I know the title is provocative.
But this is a quote. A quote from a very interesting article from Reuters… An article that shows what “racism” means in Asia (something normal and shared by… many countries). And the result of an appalling education system and a vicious propaganda machine…
Western people will be shocked. But again, these kind of feelings are common. Much more than you could imagine.
(thanks to AbsolutelyBangkok to have pointed out this article)
BANGKOK, May 14 (Reuters) – It takes more than a natural disaster to wipe out centuries of bad blood.
In Thailand, where school books and movies overflow with tales of atrocities and brutality by invading Burmese armies, the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis has left some people thinking Myanmar only got what it deserved.
[click here to continue reading]
Those kinds of comments are very much in a small minority, though you could say the same about racist remarks in other countries.In this case I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘racism’ because for me the comments were probably made out of nationalist sentiment rather than racist ideology as such. Unless of course you also consider the belief in national superiority a form of racism.
… You know very well what I’m speaking about (if your thai).
Nationalism can be part of racism, sure. A tool. “social classes” as well.
It’s a whole.
Eventually, it’s the same mechanism : exclusion.
Everebody know :
-that for the elite in Bangkok the people living upcountry, are living in the jungle
-that north easterners are monkeys and low class because of their dark skin
-that thai people despise and hate Burmese because of “history”, but are afraid of them because they are so “tall”.
-that thai people see lao and cambodian people as truely “inferiors”, mixing of children and monkeys
-that cambodian people hate thais for being superiors
-that vietnamese people think that cambodians are savages
-that cambodian people hate vietnamese (again for “history”)
-that japanese hate chinese and despises any other foreigners
etc. We could continue long time like that. As I said, racism -with all its forms- is a common idea in Asia.
Racism fueled by lack of basic history understanding, by gvt’s propaganda, by poor education.
You don’t like if if you’re a westerner, you think it’s shocking or not PC, or you don’t believe it, you think I make generalizations fair enough.
But I stand by my point.
Actually, the most important reason why central thai people think that north easterners and southerners are lower class is because they don’t speak thai properly. You know, their accents are fucking ugly, especially the sountherners. they speak like they have short tongues and makes thai, which is a beautiful language sound ugly