Remarkable blue sunny
day here today. What pollution? Recklessly bragging about it on the phone to
Mountain View, California. I’m in a cab
riding into the city. Mingus and Roach
as old friends, artfully backing Ellington on “Very Special” in my ears. This gentleman’s suspension system is on its
last legs. This is clear, from here in
the back seat. Every speed bump’s a jaw
rattling drama. Here comes another. Ka-thud.
It feels like the axle only has three or four more bumps like that left
in it.
Wound up being shuffled in to a single malt scotch tasting
last night, meeting someone who knew someone.
No complaints. I confess that I
hadn’t realized that the twelve-year and the fifteen-year preparations were
completely different, not simply the years it took to prepare them. Always good to learn things like that out
loud and in public. Standing, sipping sniffing
for citrus, I met a fascinating young man from Nigeria. It was all I could do not to rattle off every
funky Afrobeat performer I loved from the 70’s to secure his impression. “Sorry, I’m not familiar with him,
either.” Not surprisingly my fascination
for that time and those people was as arcane to him as it would be to the next
person of his generation from anywhere in the world. Fela Ransome Kuti though, the national
treasure, everyone seems to know.
We ended up talking about the great Nigerian novelist Chinua
Achebe. Regular readers know I recently
read “Things Fall Apart” to my older daughter.”
I hadn’t realized that Achebe was an Igbo. And that all the characters and customs in
the great novel, like Okonkwo and his yam planting, were therefore Igbo as well. My scotch mate was Yoruban. He mentioned that he was also a fan of
Achebe, but that the author had released a book, right before his death that
was inflammatory. My new friend said
that he wished this book had not been published as it set things back between
the Igbo, the Yoruban and other tribes as well.
The Igbo’s it seems, will not let the Biafran war lie. He wondered if perhaps Achebe hadn’t waited
till the time right before his death to do this, as he’d never touched on it
before hand during his life.
Discussing I realized how little I really know about the
Biafran war that tore Nigeria apart in the late 60’s. (As always, please do suggest below if you
know of a recommended and balanced history.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War Similarly, I wanted to simplify the vastness of Nigeria in my
mind as four main tribes. Hausa and
Fulani up north, Muslim. Meanwhile in the south the Yoruba extending over
towards Benin and the Igbo down in the Niger River Delta, both Christian and animist. Repeatedly though I made mistakes, for
example assuming the president, Goodluck Jonathan, was an Igbo, based on where
I thought he was from, or what tribe the people of Port Harcourt were. My friend was very patient but firm in
correcting me, repeatedly.
Meanwhile, back in the cab here, we’ve picked up speed. We have a clear shot on the expressway in to the city, which is nice but at 85 KPH this car is shaking like an amusement park ride. The back is absolutely not stable. I wonder how long before it just falls off.
Meanwhile, back in the cab here, we’ve picked up speed. We have a clear shot on the expressway in to the city, which is nice but at 85 KPH this car is shaking like an amusement park ride. The back is absolutely not stable. I wonder how long before it just falls off.
From Nigeria we moved to another perennial topic of mine,
the schism between China, Japan and Korea.
I called it racism. He wasn’t
sure. I appreciated the challenge. For me, if you hate a group of people, who
are ethnically other, regardless off what perceived historical offence is
supposed to justify this hatred, that is racism. Clearly it could also be defined easily
enough as prejudice. Before I meet
someone I have judgments about who they are.
But racism to my mind is substantively and qualitatively different. Substantively there is a pseudo scientific
perception that someone is of different blood.
Though precisely what defines the separation between this and that
ethnicity is subject to debate, it is different from the hatred of say another
gender or someone on account of his or her sexual preference. Qualitatively, racism involves hatred, to my
ears. I think this describes the traditional
racist hatred between black and white in the U.S. as well as it does describe
the hatred generally defaulted to, between, say, Chinese and Japanese. For my drinking buddy, the hatred between
Japan and China was something more narrow and regional, like the hatred between
Igbo and Yoruba, fueled by a specific, local context.
Racism and the fight against it has its own specific
context. It may be that the term is all too
wrapped up in the experience of black and white people to really be usefully employed
elsewhere. But what I like about it is
that the word unquestionably connotes something vile, wrong headed, ignorant
and repugnant. It also connotes
something that can be triumphed against.
In that way, it is, I think, an apt term to describe the disease in our
neighborhood. I believe that racist
hatred in North Asia is virulent, stroked willfully, in part by historical
wrongs, and largely unquestioned.
This is precisely the default that held in America before,
say, the civil rights movement. Speaking
about a black president during nearly any decade of the previous century would
have been solely in ironic terms.
America, warts and all, has made extraordinary progress against the
disease of racism. During the same
period of modernizing, China and Japan, have made almost none. So unless
someone wants to point out precisely why the term is improper to use in this
context, I think what we all put up with here is a racist default. By and large Japanese people have a racist
hatred for Chinese people and Chinese people have a racist hatred for Japanese
people. Pure 深恶痛绝[1] Korean
people also have a racist hatred toward Japanese people, who largely share the
conceit toward Koreans. And Koreans if
not imbued with a hatred for Chinese have a pungent disdain for the Chinese and
which is also shared the other way.
Americans, myself included, have misperceptions about each of
these nationalities. And it is not to
say that there isn’t racism as well, that works between Americans and each of
those countries. But I think most would
agree that these exchanges are nuanced blending of love and hate, benign
fascination and prejudiced disdain. But
we’d be hard pressed to describe the overriding sentiment between, say Japan
and China in that fashion. And whether
I’m in a cab in Beijing or a bar in Tokyo I try to call it out when I hear
it. “We hate the Japanese.” “Ahh, so you’re a racist.” You can’t really cure an ailment until you
properly identify it.
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