Racism By Country

"Japan is a relatively-free, well-educated, and extremely prosperous society–and, in many ways, to be admired. But it is also a deeply racist society, although so far non-violent. For example, in 2017 a story broke regarding a Japanese cosmetics shop posting a sign in its window announcing that no Chinese were allowed to enter. An author who is an advisor to the government on education wrote that she favors an apartheid-type system in Japan that keeps the races separate. The Japanese Defense Minister received donations from an anti-Korean group; she was also pictured in a meeting with the head of the Japanese Nazi Party. Immigration is kept to a minimum and there is a strong sentiment among both the government and the majority of the population to maintain a mono-culture by retaining a single race in Japan."

"The epidemic of racism on the British left has proven so virulent."

"[I]t's not impossible but it's difficult, for a non-white person to be British."

"The British developed similar stereotypes in India. They saw the Bengalis, in a telling choice of words, as effeminate. By contrast the British admired the ‘martial races’; peoples such as the Gurkhas, Pathans or Coorgs who lived in cooler climates and were said to have the right military qualities as a result. By the time of the First World War, the descendants of the British who had settled in Australia, Canada or New Zealand were held to be tougher and more brutal than their cousins in Britain, thanks to their geography. When the ‘less civilised’ and therefore the less adept at war won victories, these had to be written off as mistakes. When a Maori force defeated a British one in the wars in New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century, The Times of London was quick with an explanation: ‘just as at chess a bad and reckless player is sometimes more formidable than a master of the game’."

"Aside from the imported issue of Vietnam and a worsening climate in Northern Ireland, the biggest issue in Britain that year was racism. Led by Enoch Powell, a member of Parliament, the country was seeing a virulent strain of what the American civil rights movement called white backlash set off by the Labour government’s proposed Commonwealth Immigration Bill. As the British decolonized their empire, workers were being told that black and brown people from the former empire would be coming and taking away their jobs. “Keep Britain White,” was Powell’s slogan, and a number of workers groups demonstrated with this slogan. There was some amusement when a Kenyan diplomat was harassed entering the House of Commons by “Keep Britain White” hecklers who shouted, “Go back to Jamaica!” at the East African."

"Our determination to ensure good community relations is unswerving. There is no room for racial hatred in our crowded island. We cannot afford not to make a success of a multi-racial society. A moving speech was made the other day in the other place by Lord Pitt, himself a distinguished citizen of London of West Indian origin. In that speech, he looked forward hopefully to a harmonious multiracial Britain setting an example to the world. He spoke on a high level of moral seriousness, but reminded us too that our self-interest is also served by racial harmony and tolerance. I agree with that view, and would share Lord Pitt's hope, but I do not see it as an easy or even a certain outcome, at any rate in this generation. Its accomplishment will depend on the minority community accepting that this country will not take, in Lord Pitt's own words, a "large and unending stream" of dependants, and on the majority community accepting that tolerance is one of the greatest and most traditional of British virtues and that if that tradition is broken we shall all of us suffer deeply, both minority and majority, and suffer for many years to come."

"[W]ake up to the reality that is the nightmare of British racism.The royal family is perhaps the most identifiable symbol of whiteness in the world. For British nationalists, the monarchy lies at the core of their yearning for the days when Britannia ruled the waves and its monarch presided over an Empire, upon which the sun never set."

"Yet by 1901 there had been a worldwide revulsion against 'miscegenation'. As early as 1808, all 'Eurasians' had been excluded from the East India Company's forces, and in 1835 intermarriage was formally banned in British India. In the aftermath of the 1857 Mutiny, attitudes towards interracial sex hardened as part of a general process of segregation, a phenomenon usually, though not quite justly, attributed to the increasing presence and influence of white women in India. As numerous stories by Kipling, Somerset Maugham and others testify, interracial unions continued, but their progeny were viewed with undisguised disdain. In 1888 the official brothels that served the British army in India were abolished, while in 1919 the Crewe Circular expressly banned officials throughout the Empire from taking native mistresses. By this time, the idea that miscegenation implied degeneration, and that criminality was correlated to the ratio of native to white blood, had been generally accepted in expatriate circles. Throughout the Empire, there was also a growing (and largely fantastic) obsession with the sexual threat supposedly posed to white women by native men. The theme can be found in two of the most popular works of fiction produced by the British rule in India, E. M. Forster's A Passage to India and Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown, and also gave rise to a bitter campaign to prevent Indian judges hearing cases involving white women. By 1901 racial segregation was the norm in most of the British Empire. It was most explicit in South Africa, however, where Dutch settlers had from an early stage banned marriage between burghers and blacks. Their descendants were the driving force behind subsequent legislation. In 1897 the Boer republic of the Transvaal prohibited white women from having extramarital intercourse with black men, and this became the template for legislation in the Cape Colony (1902), Natal and the Orange Free State (1903), as well as in neighbouring Rhodesia."

