Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by BadassFractal 2904 days ago
I read recently that the Chinese have a term for that, something like "Western white savior" to refer to westerners who moralize about Chinese culture and act like they will show the morally primitive East the righteous way forward with their progressive views.
2 comments

Correct. Japanese do as well.

The idea that Americans are going to bring up the cultureless sexist/racist/whatever Asians is indeed made fun of regularly. Well-meaning Americans have decent intentions but are also pretty culturally tone deaf on Asian societies; before we seek to export social justice, we should probably figure out how and why their societies are structured the way they are and understand the timeline you're looking at.

>Well-meaning Americans have decent intentions but are also pretty culturally tone deaf on Asian societies

That. And because the country was founded by religious zealots, it still has a Christ complex to this day, regardless of if it involves a Bible Belter or a West Coast atheist. That and superiority ("manifest destiny", "leaders of the free world", "land of the free" and so on), it's just part of its cultural status quo.

In Chinese it's baizuo / 白左 - literally translated to 'white left'. It also shows up in various other languages and cultures. I cannot even imagine how one might view the state of American socio-political movements for those who still have the 'great leap forward' in living memory.