Race

Speaking of Japan and the US's racial history, here are a few very interesting images. The first is a handbill of first ever American music concert in Japan, performed by musician sailors with Admiral Perry on his famous "Black Ship" voyage when the US forced Japan to open relations with the US or else. Not sure if the concert was on Admiral Perry's 1st or 2nd trip, I'd guess the 2nd, making the handbill from sometime between 1852 and 1855. The artistic rendering of the event was from a Japanese artist at the time, showing that the performers were all in "black face".

Notice the song titles. One is "Massa's in De Cold! Cold Ground", probably a sad tune but with some hopeful ambiguity? Too bad there isn't a sound recording of the event. Some of the songs can be found on youtube as very old folk tunes.

It's also interesting that as far back as the 1850s, the idea of official "American" music was essentially the music of Black folk, or at least the presentation of American music would somehow be better if done in black face. So while blacks were still enslaved, the US at State sanctioned official events sometimes performed "Black music" in black face. Talk about cultural appropriation.

I don't at all get the pink hair wigs. It was a weird time to be sure.

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Tapate50 said:
How diverse is Japanese culture ?
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What do you mean by "diverse"?

I'd say Japan's culture and society has certainly made great use of "foreign" influences from China, the U.S. and from Europe. Japanese kanji comes straight from China, as does much of its food, culture and "religion". Medical and science terminology often comes from German and a huge swath of its popular modern tv culture comes from the U.S. But once in Japan, the country puts its own take on things that soon feels indigenous and all Japanese. But because of the declining birthrate the country is growing less "Japanese" everyday as foreign workers make their way here to fill jobs openings. Most foreign workers are Asian and where I live Vietnamese make up most of the foreign population.
 
Runnin said:
What do you mean by "diverse"?

I'd say Japan's culture and society has certainly made great use of "foreign" influences from China, the U.S. and from Europe. Japanese kanji comes straight from China, as does much of its food, culture and "religion". Medical and science terminology often comes from German and a huge swath of its popular modern tv culture comes from the U.S. But once in Japan, the country puts its own take on things that soon feels indigenous and all Japanese. But because of the declining birthrate the country is growing less "Japanese" everyday as foreign workers make their way here to fill jobs openings. Most foreign workers are Asian and where I live Vietnamese make up most of the foreign population.
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diverse
/dĭ-vûrs′, dī-, dī′vûrs″/

adjective
Differing one from another.
"Members of the same family can have very diverse personalities."
Made up of distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements.
Relating to or containing people from different ethnicities and social backgrounds.
"a diverse workforce; a diverse curriculum."
 
Tapate50 said:
diverse
/dĭ-vûrs′, dī-, dī′vûrs″/

adjective
Differing one from another.
"Members of the same family can have very diverse personalities."
Made up of distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements.
Relating to or containing people from different ethnicities and social backgrounds.
"a diverse workforce; a diverse curriculum."
Click to expand...

But you asked about culture. I assumed you were really trying to make a statement about something else. That's why I asked.

There are at least 3 main strains of Japanese facial characteristics in Japan (one similar to Korea, one from Mongolia and then the native Ainu), but I'm sure all Asian DNA is represented in the people. The country is really more diverse than it looks to be from the outside. The character of people from Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto) is much different than other places. Okinawa is different too. Each region has its own dialect still today and a certain uniqueness to go along with the dialect.

The U.S. and Europe actually played a big role in un-diversifying or narrowing down variety within Japan. Forcing the island to create a "country" that had to compete with the rest of the world for resources and economic security played a huge role in turning the country into an island of worker bees.
 
thethe said:
This dude looks under rocks for racism.

Pathetic
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100%.

It’s amazing when viewed with a world wide lens.

Not one person except maybe a south Alabama 101 year old is proud of slavery.

But to act like we were the only nation who participated is asinine. It’s still practiced today all over Africa (common theme?) and China.
 
I'd hazard a guess from my admittedly slightly dated time in corporate America that the old boy network continues to be a bigger impediment to meritocratic hiring and promotion in America than woke ideology. People in positions to hire, fire and promote do so largely on the basis of how comfortable they are with the people who they are hiring and promoting. This goes by various names. One of them is unconscious bias. There are all sorts of well documented examples. Rooting them out gets us closer to a meritocratic system, with all of the efficiency gains thereunto appertaining.

My department chair and I were discussing an interesting recent example. We had three candidates brought in for an opening to teach finance. One of them was a man with long beautiful hair. And this rubbed my department chair the wrong way. But he is self-aware enough to have recognized this impulse and checked it. Even so we did not hire the dude with the beautiful long hair.

Another example is accents. My department chair grew up in eastern Kentucky and sounds like a hillbilly. This has led him to be underestimated quite a bit at various points in his life. Fortunately, his many positive attributes have been strong and obvious enough to overcome the accent and he's forged a pretty successful career. But the accent has hurt at various points.

(As a funny aside the candidate we hired had very short hair but when I saw him last week had let his hair grow much longer).
 
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lol

Yeah in an age of online faceless resumes, and work from home capabilities people are trying to actively hire worse candidates

People see what they wanna see, as always.
 
Tapate50 said:
lol

Yeah in an age of online faceless resumes, and work from home capabilities people are trying to actively hire worse candidates

People see what they wanna see, as always.
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Speaking of faceless resumes, there was an interesting experiment done where resumes were sent in for jobs advertised. The resumes were randomly assigned names, with some of the names chosen for being more common among African Americans. I'll let y'all guess which kinds of names are advantageous and which ones disadvantageous.

As we root out these kinds of biases, our system will become both more fair and more efficient and closer to a true meritocracy. Win win.
 
nsacpi said:
I'd hazard a guess from my admittedly slightly dated time in corporate America that the old boy network continues to be a bigger impediment to meritocratic hiring and promotion in America than woke ideology. People in positions to hire, fire and promote do so largely on the basis of how comfortable they are with the people who they are hiring and promoting. This goes by various names. One of them is unconscious bias. There are all sorts of well documented examples. Rooting them out gets us closer to a meritocratic system, with all of the efficiency gains thereunto appertaining.

My department chair and I were discussing an interesting recent example. We had three candidates brought in for an opening to teach finance. One of them was a man with long beautiful hair. And this rubbed my department chair the wrong way. But he is self-aware enough to have recognized this impulse and checked it. Even so we did not hire the dude with the beautiful long hair.

Another example is accents. My department chair grew up in eastern Kentucky and sounds like a hillbilly. This has led him to be underestimated quite a bit at various points in his life. Fortunately, his many positive attributes have been strong and obvious enough to overcome the accent and he's forged a pretty successful career. But the accent has hurt at various points.

(As a funny aside the candidate we hired had very short hair but when I saw him last week had let his hair grow much longer).
Click to expand...

The academics can't be saved
 
nsacpi said:
Speaking of faceless resumes, there was an interesting experiment done where resumes were sent in for jobs advertised. The resumes were randomly assigned names, with some of the names chosen for being more common among African Americans. I'll let y'all guess which kinds of names are advantageous and which ones disadvantageous.

As we root out these kinds of biases, our system will become both more fair and more efficient and closer to a true meritocracy. Win win.
Click to expand...

We actually ran this experiment at a former fortune 100 company. They were mad there weren't enough women in tech jobs. So they did a blind resume pilot.

The result ended in MORE men being hired. What did they do? Well they killed the pilot of course

I'm very glad to see the trend of companies dumping their ridiculous DEI departments. They are a money and time productivity suck that has been studied to add no value at all
 
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