"Racism is a part of a problem, a world problem, which has to be overcome... We are struggling with racism [in South Africa], but racism is also alive and well in many other countries. And what we must overcome is racism being the cause of conflict. And what we need to recognize human beings as human beings; to award merit."

"By 1901 racial segregation was the norm in most of the British Empire. It was most explicit in South Africa, however, where Dutch settlers had from an early stage banned marriage between burghers and blacks. Their descendants were the driving force behind subsequent legislation. In 1897 the Boer republic of the Transvaal prohibited white women from having extramarital intercourse with black men, and this became the template for legislation in the Cape Colony (1902), Natal and the Orange Free State (1903), as well as in neighbouring Rhodesia."

"Canada harbours its own disgraceful legacy. Down through the decades, scores of federal and provincial laws isolated, dispossessed and ghettoized one racial or ethnic minority after another. Asians weren't allowed to vote in Canada until the late 1940s; federally-registered Indians had to wait until 1960... For Canada’s young Aboriginal people, it’s not clear that the arc of the moral universe is even bending in their direction at all."

"[F]acts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too. How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue? ... [C]ollectively, we don’t say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.” ... Canada has a race problem. We do and it is bad. And it is not just with the Aboriginal peoples. ... If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”"

"In Canada, successive federal governments have been apologizing and in some cases paying compensation for policies carried out—however distasteful they may be to us now—by their properly constituted predecessors. The practice leads to some interesting questions. Canada used to charge a head tax on immigrants coming from China. Its intent was undoubtedly racist, to discourage “Orientals” from settling in this country But does present- day Canada have to pay recompense to the descendants of those who chose to pay the head tax? Would it make more sense to use funds for the community as a whole rather than for individuals? How much is enough? Sadly, there have been some unedifying squabbles among different groups claiming to speak for Chinese Canadians about how any government money ought to be distributed."

"Aboriginal Canadians have been preoccupied for decades by the residential schools issue, arguing that Aboriginal children not only suffered harsh treatment, from verbal to sexual abuse, but were stripped of their culture. Their leaders have talked of “cultural genocide” and a former United Church clergyman has claimed to have uncovered evidence of murders, illegal medical experiments, and pedophile rings. The Canadian government has offered compensation to each former student and has set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will spend five years gathering information and writing its report. Already the chair of the commission is talking of possible criminal charges. Of course, Canadian society must deal with the charges, but it sadly shows little willingness to expend the same resources on dealing with the ghastly conditions on many reserves today. Leon Wieseltier, the distinguished Jewish- American man of letters, warns that the message minority groups too often get from such a focus on the past is “Don’t be fooled ... there is only repression.” Dwelling on past horrors such as the Holocaust or slavery can leave people without the resources to deal with problems in the here and now."

"Everything was fine for the first several years. Then in about 1973, the liberal party, headed by then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, out of compassion took in five thousand Uganda Asians who were Ismailis by religion. They had British citizenship, but Idi Amin expelled them from Uganda, and Britain refused to accept them in spite of their British passports. It was an act of kindness by the Canadian government led by Trudeau to accept this group of five thousand refugees. There was, however, an unexpected, immediate, and violent racist reaction against these non-Europeans, who had money and who were buying houses in good neighborhoods. Suddenly, the Canadian government at that time floated policy papers asking the question, "What kind of Canada do we want?" in purely racial terms. The government described people like me, with brown skin and still Canadian citizens, as "the visible minority." That's the government phrase. The policy papers also stated that we, the visible minority, were "straining the absorptive capacity" of Canada. Meaning that there were too many brown people and that Canada wouldn't remain the same."

"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."

"South Korea, not very tolerant, is an outlier. Although the country is rich, well-educated, peaceful and ethnically homogenous – all trends that appear to coincide with racial tolerance – more than one in three South Koreans said they do not want a neighbor of a different race. This may have to do with Korea's particular view of its own racial-national identity as unique – studied by scholars such as B.R. Myers – and with the influx of Southeast Asian neighbors and the nation's long-held tensions with Japan."

