               -- Ansel Adams |