Imagine if Taiwan did this to their foreigners—
stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,286 … 94,00.html
Fucking racists…
Looks like NZ is adopting some of the USA ways. 
Oh, cry me a river. People have been doing this to gay people for ages.
Why do you say the USA? 
I guess you’ve never been to Europe, the UK (never heard of “Paki-bashing” and maybe you know nothing about what happens in Taiwan. Remember the Westerner down in Tainan several years ago who was attacked by several local guys and had his arm cut off? How about the just arrived Scandinavian engineer who had his skull smashed in (Taichung or Tainan)? Or the rapist over a Shih-Ta who specialized in western girls? He raped girls there over a period of about 9 months and the papers never published published the news nor did the university issue warnings. Hell, about 14 years ago I was walking home on nite with my wife in Hsichih {near the junior high) when a group started throwing baseball sized rocks at us. We had to run and I was hit in the head.
[quote=“Flicka”]Oh, cry me a river. People have been doing this to gay people for ages.[/quote]Which I would have thought is a good reason for to sympathise instead of saying “so ?”
By that logic, why should anyone stop tormentming gays because “they’ve been doing it to blacks/asians for ages ?”
Bassman has made a few posts on this very topic, I’m sure he will have something to say about this one.
We guess we are lucky that we don’t have this sort of violence in Taiwan. If we did, cornelldesi, would you consider it racism ? But on the other hand, the government does give them more rights than foreigners have here, but it’s the people who are racist.
And you know what? Under normal circumstances, you can’t tell a gay person is gay just by looking at them when they’re walking along the street, minding their own business. I don’t believe gay people should have to hide who they are, it’s just they do actually have the option if they wanted/needed to. But if you’re black, Asian, whatever, you never have any choice in the matter. It’s so nice to see someone develop empathy from their bad experiences… or not.
If Westerners were suddenly targets for unprovoked attack in Taiwan, I’d call that racism too.
Holy smokes, when was this? I remember the Mitac tech writer who got stabbed with a fruit knife because he had the nerve to ask his neighbors not to make so much noise at 3 in the morning. And the chick that stabbed him was so drunk, she just couldn’t remember anything.
Do you see this Fluffy? My point was that this happens everywhere. Why pick on the States? Just because it is reported that Asians are being attacked in NZ doesn’t mean that other groups aren’t, and not necessarily in lesser numbers.
Are you sure you weren’t in Lugang?
That is my country and my city. Damn sure if I saw one of those racist morons acting up I’d be doing something. Probably getting beaten too, but I’d do something.
It makes me think twice about moving back but I will be anyway. Mess with my boy and it’ll be the last thing you remember before hospital though.
Sickening, sickening, sickening.
It’s those racist pricks at New Zealand first (political party) stirring up a hornets nest of hatred. Well, they’re part of it anyway.
Makes my blood boil. 90% of the people I consider real friends in Christchurch are Asian and I would sure hate to see them feel hatred of this nature.
Oh yeah, Taiwan ain’t perfect either.
I guess this news wasn’t recent with the N.Zealanders… and its not only Asians but everything NON-White
Reminds me of a Canadian teacher I worked with a few months back. Boy was he was the poster child for racism and bigotry. Every single day it was Paki’s this, and Paki’s that. Beware of the Paki’s. Paki’s are evil. Blah blah blah. Man, if I didn’t have such a long fuse I would have probably taken him out a week or two in.
What “normal circumstances” are you talking about? If everyone was in some sort of line-up? In the real world, of COURSE you can tell if a person is gay or not - they’re usually the ones stumbling out of the bars on Oxford Street - how else do you think Spider and his mates up from Perth know who to throw bottles at?
All violence against any minority is bad, and issues of “having an option” to hide (you mean, try and look straight or not frequent any known gay venues?) are surely as irrelevant to anti-gay violence as they are to racially-motivated violence.
If somebody doesn’t choose to exercise their “option to hide” when they need it, is violence against them more acceptable? I’ve read lots of your posts and I know you don’t mean that, but I really have to fault your logic here.
What “normal circumstances” are you talking about? If everyone was in some sort of line-up? [/quote]
What I meant was - say you’re waiting alone, at a bus stop, in the middle of the city, or buying lunch - a normal part of your day. If you’re gay, who knows? It’s unlikely that someone’s just going to walk past and give you abuse based on your sexuality. You can never, ever hide your race (short of wearing a disguise etc. etc.) as it is obvious on sight for anyone who might care to comment or act on it.
But you are completely correct in that it is irrelevant and it’s ridiculous to be ‘competitive’ about it - I was just pissed at the lack of empathy and wanted to point out that there was a difference, no matter how marginal it might be.
I remember watching a Mardi Gras parade where they interviewed a young woman who lightheartedly said she had all ‘three strikes’ against her - she was female, Asian, and a lesbian 
By foreigners you mean those who were not born in the country they reside in? Like Lien Chan and Ma Ying-jeou for example?
