Definitely in Australia there are some really extreme racists but I think those people are more on The Fringe of society like the sort of accepted Norm while there are certainly racist (and ignorant) attitudes it's not overtly racist in the sense that the vast majority of people will label people who who don't look the same as your ethnic group as outsiders. And just casually use this word everywhere.
But in Asia everybody does that it's not like some crazy people on The Fringe who are who are saying this it's a completely air quotes accepted thing across all of society to label people who are not from your ethnic group as outsiders. To me that's blatantly racist.
I think is a lot nicer to use a term like tourists, migrants or travelers or just people. Just say "hey look at that guy" rather than "hey look at that outsider guy."
I know the excuse that: "Foreigner simply means oh people from another country" but I think it's racist because it's like sort of a xenophobic monocultural expression where: you can live there in the country, you can speak the language, you can have all the paperwork, but the most important and the first thing that people see, and say to your face, is "you're an outsider. You're not like us."
I expect they'll be like lots of pushback for me saying this from like people in Japan, Thailand, HK, Taiwan and China saying "oh it's not racist at all", or "Asians can't be racist", or "yeah but we get so much racism when we go to your countries and think of the history", or "if you don't like it go back to your own country"... Or some wannabe apologists like: "don't think too much", "they're just curious about you, it's a mark of respect they look up to you", "it's totally the same in your country for us", or "it's just a persecution complex, you're too sensitive" (or other zero-responsibility minimizing of feelings and fake blaming, anything to avoid looking at flaws in your own culture huh?), or "oh no no you just don't understand they don't mean any harm by it they're innocent they don't know what they're doing it's just a cultural difference" or some other normalizing fake justifying b***, you know? but I think that's just their insensitive racist rudeness, and sophisticated gas lighting. to me it's a f*** racist term and you know I think the term "foreigners" should be done away with, and it should be like better terms like: migrants, or travelers, just people. but I think basically it's a reflection of how their societies are not as integrative as societies that I've experienced in the west and in Europe. There's racism there of course but that type of like widespread sort of accepted racism of just labeling and naming people who are not from your ethnic group as outsiders is blatantly racist to me that's what I think.
I mean there's probably cases of this type of thing in Europe too I'm not that familiar with Europe but certainly in like Australia or North America I know they were really extreme racists there but to me those people are on the fringes of society and well widespread it's not like across the society is a norm. Pretty nature it's completely normal it's not on the friends at all to just use these word. And I think these othering word is not benign at all I think it's a very racist thing and then forms the sort of basis for all kinds of other racist stereotypes that can be built on top of that foundational othering. The paradoxically because of the racist stereotype that Asians cannot be racist it's actually quite hard to bring this up you know because in my experience people in Asia are pretty blind to this type of thing and they certainly don't want to see something that reflects poorly on their own Society so they'll try to gaslight and they're pretty insensitive to how people who aren't from their country would experience that. So it's this there's not a lot of audience for this type of idea among the people who should be listening to this type of idea so anyway I'm raising it here because I think you know it's an interesting thing and it's something I've realized after living in East Asia for 10 years and I have to confess at first I was someone who enthusiastically used that word myself to talk about other people who went you know from the countries where I lived in but then at some point I realized that I was using that word to sort of feel like I was somehow better than the other people who went from those countries like cuz if I could use that word myself like somehow I'm more special than you know the other travelers or the other immigrants or whatever. Anyway that's just part of my story with it so I expect there to be some racist comments here in response to this and also plus I probably some westerners like myself coming on and defending this behavior in Asia and somehow trying to pretend that actually no it must be my problem rather than actually this is a thing.
Anyway I think it's important thing it would be good to sort of somehow have a good discussion of this but I think that's a very difficult thing to do you know but I think eventually they'll be progress on this in like maybe 25 years or something so I'm just way ahead of the curb here. Be gentle.