From: ssg9328@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Samart Srijumnong)
Subject: Re: Tai
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 01:56:56 GMT

levis@iesd.auc.dk (Tommy Larsen) writes:

>----- stuffs to which Khun Tommy has reponded to were deleted...

>Hi all!

>When I read this, a question came to mind:

>Has this kind of discrimination been going on for generations, or
>could it be caused by the change in thai culture due to increased
>industry and materialism?

To me, ethnocentrism (according to an introductory anthropology text's glossary,means "The tendency to judge other societies by the standards or norms 
dominant in the observer's own society,") is very natural. Each region of
Thailand had been isolated for some decades before modernization came which
provided more transportion and telecommunication. Khun Tommy's observation is
partly correct in saying that this discrimination is related to industry
but its direction is doubtful. IMO, industry has created job mobility. Combined
with distribution of education to people in other provinces besides Bangkok
(note that Chiangmai U is the first provincial university but was just 
set up less than 30 years ago), the provincial graduates (or Khon-Chon-Na-Bot')
could have chance to line in for the jobs which otherwise would be available
only for Bangkok children or those of high-ranking officials in the provinces
who normally had family base in Bangkok. It is this new era that the Bangkok
people learn about their fellow country people from other parts of the country.
The migration of Khon-Chon-Na-Bot does not much help making indigenious 
Bangkok people come closer to look at them as equal Thai citizens since many
of the migratory country people came to fill in low position jobs, e.g. servant,workers, service-persons, taxi-drivers, and the likes. Thai novels and soap
opera help stimatize the remote characteristics of these migratory Thais by
assigning them the characters of Khon-Chai^ (house maid) or Khon-Khab'Rot"
(driver) or Khon-Suan+ (gardener) to those from Su'Pan-Bu'Rii- (a province 
in Central Part whose residents speak Thai with very unique accent), or
more recently, from the Northeast or the North. Surprisingly, which Khun Noi
could probably have answer, those soap opera authors have not touched much
the southern people (Khon-Tai^). 

The discrimination is not so severe except annoying to those from the region
at which the prejudice is aimed. It is remarkable that the prejudice has 
taken institutional form (on abstract level of stereotype). Some of my friends
still have negative attitude toward Khon-Ii-Saan+ though we are good friends.
They even express such attitude in my presence despite they realize where I am
from. This lights some hope that the discrimination is not as deep as racism 
in some western countries. The more Bangkok people get involved with friends 
from other parts of the country, the more they realize that those people are
also, in many ways, human being like them. 

Let's me elaborate what I mean by the term "institutional prejudice." It is
an abstract representation which Bangkok people have learned from the media
and regenerated when they are among themselves. There many dimensions of
the stereotypes a certain people give to other peoples, e.g physical 
attributes, habits, morality, and the likes. Bangkok people are making fun
of Northeastern people that they have low nose because they eat to much
sticky rice. This is obviously anti-factual since the Northern people who
too also eat sticky rice are not perceived as such. As far as habits, the
Northeastern are said to be lazy. The Northern girls are said to be Jai-Ngai"
(easily convinced to have sex with). The Southern people, particularly men,
are Du' (mean, not friendy). 

The provincial people too have some ideas about Bangkok people. When I was 
young we people at Korat called Bangkokians Chaw-Laang" (people from the 
lower land). We tended to believe Bangkok people, perhaps inspired by 
the limited media of the time, were snobbish. When some of our fellow Korat
friends came back from Bangkok, either from visit or from working there, and
spoke with Bangkok accent, we said they Dat'Chaw-Laang" (snobbishly speak
the lower-land people's language). This kind of strike-back is probably a
natural reaction, IMO. 

Now that social understanding of the whole populace is being boosted, I just
hope that the prejudice of any kind should be lessened. I always believe 
that in Thailand things always "easy come and easy go." Nothing is so 
institutionalized no matter it is sexism, sexual preferences, regionalism,
or the likes. In the US, business, medical, or law schools are traditionally
dominantly enrolled by male students. In Thailand, these fields are not
genderly prominent. In the US, President-Elect Bill Clinton got into big
criticism when he said he would lift ban of homosexuals in military. In
Thailand we have (no so obvious) members of this group taking high positions
in the government: PM, Parliamentary President, military general. 

I, for one, am not so concerned about this problem. It is intellectually 
interesting talking about it but it is not going to be a big problem. We,
however, need to deal with other kinds of problem, particularly how to 
learn to share power. I am so concerned in reading about the reaction of the
military leaders on the government, the revisit of right-wing terrorists, 
the not-so-professional politicians, and the likes. 

Samart Srijumnong
Champaign, Illinois
November 23, 1992