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Comment by runawaybottle | Hacker News Reader

Bro, Asian on Asian racism is like way higher than western racism towards that region.

I’m almost positive Koreans think they are better than Chinese, and the Chinese think they are better than Koreans, and they both low key hate Japan’s uppityness (Of course the Japanese consider them ‘less than’, we can certainly throw in some historical advantage taking to add flame to this). This is like a age old tale in almost any region (think Pakistan/India/Bangladesh).

So ya, I can bet you there’s a level of passive aggressive racism to this day, like everywhere else on planet earth.

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As Korean, yes there’s plenty of racism of Asians vs Asians. My aunts in Korea were terrified of Chinese people when they were kids because there were always rumors of them kidnapping kids etc.

There’s a lot of anger across Asia for Mainland Chinese these days. Practically all countries look down on Mainland Chinese, even those in Hong Kong does too. They think Mainland Chinese are dirty and loud and obnoxious because as tourists they are very obnoxious.

Koreans have general hate towards Japanese because of the war, but prefer Japanese to Chinese and all other Asians are looked down on, like Vietnamese, Philippines, etc.

My (Chinese) stepmother told me to be careful about dating/marrying Korean girls because “they get a lot of plastic surgery and your kids will be ugly”.

Definitely some ingrained racism between all these different Asian ethnic groups.

> “they get a lot of plastic surgery and your kids will be ugly”

This practice has successfully crossed from Korea to China. :/

I agree that there are unfortunately too much hate among different East Asians, but it doesn't seem relevant here.

I mean, if you think Koreans' fear of MSG is somehow related to our prejudice against Chinese/Japanese cuisine, then clearly you haven't seen many Korean dishes.

I think that just reinforces the point. If your culture eats tons of food that’s packed to the brim with glutamate but you’re vocal about the MSG in Chinese food… what should the takeaway be?

I guess I wasn't explicit enough, Koreans aren't vocal about MSG in Chinese food - we are vocal about MSG in our own food !!!

(But of course, only when it's added as factory-made "chemical" - if it's from dried anchovies and seaweed, that's natural, so of course that's totally OK, either in Korean, Chinese, or any other cuisine.)

What kind of (racist) actions are taken in the east due to this prejudice they have? And how does that compare (or how is it way higher) to how western racism is towards those minorities in the western countries? Thinking they are better doesn't really compare.

Sure, so the passive aggressive racism is a far cry from what would have been real manifestations of it that occurred in those regions historically. How does it manifest today? Maybe they hear a msg rumor and go ‘yeah, figures’. A better example might be that mainland Chinese people genuinely think Hong Kong people think they are ‘better than mainlanders’, and low key believe in and support the crackdown and integration of Hong Kong (put them in their place). Wild stuff, amongst your own you have this informed hatred.

Similar to Karens in America, we don’t have outright segregation, we have a diluted form of it, which of course is a far cry from what it was.

The water is not totally filtered yet, need a few more pass throughs (few more generations).

As to why I think it’s way higher, it’s simply because the West has strong shallow racism. But the East actually knows the nuances of their region and still find ways to be prejudiced. That just simply takes more bigotry imho, where as in the West they only need pure ignorance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre

https://www.quora.com/If-youre-of-Chinese-ethnicity-and-livi...

https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/in-korea-double-standards-on-r...

https://archive.vn/bt6n1

You make it sound like racism only occurs in USA. This is naive. Racism is across the world and some are worse than others. Japanese took Korean women as literal sex slaves during their occupation and didn’t give them rightful citizenship in Japan and just looked down on them.

In China during the Rape of Nanking Japanese also did horrible atrocities, like cut open pregnant women and gamble on the sex of the fetus. Really horrible things but in America is only sounds like only white people commit racism, which is not true.

The most modern incidents of genocide happen in Asia. Cambodia in the 1970s and even Myanmar committing genocide in the last few years against Rohingya, lead by former Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

In Korea, many half-Korean Half-black children from American army were born and until recently they were openly spat on by Koreans in public. Until Hines Ward who is half Korean half Black won MVP for NFL Super Bowl, then it raised awareness in Korea over this.

So please don’t think racism is only in the US. What blacks experience today is much better than what they experience in other countries where there is true hate, not just stereotyping.

Absolutely not, in fact I didn't mention USA anywhere in my post. I was curious on what constitutes racism in the east vs. the west and I don't have experience in the east. I'm also not disregarding anywhere in between the countries of the east and west.

I know of the historical factors but that's like saying Germans are still racist because they have a history of being Nazis - I was more interested in what kind of experiences of racism between Asia are happening in modern times which I've seen you've written so thanks for that. I was also curious whether there were any parallels in one of the bigger issues like police brutality of minorities in Asia.

There is a whole other discussion when talking about true hate vs. stereotyping.

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