"Your People" vs "My People": the Asian mentality on ethnocentric group unity
Sometimes even I myself wonders exactly why some many thoughts about racial divisions race through my mind when I live and work in a country known the lack of it (almost everyone walking down the street dress the same way, talks the same language, sports the same behavior, and racist enough, really does look very similar to each other underneath the same makeups...) And I, with my salary-man outlook and behavior , does not exactly stick out like a sore thumb as most other foreigners seem to experience. So I thought, until someone at work opens his/her mouth and start going off on their knowledge or willingness to learn more about...those foreign people. Oh, do they just love saying that word, especially in these days of globalization. "We the Japanese need to learn English (or any other non-Japanese language, for that matter) so we can better communicate with those foreign people." Indeed, they certainly do need to speak better English, but that kind of attitude really mak