Another Anti-Laowai Hate crime
April 16th, 2006 by MarkI saw this on Michael’s website, today. For those readers convinced that “there is no prejudice against white-people”, maybe this will open your eyes a bit. One reader of my blog argued vociferously that me being kicked out of my appartment a couple of years ago (along with all the other white, but not the Asian-American/Canadian tennants) had nothing to do with racism. How about overt violence?
Recently, a man was dragged out of a club and beaten by three others with a baseball bat. The reason? He was a white guy dancing in a club. That’s it. Here is an account from one of the people involved:
Then he began to tell me that shortly after we’d danced, some men told him that he had to go i.e. leave the club. Some men took him outside and before he knew it there were three men beating him up with a baseball bat and baton. They hit him in the face, on his back, stomach, legs and knees.
More from Michael:
Anti-foreigner prejudices run deep here, and sexual jealousies are just the ticket to bring them to the surface. Lots of foreigners out with their Taiwanese wives and girlfriends have bumped up against this problem. As Feli notes in her original description:
So the five of us ended up going to a local dance club, located behind the Sogo and Mitusoki Department Stores in downtown Kaohsiung. I haven’t been there in about six months because I’d heard about a number of incidents involving Caucasian foreigners being beat up or hit over the head with a beer bottle for simply talking to, or dancing with a local Taiwanese woman.
While the police picked up the victim, so far the attackers have been unpunished. To make it worse, the Apple daily misreported the events, again. I don’t know if it’s because blogging is bringing more of these events to light or if there’s a genuine increase in these kinds of crimes, but I’m hearing more and more about them and meeting more and more people who have been involved in them.
:
April 18th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Excuse me, you’re misrepresenting.
I did not say there is no prejudice against white people in Taiwan. Let’s note differences between prejudice and racism too, since racism was the original topic from before.
Again, many Taiwanese people are actually racist against blacks, Africans, and Southeast Asians (including Vietnam and Thailand). They are generally reverse racist when it comes to whites, which means they think whites are superior to East Asians.
Now, using the term racism in this defined way, meaning something that has to do with a sense of superiority or inferiority, instead of just throwing it around as a catch-all phrase, how does this apply to the incident of violence that I agree should be condemned?
I agree that it’s a product of stereotyping, discrimination, or prejudice plus violence. Many Taiwanese hear bad stories about white guys and Taiwanese women, some of which are true, some of which are false, some of which are exagerrated. They saw this girl Feli’s friend and assumed he was one of those kinds of guys. In the next step, they then tried to use violence to try to “right” what they saw as a “wrong”.
Let’s see what I really think here, contrary to your assumptions:
a) They tried to group Feli’s friend in with other bad apples. That was their first mistake.
b) They then tried to use violence to try to “fix” the wrong. This was their second mistake.
c) Many white guys come to Taiwan, as they do to many places in East Asia, to try to sleep with East Asian women. They do this because reverse racism benefits them here and chumps in the US or elsewhere are champs in Taiwan. This happens a lot. I am not saying everyone. But it happens a hell of a lot.
I think it’s unfortunate, as you might have guessed, and unlike Mr. Turton, I think it’s an unfortunate product of reverse racism, rather than some kind of actually superiority of white guys in Taiwan, as I think he’s hinting at when he says “sexual jealousy” . The acting like a scumbag part of it, I would attribute it also partly to the local girls having little reliable information about the male’s network and people going abroad and thinking they can do whatever they want a ll of a sudden (this part applies to all foreigner’s obviously, not just white’s).
Repeating a) and b), none of what I just said justifies getting beat up like Feli’s friend. Again, I condemn it, and if I had information on who it was, I would report it to the cops, if it would do anything.
As a side note regarding the apartment. I suggested that if the others were all Taiwanese-Somethings (American/Canadian/etc) whatever, you can’t automatically chalk it up to discrimination because of the gazillion family relationship/friend of a friend/friend of the family ties that are possible. It absolutely isn’t proof just to say the ones that stayed were Taiwanse-Somethings but the whites got kicked out. That was the information I had when I made that argument before you then, IIRC, said one of the ones that got to stay was not.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
I think maybe the key misunderstanding is that you are using a different definition of racism than many of us are. Here is dictionary.com’s definition of racism:
It seems that you are restricting your definition to #1, whereas nearly everything I’ve brought up has been a case of #2. Actually, in my experience, people who really feel they are superior don’t often show overt signs of racism. I’ve found it much worse from those with a “middle-ority” complex. It often manifests in an “I may be a poor, ugly or unsucessful, but at least I’m better than those <insert racial stereotype> bastards.” kind of attitude.
P.S. At least one Korean-Canadian got to stay in the complex. It was defitely a skin-color thing.