A Nation Constantly Feeling Sorry for Itself is Partly Responsible for Racism against Its Diaspora
It is apt that this post falls on the day after the annual celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday in the US and around the world. The African-American activist, decades ago, led the civic rights movement that marked the tentative (albeit trouble-filled) first steps of blacks being recognized as legal equals in America. More importantly, he created a culture in the US that made overt or covert racism against blacks all but taboo, making it completely normal for blacks to publicly launch dignified campaigns against any scent of assaults on their racial dignity by other races.
The human dignity of the blacks, as a result of King and his fellow activists' efforts, unfortunately have no spread to other races, especially Asians, who often have to put up with meek acceptance of overt racial gestures, as seen by a recent portrayal of Asians in Spanish and American TV stations. Celebrity exploitation of Asian negative stereotypes, despite heavy backlash from Asian communities, often go unpunished and unrepentant, something that is extremely difficult to imagine had the victims blacks or even Hispanic. The meekness earned the Asians the ironic title of "model minority."
Previous studies of racism have almost exclusively been focused on what happens within a country, such as King's efforts that led to developments in the US. But few seem to notice that there is also an international undercurrent responsible for racism in a particular state. That is the position of a Diaspora's homeland in the eyes of locals in the host country. While most blacks, being products of the Atlantic slave trade centuries ago, successfully evades association with their African homelands with which they have absolutely no ties, the same cannot be said of most other racial minorities.
Looking at the plight of the poorer Southeast Asian countries' migrants abroad, as compared to those of East Asian and Indian migrants, serves a strong illustration. The recent stories of maid abuse, and the lack of effective response from governments here in Southeast Asia that provide the maids, shows just how little weight such abuses carries in the psyche of the citizens in their developed host countries. Because their countries of origin are poor and have no choice but to send people abroad for dirty, low-paid jobs, the locals feel that they can ill-treat with impunity.
The same cannot be said of the other Asian immigrants. The developed countries, eyeing the strategic and economic needs to maintain good relationships with major partners in Asia, will take note of ill-treatment of their diaspora within their own countries. This is well-presented by how the plight of a single Indian diplomat in the US drew major international headlines and eventually apologies from the US government. One should be in the illusion that similar matters, if involving a Filipino diplomat, for instance, will generate the same amount of strong responses from either party involved.
The causation here is a very basic one. If a country and its citizens spend most of international PR efforts on showing the world how poor it is and how much aid and support are needed to keep the economy (barely) afloat and people fed, they may benefit in the form of a constant influx of aid money, but at the expense of "international dignity." No one will take a beggar seriously, because they feel the beggar has no resources to protect him/herself in cases of assaults. It is, then, not at all surprising to find Filipinos and Indonesians, for instance, to be stuck in cycles of abuse abroad.
For these peoples, simple grass-roots level activism, similar to those launched by Dr King, may not be enough to counteract the continued flow of sorrowful information and migrants streaming from their ancestral homelands that solidify their images of forced meekness due to poverty and lack of choice in the minds of the general populace in their host societies. They need the governments of the homelands to actively change their behavior in order to slowly but comprehensively improve their images and collective protections against potential racist abuses.
The governments need to sacrifice some external economic resources received in order to maintain a sense of dignity and prospect of economic self-sufficiency. It must be willing to take itself off straight-up aids, switch toward a more equal trade partnerships, and invest more of the incomes earned toward social welfare programs assisting the poor. In such ways, they can retaliate economically against racism abroad by actively withdrawing their poor migrants from abroad, in effect launching economic warfare against those who refuse to apologize for and take concrete actions against acts of racism against its diaspora. Only such actions can strengthen the social positions of the diaspora as a respected and not persecuted minorities.
The human dignity of the blacks, as a result of King and his fellow activists' efforts, unfortunately have no spread to other races, especially Asians, who often have to put up with meek acceptance of overt racial gestures, as seen by a recent portrayal of Asians in Spanish and American TV stations. Celebrity exploitation of Asian negative stereotypes, despite heavy backlash from Asian communities, often go unpunished and unrepentant, something that is extremely difficult to imagine had the victims blacks or even Hispanic. The meekness earned the Asians the ironic title of "model minority."
