Yes, racism exists here. Its existence shouldn’t be up for discussion.
The best place to have a discussion about Taiwan’s racial tensions, a taxicab does not make. Like disagreeing with a waitress or your scissor-wielding hairdresser, it takes a severe lack of common sense to have an argument with anyone who’s holding your life in his or her hands. Moreover, having discussions in enclosed spaces – like a small moving vehicle – means there’s absolutely no way to escape from the argument.
Try as I might to fend off the usual questions about my racial identity during a cab ride one night, the driver and I eventually got to the big question. He turned around to look at me as we waited at a red light and asked, “Do you think Taiwan is a racist country?”
My initial response was to say yes, of course it is. Not because Taiwan is extraordinarily reprehensible in regards to racism, but because I believe no country is immune from discriminatory policies and traditions. He was ready with his own response though. “Taiwan isn’t racist because it doesn’t compare to the racism in America.”
Sigh. I was in no mood to answer that poorly constructed argument and engage in a subsequently heated discussion that I couldn’t get out of until I reached my at-this-point-still-too-far destination.
But here in the safety and relative tranquility of my apartment, I’ve decided to discuss and perhaps clarify some aspects, although definitely not all, of the dynamics of race relations on the island.
All good explanations include some definitions, so I’ll begin with an important one: what is racism? Discussions revolving around race can often get confusing because we conflate terms like racism, prejudice and discrimination. Unlike the latter two terms that suggest a particular behavior, racism is both prejudice and power. Racism is a system through which certain racial groups maintain power over others. This is why in white-dominated societies such as the United States, minorities are not “racist” since they don’t have the institutional power to make white lives more difficult.
Newcomers may initially believe Taiwan to be a pretty homogeneous country where racist tensions are dialed back because well…Taiwan isn’t exactly populated by that many races.
But interaction between the Taiwanese aborigines—Pacific Islanders who’ve called the island their home for thousands of years—and the Hakka and Han-Chinese who populated the island in several immigration waves, has created an amalgamation of cultures and physical descriptors that has still allowed some semblance of a hierarchy to exist, even if it’s not along as stark racial lines as in the United States.
Despite improved employment rates over the past year, Taiwanese aborigines have for generations been treated as second-class citizens, limiting their social mobility. Chinese expansion made aborigines subject to heavy-handed, sometimes brutal, assimilation practices. In the 1940s, the Chinese Nationalist Party took away centuries-old aboriginal ancestral lands – the aborigine communities’ main source of income. Now, they’re still more likely to be unemployed, more likely to hold lower-paid or riskier jobs, and less likely to graduate from college. According to the Council of Aboriginal Affairs at the Executive Yuan, the average wage of aboriginal workers in 2014 was 75 percent of the average wage earned by a Han-Chinese counterpart. And, in a move that was outright exploitative, the Taiwanese government built a nuclear waste facility on an island off the coast of Taiwan populated by the Tao people without the local people’s explicit approval. This demonstration of the Taiwanese government’s power over the indigenous people is a clear example of racism, whether locals like the taxi driver like it or not.
There’s also a veneer of prejudice, or flagrant lack of concern for anyone not ethnically Han-Chinese, that coats discussions about immigrants from Southeast Asia. This discrimination stems from classism in the region, straight up pure prejudice against people of a different skin tone, or (most likely) both. I say likely both because class and race are tied so closely together. Darker skinned people are generally associated with menial labor and seen as inherently different in intellect, skill or quality, making them worthy of a lower-class status. But no matter the root of the prejudice, the result is still the same. Taiwan’s social and political structure is built in the immigrants’ disfavor. Policymakers in the past have threatened to eliminate the minimum wage for migrant workers and ban foreign workers from residing in certain areas. The issue here is not their legal status —because many of them can legally work in Taiwan—but pure discrimination.
In both cases, the minorities and the outsiders have been effectively silenced. In the case of the Taiwanese aborigines, decades under martial law quashed both their use of their own languages as well as their political voice. With aborigines considered largely assimilated and disenfranchised to the point of near-irrelevance, and their culture mainly used to supplement Taiwan’s tourism industry, it may be easy to forget that minorities in Taiwan don’t have access to the same resources as everyone else.