I have a clipping (no pun) of the US guy here in Taipei that was walking home one night near or in New Park and was accosted by several guys who CUT OFF HIS DICK! No lie.
You see, that’d be just TWO strikes with your logic and not an amusing anecdote at all! 
I know what you mean, it’s silly to be competitive. I guess I just don’t consider hiding as an option, regardless of whether I may or may not have the choice to do it. There’s Something About Marys… 
You see, that’d be just TWO strikes with your logic and not an amusing anecdote at all! [/quote]
No, no, even using my logic it’d still be at least two and three-quarters…
It’d be an interesting world if one couldn’t hide one’s sexuality - people would probably have come to terms with the whole gay/bi issue a whole lot better by now if they could literally see where people were along the spectrum - it’d be just an unavoidable part of life Well, either that, or the factions would have split off and be waging war against each other It’s the fact that it can be hidden that makes some people blind to the realities of just how many people are if not gay, at least not completely straight as they’d like to think.
I think that one of the best ways to defeat racism is through education. Young people need to be taught that hating others simply because they are different than themselves is wrong and, actually, quite evil.
Schools need to have classes in which kids get a chance to learn that people the world over, despite how they look, all basically want the same thing: to live a peaceful life.
While it may be too late to change the racist views of some older folks, I really believe the mistaken views held by the young can be changed.
Also, the punishment for anyone who engages in such horrible behaviour should be very severe.
It would, but it’s only because lots of gay and lesbian children/teenagers are forced to LEARN to hide their sexuality/difference to avoid being singled out, that as adults they become less inclined to do so. Of course, blacks/asians cannot do this, and I have to admit to being really PLEASED when two Muslim children joined my predominantly white junior school as it took the heat off me once in a while - I still feel bad about that now, poor Osman and Anna Dervish 
Of course, by the time we got to senior school, the blacks and south asians were fighting and so the white boys took refuge in homophobia - oh there’ll always be an England!
Of course, many gay guys just CAN’T hide their sexuality, even if they wanted to - indeed I was called a poof long before I knew what one was, and even today, my sexuality and for many gay guys I know is OBVIOUS by the way we interact with people - it’s nothing to do with flambouyance or wearing leather or drag - we listen to women and check out men - straight guys just don’t do that!
But lots of gay guys can and DO hide their sexuality and that’s their own equally valid choice. Unfortunately, if a group of men has followed you from a gay bar with the intent to bash you, it’s a bit late to start hacking up phelgm and walking like John Wayne.
[quote=“daasgrrl”]You can never, ever hide your race (short of wearing a disguise etc. etc.) as it is obvious on sight for anyone who might care to comment or act on it.
[/quote]
Actually, not quite. There’s a long tradition in African-American culture of “passing” for white - obviously this was done by lighter-skinned blacks, often claiming some sort of ‘Mexican’ blood to explain their brownish complexions. Joe Christmas in Faulkner’s Light in August is perhaps the most famous literary example. The number who pulled it off long enough to successfully integrate into the white community, for obvious reasons, can never be known.
If I were a mathematician I’d research for a graph plotting the ‘breaking point’ for ethnic minorities within a largely homogenous population. That is to say, when the numbers are small enough to be neglible - such as non-East Asians in Taiwan - we are novelties and thus treated as such. We aren’t in any serious way a threat to the majority, and most of the racism we’re on the receiving end is the result of naive ignorance, not genuine nasty hostility. I mean, 95% of the time I hear racism from Taiwanese about us waiguoren, it’s pretty harmless, goofy stupidity, the result of them never having encountering foreigners before and looking at us like aliens from another planet. Hatred? There aren’t enough of us waiguoren to be hated. If anything, we get special treatment for being such a ‘celebrity’, since they don’t see many whiteys/blackies down this way.
I’ve read that back in the old days, quite a few black intellectuals left America for Europe, for the same reason. People like Richard Wright and Josephine Baker talked about how they were freer in France than back in their home country. Because in Europe, back in those old days, probably 90% of the people never saw a black person in their entire life - and so their status as a novelty object overwhelmed any feelings of potential racial hatred.
But bring in enough ‘outsiders’ and their number builds up to the point where they’re no longer an obscure novelty, and you start to get the grumbles from the natives. Who knows where exactly this ‘breaking point’ is - it could be as low as 1 or 2%. Homo sapiens is a tribal animal, and the less evolved of us instinctively feel threatened by ‘them’ when ‘they’ start to rival in on ‘our’ turf.
And that’s why there’s more xenophobia in Korea, Thailand, and Japan than in Taiwan (way more foreigners). Why there’s always been more white-black tensions in the South than the other parts of North America (it’s a 50/50 racial split in most of the South). Why an Asian-American in Iowa would probably have an easier time than an Asian-American in San Francisco.