backpedalwhoa (+ racismboo)

So, after my last post, in which I whine and whinge about how unfair life is for poor me, I feel that I must balance out the perspective a bit, as I so often fail to do. Because, to be fair, many of my relatives are purely wonderful, kind-hearted people. Many of them realize that I am different, have grown up in a different culture, and make the effort to understand me. And that is something I truly appreciate, because, really, we are not really all that different, all of us.

I can also understand that they are a conservative clan, having grown up in the circumstances they did, and holding many traditional views about gender roles, respect, education, and filial piety. I am, I know, not as patient as I could be in accepting these cultural differences between me and my relatives.

As of now, all I can do is continue communicating with them, having these talks where we work to understand each other, as I have often had with my aunts regarding dating and race. They are often bemused, or perhaps amused, by my "equal opportunity dating" stance. And while I am not trying to excuse the often blatant racism that exists in Taiwan, I can understand that any homogeneous, conservative society is inevitably going to have difficulty accepting "outsiders" in their midst. I am hoping, through these conversations with my relatives, to help widen that acceptance margin.

And not only are the outsiders of Taiwan many (i.e. all non-East-Asians), but they are also ranked on a graded scale of acceptability. I would say Caucasians are probably at the top, most likely to be accepted (or at least pardoned) by locals here. And, here is no big surprise, dark-skinned and black people rank very low on this scale.

I walk to and from ShiDa every day and see the conglomeration of all these different races, coming for language exchange opportunities, and I love seeing that kind of diversity. But, then I wonder, once they leave the confines of the university and surrounding district, what must it be like to be so starkly different - physically, culturally, and even mentally?

Well, maybe Kevin is right and the current generation is not willing to blindly follow their predecessors into becoming drones of education, and I hope that also means they are more open-minded. I am not seeing that, but of course any change will take time. I am only going to be here for three months, after all.

In all of this, I cannot help but be reminded that, half a globe away back at campus, I have a friend, a black male, who is interested in Chinese and economics and politics, and has this crazy vision of rallying the Asian-Americans to fight for their rights and against racial discrimination in the United States.

Right, well, I think I've babbled on long enough. I have a trip to Thailand to prepare for, and so I will be offline for the next 5 days. What a refreshing change of pace.