[prottog]

I'm a visibly nonwhite minority here in the deep south of America with friends of every skin tone, including those who are black. Not once has anyone younger than 40 been afraid of his physical safety due to the color of his skin, other than being in places where physical safety was questionable to begin with. Perhaps the true point here is that in Japan it is very rare that anyone has to fear for his physical safety for any reason.

I'd much rather live someplace where "actual white supremacy", to the degree it exists, is denounced by polite company, than a place where it is accepted in polite company that you're avoided for looking physically different and "no foreigners allowed" in businesses are common.

As one who only came to the States as an adult, it's really confounding to me the degree to which it's understood that America is a racist and white supremacist country. I just don't get it at all.

[rowanG077]

I'm not american so I have no experience with it myself. But I thought for example the birth of black lives matter movement was directly linked to black people feeling physically unsafe.

[parker_mountain]

Yes, from the police and police interactions. American police are unusually brutal anyways.

Per capita, American police kill 3x more than Canada's police, and 60x times more than England's police.

[Aeolun]

Are US criminals also 60x more violent? I feel like these stats are related. You can probably correlate them with guns and economy in some way as well.

[parker_mountain]

According to various statistics, crime rates in the US are between 25% less than England, and up to 20% more.

An incredibly massive distance from 60x.

[rowanG077]

Right. So doesn't it make sense for someone to move to a different country where you don't have to fear the police?

[therealdrag0]

Police interactions are quite infrequent among non-criminally adjacent people. Keep in mind lots of those policing minorities are minorities themselves. Police kill thousands of white people too. So in a sense your question is why doesn’t everyone leave America because of fear of police?

[hungryforcodes]

Everytime I talk with other non-Americans about traveling in the US one of the main fears that comes up all the time is fear of the police. So I can't imagine the Japanese police being nearly as much a cause of concern and or fear.

[ryan_lane]

I think people should have a rational fear of police everywhere, including Japan. Police have a state given power over you, and that can be abused no matter where you are.

Japan isn't perfect here. Your rights when dealing with the police here are different (and not in a better way). You do not have the right to remain silent, and your silence can be used against you. They can keep you in jail for ~30 days without charges. It's an open secret that the police can and do beat prisoners to get confessions out of them.

That said, if I had to chose an interaction between the Japanese police and the US police, I'd take the Japanese police every single time.

[hungryforcodes]

Yeah, interesting!

[krapp]

Aren't Japanese police just as likely to target "the foreigner" in the neighborhood anyway? They're not going to shoot on sight the way an American cop would but their ability (and legal leeway) to extract confessions is infamous.

[rowanG077]

Maybe, but that's an irrelevant metric. I'd still expect the absolute percentage chance of becoming a police victim to be much, much smaller.

[HyperSane]

Only if you are a criminal. Don't point a gun at a cop and you won't get killed by one. If you don't break laws or speed you will not actually interact with cops in the US. I'm 45 and the only times I have ever interacted with police is when I got pulled over for speeding, or something wrong with my car.

[noodleman]

This is horribly reductive.

Put aside the sample size of one for a moment. The fact you've only dealt with the police when genuinely committing crimes, and their response was proportional to the crime, is most likely down to your skin colour.

[HyperSane]

> and their response was proportional to the crime, is most likely down to your skin colour.

And also due to the fact I was calm, reasonable, cooperative, and didn't point a gun at them. If you are trying to argue that a person's behavior has no effect on how likely they are to be killed by a cop then you are just completely wrong.

[blondin]

the very first time i am going to bring race in a hn comment.

you are not black or a minority, are you? systemic targeting is a thing. exarcerbated by media portrayal. it is a real mess that affects real people.

[HyperSane]

If you are trying to argue that a person's behavior has no effect on how likely they are to be killed by a cop then you are just completely wrong.

[nradov]

Do those Canadian police killing numbers include the 75 or so indigenous people that they intentionally dumped outside to freeze to death?

https://allthatsinteresting.com/starlight-tours

[odessacubbage]

reflexive shame towards the nation is the only cultural practice americans are still taught. in contrast to japan who have pretty much eroded their past atrocities from the public consciousness, the intelligentsia seem fixated on wallowing in ours. i leave it to you to decide which strategy has created a more cohesive public.

[ryan_lane]

> Not once has anyone younger than 40 been afraid of his physical safety due to the color of his skin, other than being in places where physical safety was questionable to begin with.

It's hard to take you seriously here. I've met very few black folks who would agree with you on this. Have you directly asked a black person how they feel about encounters with the police?

> I'd much rather live someplace where "actual white supremacy", to the degree it exists, is denounced by polite company

It's not denounced by polite company. I was recently in Louisiana where someone was talking about why they don't go into New Orleans anymore (because of black people), and about how we have an incorrect history of the civil war because "winners write the history" ("it wasn't due to slavery").

> than a place where it is accepted in polite company that you're avoided for looking physically different

I'm not saying this doesn't happen at all, but I think it's often mistaken for "I don't want to sit next to a gaijin", when it's really "I don't want to sit next to someone really tall because I'll have no room" or "I don't want to sit next to the gaijin who smells like they haven't showered in a week".

I know this is one of the more common complaints on japanlife reddit, so I won't discount it completely, but even there it's a pretty controversial take.

> "no foreigners allowed" in businesses are common.

I've been living in Tokyo for the past 3 years (and have traveled around Japan a lot) and haven't seen a single "no foreigners allowed" sign. I have never been rejected for being foreign. I'm sure you may run into this on rare occasion in the countryside, but this isn't anywhere near the norm, even there.

I've heard this is still the norm at places like soaplands, oppai bars, and such, but that it's not enforced for folks who can speak enough Japanese to clearly state they understand the rules. I haven't gone to any so can't personally verify that (and my spoken Japanese isn't good enough anyway). These places have strict legal requirements to keep their licenses, so this is a case where I at least understand their rationale. I'm sure there's some xenophobia baked into this as well, as it's a common (stupid) stereotype that foreigners bring STDs into Japan.

> As one who only came to the States as an adult, it's really confounding to me the degree to which it's understood that America is a racist and white supremacist country. I just don't get it at all.

As someone who grew up in the south, and who has mostly conservative friends and family, I absolutely get it. There's degrees of racism, but I've heard the phrase "we should turn the middle east into glass" more times than I'd prefer. I know lots of folks who moved away from the New Orleans area so that their kids wouldn't go to school with black children. I've been in situations at work where people would be in a 1-1 with me and be complaining about black people being hired, and how they don't allow that on their team. I know property managers that only do word-of-mouth advertising for rental openings so that they can only rent to white people.

All of those things are just direct experiences I've personally witnessed. It doesn't take into account the historical racism that continues to affect the black community today, like redlining, white-flight, systematic police targeting and imprisonment, the war on drugs, etc.

I'm glad you haven't personally had that experience, but you shouldn't downplay the situation that others less fortunate than you experience often.

[MockObject]

> Have you directly asked a black person how they feel about encounters with the police?

Comments like this seem to ignore the fact that a good number of law enforcement officers are black. I guess one could ask one of them?