A German Entrepreneur Shares His Negative View On The Way Taiwan Treats Foreigners

There is nothing more offensive to someone born and raised here than to have the name for their appearance be synonymous with 外, nothing. It is SO different than calling somebody "老王" or "老陳", its kind of offensive that you can't see a difference. If I call somebody 老王 its because I know them, I know their name is Wang, I know this about them. I would rather you call me every offensive curse word in the book because of something I did or how I acted over calling me "可愛的外國朋友" because of how I look. I am assuming you are Asian (ethnicity) American (nationality) or Asian ____ (some English speaking country), and I just wish that you could know for a day what it felt like to grow up in your country when the word for ethnic look was "foreign". When every person you meets flips their shit because you speak English just like they do, like they had just met a dog that had been trained to stand up, wear clothes and talk like a human, like a law of nature had just been broken. I'm not talking an insensitive ignorant asshole (like a white person in the US asking an Asian American where they are really from) that you come across every so often, I mean, literally, every. fucking. person.

The lack of malicious intent DOES NOT mean that something is not wrong, harmful and offensive. Like the article said positive racism is still racism. Racism is the paradigm in Taiwan, assuming everything about a person and treating people differently because of their race is not only acceptable, it is as natural as breathing air. The issue of "racism" as it is known in the west is not even a concept here, because it is just the natural way of thinking and treating others. In my home country of Taiwan I have been treated normally when meeting a stranger a total of 17 times over 30 years. 15 of those 17 have been either blind, mentally handicapped or small kids that have not been taught yet that white=foreign=must treat differently. Trying to explain that there is a difference between ethnicity (how someone looks) and nationality (either legal citizenship or where a particular individual is from (not his/her ancestors)) is like going back to the dark ages and trying to explain complicated physics. So it is NOT just a cordial way to call someone, it is a mindset, a social paradigm. White = foreign.

I don't hate my fellow Taiwanese, and I always try my best not to let it get to me and not to lash out, but I do hate this paradigm, and I will do everything I can to change it.

/r/taiwan Thread Parent Link - buzzorange.com