The crux of all identity issues in Asia is that the discriminated and the discriminators may not belong to obviously different racial groups (or belong to different racial groups at all!). So, yes, the cabbie is right in that the issue we’re seeing here is nothing like racism in the United States (unless we’re talking about America’s prejudice against southern and eastern European immigrants in the late 1800s). It’s just something else that’s also pretty ugly.
In fact, Taiwan’s discrimination issues may be even harder to address, precisely because they’re easy to ignore. The history of Asia – chock full of migration stories – makes any given single Asian identity very difficult to define. The lines delineating which people belong to which groups in Taiwan are less stark than black, white, brown and yellow. It’s safe to say nearly all locals would say they’re not racist and would denounce the racial profiling of Black communities in America by mostly white, undertrained, trigger-happy police officers. But gross discrimination against Pacific Islanders by East Asians, or Asians by Asians within the country, in comparison, isn’t treated as seriously even when they’re based on the same racialized classist ideology that birthed America’s problems.
And the discrimination that goes on island-wide does have huge ramifications. Big ones.
As Taiwan becomes increasingly multicultural, tensions will mount in response to increased immigration from China, Southeast Asia and countries further to the west. And while some Taiwanese politicians look towards Singapore as a model economy, ironically Taiwan isn’t ready to adopt the liberal immigration policies that encouraged foreign workers to migrate to Singapore and create the multinational hub as we know it today. Taiwan has not been as open to the import of talent thus far.
However, Taiwan, as it navigates the extremely volatile position it’s been cornered in today on the international stage, has much to lose from imitating the xenophobic immigration policies of Japan or the affirmative action policies of Malaysia. To avoid this path, the Taiwanese government must begin tackling long-held prejudices. And to do that, the Taiwanese people need to acknowledge that racism and real discrimination do exist inside its own borders, in the hearts and minds of its people.
(Feature photo of PTS Drama Series “The Vietnamese Brides in Taiwan”)
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A fascinating piece and real food for thought. Thanks!
ha dummies, its an island, youre all foreigners there. typical insecure people needing to claim some pointless group to feel specialness. u cant even prove relation to the ancient residents who built now underwater 10,000yo remains like in yonaguni. recent “foreigners” in taiwan just need to walk around with cameras and show the world the way most programmed with pride/arrogance in their accident-of-birth in taiwan treat them or simply look at them. then it will be clear that taiwans discrimination problem is bigger and much more prevalent than even the US.
Ketagalan Media is such a wonderful discovery, in particular where it opens up interesting commentary to English and Chinese readers alike. As for the current article, allow me my 淺見寡聞:
I rather prefer a distinction between prejudice and discrimination wherein the former comprises an attitude, while the latter entails action or behavior. While I agree that issues of power are entailed in the notion of “racism,” social, educational and political considerations can also shape individual prejudice or societal discrimination. (Just think of all the –isms we have: some are ideological, some are not.) It’s not true that those who are the object of racism are somehow disqualified from holding racist notions themselves. Racism is where one does not accept the premise that there are universal human attributes (or latent potential to achieve them). Added to prejudice, and you have racial prejudice; add to discrimination, and you have racial discrimination. The latter is generally more difficult to manifest at a societal level precisely because those without power have limited means to exert limits on those with power. It would be exceedingly difficult for a community of black people, or Chinese, or Hmong to keep a white person off a bus in America; it would be relatively easy to exert pressure on a white person to choose another bar or another street to walk through.
Educated people in Taiwan are no doubt quite familiar with the historical injustices inflicted upon aboriginal people (indeed, at the hands of a string of outsiders stretching back centuries), even if they are not particularly motivated to address it at a systemic level. I would trace the root causes of post WWII inequalities to [Han Chinese] racially-construed notion of nationhood on which the ROC is formed, along with old-world notions of social hierarchy, which conveys from a Chinese legacy. (Of course, these are not uniquely Chinese.)
