[throwaway2037]

    > Cambodia is blatantly racist

In my experience, there is nothing special about Cambodia in this regard. You could substitute any poorly developed nation, and you would have similar results. If Cambodia had a GDP per capita similar to Japan/Korea/Taiwan, they would "suddenly" become less racist because they would be much more concerned with economics rather than ethnicity/religion.

[marcus_holmes]

I had to think about this.

I don't think it's wealth that's the differentiator. I think it's partly colonialism and partly culture.

> If Cambodia had a GDP per capita similar to Japan/Korea/Taiwan, they would "suddenly" become less racist

Japan is also, famously, extremely racist. Probably to the same extent that Cambodia is, but I haven't been there so I can't compare.

Colonialism has a lot to answer for in SE Asia. I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.

And culturally, there are a lot of differences between SE Asia mentality and Anglosphere/Western mentality. I suspect part of it is this, too.

[throwaway2037]

    > Japan is also, famously, extremely racist.

I replied about this below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828355

    > I don't think it's wealth that's the differentiator. I think it's partly colonialism and partly culture.

I think it is political/social issue. What really drives the fall in racism is politicians/community leaders/school officials talking about it. They observe it, then speak out against it. When and why different countries choose to do is (a) somewhat random and (b) somewhat correlated to their wealth and (c) strongly correlated to the strength (and existance) of their democracy.

Why do almost all countries that get rich also get more democratic and more liberal on social issues? I don't know, but I see it nearly universally in many different countries.

    > Colonialism has a lot to answer for in SE Asia. I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.

One interesting point that many people are not aware of: Thailand is the only country in SE Asia that was never a colony (including "protectorate"). Is Thailand really so different than Cambodia in this regard? I'm not the right person to answer, but it is interesting to think about.

[marcus_holmes]

> Why do almost all countries that get rich also get more democratic and more liberal on social issues? I don't know, but I see it nearly universally in many different countries.

Agree.

Like I said, I've never been to Japan, can't comment on it, I'm only repeating what I've heard. I'm glad that's changing.

Thailand is a little different, yes. I wasn't there for as long, and was mainly only a tourist there, so no expert. But I never heard "Thailand is for the Thai people" while I was there. The cultural racism is similar, but they haven't had Cambodia's historical suffering as a background.

[graemep]

> Japan is also, famously, extremely racist.

seems to contradict

> I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.

Racism can also take different forms. India has the world's oldest and most deeply embedded racism, but westerners rarely even recognise it for what it is.

[throwaway2037]

    > India has the world's oldest and most deeply embedded racism, but westerners rarely even recognise it for what it is.

Do you mean the caste system in Hindu society?

[exoverito]

It's human nature to be "racist" since people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves. That can be multi-dimensional, ranging from values, cultures, tastes, but race is the most obvious and one of the major principal components of human experience.

Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are effectively ethnostates and they've not had the cultural enrichment yet that America or Europe has faced. Notably, there is rising anti-migrant extremism in the West, because the Great Replacement Theory is becoming increasingly obviously not just a theory.

[graemep]

> people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves.

Similar how? Why skin colour rather than say eye colour? Why not similar language, culture, religion, politics...?

[exoverito]

Race is not skin color. Albino Sub-Saharans are very obviously not European.

People of course prefer others that share their language, culture, religion and politics. Race is often highly correlated to those.

To ignore the dimension of genetics is to willfully blind yourself to reality.

[graemep]

What dimension of genetics? Race is not genetic. If you try to cluster people by genetic similarity the end result does not look like people's idea of "race" at all, and different (even closely related cultures like the UK and the US) have different classifications of race. http://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different

In the days of racial science (so up to the 1950s or so) some east Africans and South Asians were classified as "caucasian". Textbooks and encyclopedias from the time say so.

Race is not highly correlated to religion. Christianity is followed by numbers of Europeans, South Americans, Africans, and Asians. Islam by semitic, African, South Asian, South East Asian people. Buddhists are most commonly, South Asian, SE Asian or East Asian - still multiple different "races". The same with cultures. I do not see how race correlates to politics at all. There are weak correlations with culture and language, very weak within countries.

[marcus_holmes]

"Race" as used in this sense is almost uniquely an USA thing, exported to right-wing movements elsewhere.

A white USA citizen will have more in common culturally, religiously and politically with a black USA citizen than any white European, Australian or New Zealander.

[marcus_holmes]

> It's human nature to be "racist" since people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves.

This is blatantly and obviously not true. Especially when discussing ex-pats, as you'd realise if you gave it 5 seconds' thought.

[account42]

Expats actually prove the rule, otherwise we would not need a word for them.

[marcus_holmes]

That's just ridiculous. We have words for everything. Multiple words for everything. Having a word for "people who live in a country that isn't where they grew up" doesn't then mean that everyone else is inherently racist.

[throw-the-towel]

Who ever said Japan is not xenophobic in this way?

[throwaway2037]

Whenever I bring up Japanese culture, I am guaranteed to get a response like this. It is like a doctor's hammer to the knee: The leg always kicks. It is as low effort as someone saying that there are still blatantly racist people who live in the US "Bible Belt" and think all black people are inferior to white people. It adds so little to the conversation.

Ask anyone who has spent time in Japan, there has been a dramatic fall in blatant racism in the last 10-20 years. Yes, there are still rare instances, but the bad old days (before 2000) are gone. There is now a consistent, tiny, visible minority of non-East Asians that live and work in all major Japanese cities. And their children go to local schools. They are mostly working in low skill jobs like restaurants, construction, retail shops, farms, or factories. To be clear, many of those businesses require highly skilled people to run them, but the immigrant labour is doing low skill jobs. Also, there is a tiny fraction of those immigrant workers whom have trained very hard and are no longer low skill, like a bus driver or elderly care nurse.

Korea and Taiwan also have large numbers of immigrants doing low skill work.

My guess is that probably Taiwan is the most exposed to non-East Asian immigrants because they have a large population of foreign domestic helpers (clean/cook/child+elder care), so that is someone foreign in and around your house all day. I don't think Japan nor Korea has that system.