Previous studies of racism have almost exclusively been focused on what happens within a country, such as King's efforts that led to developments in the US. But few seem to notice that there is also an international undercurrent responsible for racism in a particular state. That is the position of a Diaspora's homeland in the eyes of locals in the host country. While most blacks, being products of the Atlantic slave trade centuries ago, successfully evades association with their African homelands with which they have absolutely no ties, the same cannot be said of most other racial minorities.
Looking at the plight of the poorer Southeast Asian countries' migrants abroad, as compared to those of East Asian and Indian migrants, serves a strong illustration. The recent stories of maid abuse, and the lack of effective response from governments here in Southeast Asia that provide the maids, shows just how little weight such abuses carries in the psyche of the citizens in their developed host countries. Because their countries of origin are poor and have no choice but to send people abroad for dirty, low-paid jobs, the locals feel that they can ill-treat with impunity.
The same cannot be said of the other Asian immigrants. The developed countries, eyeing the strategic and economic needs to maintain good relationships with major partners in Asia, will take note of ill-treatment of their diaspora within their own countries. This is well-presented by how the plight of a single Indian diplomat in the US drew major international headlines and eventually apologies from the US government. One should be in the illusion that similar matters, if involving a Filipino diplomat, for instance, will generate the same amount of strong responses from either party involved.
The causation here is a very basic one. If a country and its citizens spend most of international PR efforts on showing the world how poor it is and how much aid and support are needed to keep the economy (barely) afloat and people fed, they may benefit in the form of a constant influx of aid money, but at the expense of "international dignity." No one will take a beggar seriously, because they feel the beggar has no resources to protect him/herself in cases of assaults. It is, then, not at all surprising to find Filipinos and Indonesians, for instance, to be stuck in cycles of abuse abroad.
For these peoples, simple grass-roots level activism, similar to those launched by Dr King, may not be enough to counteract the continued flow of sorrowful information and migrants streaming from their ancestral homelands that solidify their images of forced meekness due to poverty and lack of choice in the minds of the general populace in their host societies. They need the governments of the homelands to actively change their behavior in order to slowly but comprehensively improve their images and collective protections against potential racist abuses.
The governments need to sacrifice some external economic resources received in order to maintain a sense of dignity and prospect of economic self-sufficiency. It must be willing to take itself off straight-up aids, switch toward a more equal trade partnerships, and invest more of the incomes earned toward social welfare programs assisting the poor. In such ways, they can retaliate economically against racism abroad by actively withdrawing their poor migrants from abroad, in effect launching economic warfare against those who refuse to apologize for and take concrete actions against acts of racism against its diaspora. Only such actions can strengthen the social positions of the diaspora as a respected and not persecuted minorities.
An interesting article.
ReplyDeleteJust to leave this out there - Martin Luther King Jr seems to get a disproportionate amount of credit for the Civil Rights movement. There were many other people who worked for civil rights, such as Stokley Carmichael and Malcolm X to name a few.
Going deeper into the article, it seems that the dynamics of race relations in the United States with relation to people of Asian descent seems very complicated to say the least. There are those in America who believe that Asians are "practically white" (a sentiment with which I, as a white person disagree), and that as a result they are fair game. The fact that Asians make up a relatively small minority outside of California probably also means that they don't have a big voice when compared to other minorities.
As far as Asians are concerned, I think the big issue is how non-Asians see them as a single block rather than difference races suffering from differing issues. Some, as people know very well, do very well in America, even more so than whites (Chinese, Koreans, Indians, for instance). But others do even worse than blacks, such as Cambodians and Laotians. Because because the latter groups are lumped together with the successful ones who also happen to be numerically larger, their problems are not seen by American society. Thats a definite issue.
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