Those books are absolutely hilarious…the blurb repeats all the reactionary anti-semetic talking points about Jews…as positives! You too can be the shrewd, parsimonious moneylender…just buy this book to unlock the ancient wisdom of the sons of Abraham who became the shadowy overlords of the western world!
We Taiwanese has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to the racial sensitivity thing. Anti-semitism is probably one of the least serious aspects of it. The way non-white foreigners are treated here is disgraceful. I have a cookbook called “Teaching Maria how to cook” which is supposed to be a guide to help Taiwanese women to teach their filipina maids to cook chinese food. It seemed like the closest thing to the cookbook for absolute beginners that I wanted. Upon closer inspection, the illustrations and photographs definitely seemed evocative of minstrel imagery. So not OK.
Racism in part stems from being unfamiliar with the other race.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the USA is 2 or 3 percent Jewish.
I haven’t seen a single synogogue or yarmulke here.
There are a limited number of whites in Taiwan on a given day,
and a very small percentage of them are Jewish. I would be
surprised if there were more than 1000 Jews in Taiwan including tourists.
Ditto for blacks. And in both cases, the lack of experience
(intercourse?) leads to ignorance, fear, stereotypes, xenophobia,
and racism. They just don’t know from Jewish here!
Not all Jews in China are white. Some are Chinese. I forget the name for them in Chinese, but they’ve been a community in China since at least the Yuan Dynasty.
He says there are about 500 jews in PRC, and
about 2000 in Asia. Otherwise though I believe
Jewish is matrilineal. So other than Semitic migrants
to the PRC, I don’t see how Jews would come to
Taiwan except via Europe or Asia, to teach English…
Matrilineal is clear cut, as they say:
Momma’s baby…
Poppa’s… maybe.
How many bai ren are there in Taiwan on a given day?
[quote=“robi666”]not really an excuse,
but history is a possible explanation for anti semitismus[/quote]
Huh? Are you suggesting that some Taiwanese are prejudiced against Jews, because of a history of Jews mistreating Taiwanese? Can you please explain. :s
of course not
Prejudice against Jews origin before Taiwan became independent.
China like many countries took Jewish refugees from Germany. Most of them were based in Shanghai. And one refugee became quite wealthy by selling opium. He became the biggest drug lord for that time.
The rest of my thought should be very obvious. Chinese people usually study their history very well. And it is always easy to doom a minority.
Not trying to argue with you robi666, but I still don’t understand. It’s been my experience that Chinese – ok, Taiwanese anyway – know very little about any history other than that of ancient China. So there was purportedly one wealthy jew in Shanghai who got rich selling opium and you believe there’s widespread Chinese, or Taiwanese, prejudice against Jews based on rumors of that one man?
I believe the ignorance explanation is much more plausible. Chinese/Taiwanese generally lack experience with Jews, blacks, italians, etc., so they find them exotic and buy into whatever stereotypes they’ve seen on TV or heard in jokes or from ignorant teachers.
In my experience Chinese are very aware about their history, in China maybe more than Taiwan. But of course ignorance and stereotypes are a always an explanation, but they don’t explain their origin.
I don’t know where it comes from, but I was saddened to hear some second-hand reports of anti-Semitism the other day. Now that I think about it, it’s the second time I’ve heard such comments in eleven years. Not hard-core hate, but rather comments like like “Jews control the world’s money”, and general stereotypes like “Jews love fighting and war”, and questions like “Why are the Jews always killing innocent Palestinians?” Clearly, the latter two are based on the Middle East conflicts, and I personally am dissatisfied with many Israeli policies and abuses, but (without digressing into the complexity of that conflict) when these get turned into comments about Jews everywhere, that’s ignorant, and ugly, as would be blaming ‘whites’ or ‘Christians’ because of the US war in Iraq.
Fascism does not equal anti-Semitism. Read your history books. Mussolini was not an anti-Semite like Hitler. Fascism and Nazism were two different movements. Gawd, some people are so ignorant.
I really think that the way your boss and other coworkers talk is because they spent time in the US. There’s very very little, if any at all, anti-semitism in Taiwan.
I’ve never heard any references to Jewish people here.
That’s because there are very few, so most Taiwanese won’t even have an opinion about them. Much less refer to someone as a “jew”.
If you actually asked a normal Taiwanese person about their opinion of Jewish people, the answer you would get would probably be, “they are frugal and good with money.”
There’s really no anti-semitism in Taiwan, since like someone else said, Taiwanese can’t really tell one waiguoren from another.
Your boss probably had a friend/colleague during his stay in the US who referred to people as jews a lot. Maybe he doesn’t realise it’s offensive. And probably your other colleagues picked it up from him and began calling people jews too.
Could be, but the two people I know of who spouted stereotypes had never spent time in the US and didn’t know a single Jewish person. It was ignorant BS, pure and simple.
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