Taiwan is trapped in a backwards-looking existential crisis. As one who hopes Taiwan can achieve its [human] endowment to craft its own destiny (i.e., to look forwards) it needs to examine collectively what society deems is ethical, and proceed “downstream.” This means, quite fundamentally I think, to sever it’s political heritage from 三民主義 and the theoretical underpinnings of the R.O.C. constitution itself. Careful and thoughtful people—of which there are many—need to look at how the reality of Han Chinese power structures in Taiwan have historically refracted onto Taiwan’s social tapestry in ways that have resulted in the discriminations cited, and come with a blueprint for how they can be addressed through legal reconstruction and education. When I first came to Taiwan in 1980—a time when most [Han] Taiwanese, let alone foreigners, knew little about 原住民—I mused that what the country needed for its survival was to embrace multi-national diversity in a legal and societal sense. In short, to create something different from “China.” There is still scant allowance for that—through the institution of marriage, for instance, though demotic ideas of who is Taiwanese are still very much shaped by ethnicity (and not what color is your passport). But it will take substantial legal and educational machinery to set things in motion. Again, the issue harkens back to a conversation on what is ethical when examining the past and crafting the future. The existential challenges to Taiwan are even greater than in 1980, and the clock is ticking. In order to go anywhere, you first need a good compass, and a good engine. Fortunately, there are pockets of a strong and proud nativist movement, led by well-educated community leaders, who have been working positively to sow the seeds of success for aboriginal communities and build acceptance and empathy among Han Taiwanese. Also, the new legislature may indeed begin to grapple with institutional as well as subversive forms of discrimination that have accumulated over time.
“…minorities are not “racist” since they don’t have the institutional power to make white lives more difficult.”
What this charming young lady appears to be saying is that if people of one skin colour behave badly to people of other skin colours then it’s racism, but if people with those other skin colours behave in similar fashion then it’s not racism. Obviously this is not a double-standard because what is morally important is not individual conduct and the content of one’s character, but the colour of one’s skin.
So aye, well done pet. I’m sure Martin Luther King would approve.
The author performed the commendable (yet, unfortunately, all too rare) act of defining the key term before using it. Subsequent usage was consistent with the definition. The author never stated that prejudice or discrimination against the dominant ethnicity was less “morally important”, only that it was not – by the given definition – racism. In short, if the term “racism” is replaced by “ethnic persecution by the dominant ethnicity against others”, it obviously is meaningless to talk about “racism” against the dominant ethnicity.
Personally, I prefer to avoid the term “racism” because, as with the term “love”, everyone has their own emotionally-charged definition, and attempts to redefine it tend to fail.
“The author performed the commendable (yet, unfortunately, all too rare) act of defining the key term before using it.”
Redefining it more like. Racism is, as the name suggests, the disposition of taking the colour of a person’s skin as the criterion by which to prejudge their character and behaviour. People like Calin Brown attempt to redefine racism in order to excuse racist behaviour when it comes from racial minorities. That is why she wrote:
“…minorities are not “racist” since they don’t have the institutional power to make white lives more difficult.”
She says that in order to provide a double standard to excuse racist behaviour against white people (or should that be “yellow” people in this case?). And although it may be true that the minorities do not always directly control the institutional mechanisms that can make white/yellow lives “more difficult”, those mechanisms nonetheless exist. To falsely accuse someone of racism can wreck their professional lives by getting them sacked, and it can wreck their personal lives by ruining their social standing and reputation. And to make this possible on the basis of a verbal sleight of hand redefinition is not “commendable”. It is despicable and she should be publicly criticized on this point.
It seems that the claim is that:
1. “Racism” is defined as a disposition that results in prejudging by skin color.
2. The article redefines “racism”.
3. The motivation is to excuse skin color prejudice by minorities against the dominant group, and therefore the article should be criticized.
And that leads to the response:
1. There is no single standard definition of “racism”. The Wikipedia entry for “racism” discusses quite a few.
2. Yes, the article redefines “racism”. There is no standard, so why not? It is helpful that the redefinition is given up front, so you know how the term is being used – and can openly debate the suitability of that definition, as is being done here. Usually, “racism” debates lack any definition – with some using the term to refer to beliefs, others referring to social behaviors, and still others referring to institutions of power.
But the article leaves the critical term “race” undefined. Instead, the article seems to take the historical US/UK color-coded racial scheme as the standard, and applies it to Taiwan and Asia, as evidenced by these statements:
– “The lines delineating which people belong to which groups in Taiwan are less stark than black, white, brown and yellow”
– “Taiwan isn’t exactly populated by that many races”
– “The crux of all identity issues in Asia is that the discriminated and the discriminators may not belong to obviously different racial groups (or belong to different racial groups at all!)”