"Korea needs to institutionalize a legal system that mitigates unfair practices and discrimination against those who do not supposedly share the Korean blood. Koreans need an institutional framework to promote a democratic national identity that would allow for more diversity and tolerance among the populace, rather than simply appeal to an ethnic consciousness that tends to encourage false uniformity and enforce conformity to it. They should envision a society in which they can live together, not simply as fellow ethnic Koreans but as equal citizens of a democratic polity. It should be an integral part of democratic consolidation processes that Korea is currently undergoing. Otherwise, it would be hard to expect Korea to become "Asia's hub," which will require the accommodation of cultural and ethnic diversity and flexibility."

"This dispute is over whether nationhood is a product of nationalist political mobilization of uniquely modern dimensions, or, conversely, whether the prior existence of ethnicity in fact explains much of modern nationality. The issue is particularly complicated in the Korean context, where there exists substantial overlap between the levels of race, ethnicity, and nation. When Koreans shouted, 'We are one' in Seoul's city hall plaza and in Los Angeles' Staples Center, they meant that Koreans are one race, one ethnicity, and one nation, regardless of their current legal citizenship, place of residence, or political beliefs. Although race is understood as a collectivity defined by innate and immutable phenotypic and genotypic characteristics and ethnicity is generally regarded as a cultural phenomenon based on a common language and history, Koreans have not historically differentiated between the two. Instead, race has served as a marker that strengthened ethnic identity, which in turn was instrumental in defining the nation. Race, ethnicity, and nation were conflated, and this is reflected in the multiple uses of the term minjok, the most widely used term for 'nation', which can also refer to 'ethnie' or 'race'. What accounts for the rise and establishment of such a strong sense of ethnic national identity of racialized notion of nation held among Koreans? As in the general literature on the study of nations and nationalisms, there exist several contending views to explain the origins of the Korean ethnic nation."

"I was seeking to explain anti-American movements that had erupted in South Korea in the 1980s. I was interested in explaining why South Korea, once considered a best friend and ally of the United States, had embraced anti-American rhetoric and movements during its pursuit of democracy. My research found that the movements had inherently been related to the politics of national identity, since with the anti-American rhetoric dissidents had sought to challenge the authoritarian state's definitions of nation and national identity."

"The historical origins and politics of Korean national identity based on a sense of ethnic homogeneity has not received adequate scholarly attention. Ethnic unity is widely assumed on both sides of the Korean Peninsula, and most Koreans do not question its historicity. Indeed, it seems 'politically incorrect' to question the eternal and natural essence of Korean ethnic unity. However, one cannot assume that Koreans' ethnic national identity is fixed, or is something that stems from ancient times."

"To a radical Korean nationalist, the division of the nation, the race, is an intolerable state of affairs. So too is the continued presence of the foreign army that effected that division in the first place."

"Foreign traders were being restricted to certain parts of the peninsula well before the Korean people learned from the Japanese how to look at the world in racial categories. This makes it harder to figure out whether discrimination against foreigners in South Korea has more to do with xenophobia or nationalism. There still seems to be, as in Japan, a common sense of a certain racial hierarchy, with Koreans and perhaps the Japanese too at the top. But it's a moral hierarchy without much serious conviction of intellectual, let alone physical superiority. For all the loud professions of hostility towards Japan, the Japanese are considered the least foreign of foreign races."

"South Korean nationalism is something quite different from the patriotism toward the state that Americans feel. Identification with the Korean race is strong, while that with the Republic of Korea is weak."

"I was invited to the home of a young Korean couple for dinner and the subject of the children of mixed-race marriage came up. "You know, we hate them," the husband said quite unashamedly and, for some reason, with a smile. By "we" he meant not just he and his wife. He meant all Koreans. All felt this way. And feelings, I'd already noticed among my Korean friends, were not something to be kept in check by reason. They were justification for whatever came out of your mouth or made you swing your fist."

"[South Korea] continues to struggle with minority rights and social integration, especially for North Korean defectors, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people, and immigrants."

"[T]o say that the Korean blood is purely "Korean" is sheer fantasy. A recent DNA analysis shows that 60 percent of Koreans have "foreign" blood. The very idea of forging a nation's destiny and identity on the basis of ethnic blood seems not only atavistic but also dangerous. It is atavistic because modern nations are increasingly made up of different groups and tribes, and dangerous because it is the cause of racism..."