Microaggressions

[rpl22]

Good day !

I have been following the thread on Microaggression in Japan (link below) since a few weeks, and it has become hugely popular, and a real debate has started there.
The debate recently move to Taiwan (link below) and drew a lot of attention too.

I would like to move the thread to Hong Kong and hear the forumers' take on the subject. I hope the discussion can become as productive here in Hong Kong as it was and still is in Japan and Taiwan :-)

Links:
debito.org
FORUMOSA • Victims of "Microaggressions"


small extract :
Have you ever noticed how many interpersonal interactions in Japan are like “speed dates” of set questions?
For example, the taxi drivers who have the odd fascination about where you’re from, whether you’re married, how much you like Japan, and how hard you think the Japanese language is?
The barkeeps and clientele who try to slot you into their hackneyed preconceptions of some country and nationality, what you can and cannot eat, and (as things get drunker) how much you enjoy having physical liaisons with Japanese?
The neighbors who have a white-hot curiosity about how differently you raise your kids, what you fight with your spouse about, and how much you like Japan — regardless of how many years you’ve been interacting?
In the beginning, these were dismissible as just acts of awkward friendliness by people who didn’t know how else to approach you. It at least made you really good in certain areas of Japanese conversation.
But after years of repeat games, boredom sets in, and you begin to realize two things: 1) that you can sleepwalk through most conversations, and 2) that, if you stay awake, you see there is a larger issue at play here: social control — something increasingly recognized by social psychologists as “microaggressions.”
Microagressions, particularly those of a racialized nature, are, according to Dr. Derald Wing Sue in Psychology Today (Oct. 5, 2010), “the brief and everyday slights, insults, indignities, and denigrating messages sent to (visible minorities) by well-intentioned (members of an ethnic majority in a society) who are unaware of the hidden messages being communicated.”

[TheBrit]

I have been reading that too; personally I think debito is a complete twat and his microaggressions idea is rubbish. He lets his jaded view of his divorce and failure to make it in life distort his perception of reality.

The only decent stuff he writes is on child kidnapping which is a real and serious issue. The rest of it is unbelievably mawkish nonsense.

[Creative83]

Look at that forum.

"Great post"
"Nice contribution"
"very well written post"

[dear giant]

I don't know anything about debito but I would say that I have experienced the phenomena of people leaving the seat(s) next to me on public transport (on those few occasions I've ridden it) unfilled longest, of being complimented on my chopstick usage by the same people over a period of years and of initial small talk with HKers in spoken English seeming to follow some sort of script (usually starting w/questions about where I'm from, what I do career-wise, whether I like HK, etc. and eventually progressing with to how much I make every month and how large my apartment is).

When unexpected responses are given in that sort of dialogue, even innocently, the other party can become quite upset. I remember one interaction between my wife and I and a newspaper vendor who had a little stall on a sidewalk in our district. We had stopped and bought magazines from him numerous times over a period of a few months and, one time, he struck up a conversation with us. When he asked where I was from, after telling him that I was from the United States, I took the opportunity to try to show a bit of polite interest in him and, without intending to cause any insult (and aware that most HKers living here today are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants), asked him where he was from.

That set him off. He went from smiling and being friendly to literally shouting that he was a Hong Konger and not a Mainlander and screaming a bunch of other stuff that I couldn't understand and didn't ask my wife to translate. We had already paid for the magazines we'd bought and so we just walked away.

This was long before the Mainland colonization push to spawn in HK and the resulting Mainlander = locust stuff.

[TheBrit]

Look at that forum.

"Great post"
"Nice contribution"
"very well written post"

I

It is his own website. He only approves stuff he likes and deletes the rest. Google tepido Japan to see the other point of view.

[bryant.english]

Yep, get the good with chopsticks - been using them for over 12 years, lol!

My Cantonese is very good - if I say josan!

[Satay Sue]

Omg is that guy Debito still going on

Edit : assuming it's the same guy who raised a row about, what was it, foreigners banned from an onsen in Hokkaido I think?

[Creative83]

I

It is his own website. He only approves stuff he likes and deletes the rest. Google tepido Japan to see the other point of view.

I took the quotes from forumosa. But i mean it could very well be heavily moderated as well.

[Mat]

I'm gonna macro-aggress that dude and he will see what's worst :0)

Seriously though there is this need in the human nature to try turning the little things in life in so called "big issue" that is quite fascinating.

[TigerSun]

Sounds like micro-psycho-baffle-gab-bullshit from a psuedo-psychologist to me.

People learning a language will fall back on questions they fill confident with just like guys will fall-back on reherased pick-up lines.