“Race” is a social construct, with no independent existence. So viewing a society in terms of another society’s construct of “race” seems questionable at best. Historically, in Taiwan “race” was largely constructed via colonization – first by imperialist Japan, then by Nationalist China. While the colonizers asserted their racial superiority, they also argued racial affinity, to ease assimilation of the colonized (i.e., you are inferior, but our affinity makes it possible for you to reach my level – but only with total submission to my domination), and to present themselves as an alternative to European imperialism. The legacy of these hierarchies, and the tension between the claims of racial superiority and racial affinity, are more relevant in discussing Taiwan’s ethnic and cultural power relations (e.g., Taiwan’s relationship with its Southeast Asian immigrants, or the “waishengren” vs “benshengren” relationship) than the color-coded scheme, and reveals the basis of “race” as a tool to serve the administrative and control needs of power.
3. After rereading the article, I could not find anything to suggest an intent to excuse prejudice.
“1. There is no single standard definition of “racism”. The Wikipedia entry for “racism” discusses quite a few.”
I’m sure it does, but “definitions” are not a matter of arbitrary choice. You can define “up” as “down” and “black” as “white” if you want, but that doesn’t make it so. Whilst various people may offer various “definitions” of racism (or any other concept), that doesn’t mean they are any good, or that they are all equally valid. In particular, this is because those other definitions are context-bound. A definition is an abstraction of our context-bound experiences of a given concept. Abstraction is the aim of definition, and abstraction helps to “democratize” knowledge because abstractions are not tied to any one particular context and can be applied by anyone in common use to a variety of different circumstances, agents and objects. And that common use of “racism” – abstracted into definition – is race as a criterion for prejudging others.
Calin Brown’s “definition” of racism precludes that. Her “definition” is limited to denoting very particular who-whom patterns of institutional behaviour and consequences. Her “definition” is not a linguistic tool of knowledge and understanding, it is a linguistic tool of political discourse and blame attribution.
“Usually, “racism” debates lack any definition – with some using the term to refer to beliefs, others referring to social behaviors, and still others referring to institutions of power.”
Try this… Debates about “blue” lack any definition – with some using the term to refer to items of clothing made from denim, others referring to the appearance of the sky or of the ocean, and still others referring to certain wavelengths of light…
“…”Race” is a social construct, with no independent existence.”
Nonsense. One could just as easily claim that all social constructs are themselves social constructs, with no independent existence; both an infinite regress, and an example of the stolen concept fallacy. Race is actually just an abstraction from skin colour and correlated physical characteristics. That it has no moral importance of itself is a separate point.
When the Japanese colonizers came to Taiwan they did not “construct race”, what they did was they recognized that the people in Taiwan were somewhat similar but somewhat different to them in skin colour and perhaps other racial characteristics, and then they took over the country and said “because”. The political dynamic was one thing, the racial characteristics were another (another abstraction), the problematic bit was the “because” linking the two.
Social constructionism is not epistemology, it is just a field of professional confusion that happens to be useful to the kind of people who depend on having “useful idiots” at their disposal.
“Historically, in Taiwan “race” was largely constructed via colonization – first by imperialist Japan, then by Nationalist China.”
My wording was unintentionally ambiguous: the intended meaning was:
“…via colonization – *colonized* first by imperialist Japan, then by Nationalist China”. Both colonizer and colonized can develop race hierarchies.
This dialogue seems to be proceeding along non-intersecting tracks, so this is where I get off.
Lots of half-truths here.
“In the 1940s, the Chinese Nationalist Party took away centuries-old
aboriginal ancestral lands – the aborigine communities’ main source of
income.”
Sorry, but the Japanese did that. The Nationalists unfortunately decided to continue the policy.
“In the case of the Taiwanese aborigines, decades under martial law
quashed both their use of their own languages as well as their political
voice.”
The same happened to the Hakka, which are Han Chinese too last time I checked.
“Despite improved employment rates over the past year, Taiwanese
aborigines have for generations been treated as second-class citizens,
limiting their social mobility.”
Hokkien and Hakka have been too.
—
Things aren’t so black and white.
Yes totally agreed. I have witnessed and been on the receiving end of racist remarks (as has my wife) towards white, black, and South East Asians. I knew one Indonesian who was a maid here in Taiwan that was verbally and physically abused. When she reported it her employers wife spotted the phone call on the bill and had her deported.