America, the least racist country in the world

Dear Korean,

Why don't blacks and Koreans have a better relationship, and what can be done about the problem? It's amazing how Koreans living in Korea seem much nicer than Koreans in the United States. Do you think the U.S. has a way of dividing people?

Romulus A.

Dear Romulus,

The Korean firmly believes that America is the least racist country in the world, and this post will finally explain why that is. The Korean already wrote something about Korean-black relations here, but the second part of your question is most intriguing. Yes, the Korean does think that the U.S. has a way of dividing people of different colors – namely, U.S. is the only country where people of different colors live next to each other.

I know, I know. The Korean knows that there are minority race living in various parts of the world. But except for Europe, there is no country in which ethnic minorities, starkly different in culture and appearance from the majority (so excluding situations like Hutus and Tutsis in Congo/Rwanda,) constitute a percent that matters, something like more than 20 percent of the entire population. (In the U.S., the percentage is nearly 30 percent.) And as to Europe, well, look what’s happening to them.

Why do numbers matter? Because unless the minorities are somewhat numerous, they are not threatening to the majority. Hating takes energy; people don’t hate for no reason. Widespread hatred in the majority toward the minority takes place only if the minority is somehow threatening the majority’s position.

So if you are an African-American tourist traveling through Korea for two weeks, you will find that Korean people are generally nice to you. Why wouldn’t they be? You will leave in two weeks! But trying living there and see how you like it.

God help you if you were trying to date a Korean. Interracial relationship is a racist’s greatest fear, especially if it involves a minority-race man and majority-race woman. Ever wondered why Emmitt Till was so brutally lynched, just for whistling at a white woman? When a minority-race man dates a majority-race woman, other majority-race men feel their position threatened, because they feel that their possession is being taken. (It should not come as a surprise that racism goes hand-in-hand with sexism.)

Similarly, if all Mexicans in America were tourists, there would be no racism in America towards Mexicans. Racism towards Mexicans exists only because there is a perception (however incorrect) that Mexicans are staying in America, and are taking away things that belong to Americans – in the form of jobs, tax dollars through welfare, or literally taking away life and property through crimes.

On the other hand, Asians in America are not numerous enough to be threatening, so we have been spared from blatant racism so far. But whenever Asian Americans do appear to be threatening, the reaction is exactly the same – just look at what happened to Vincent Chin when Japanese automakers were threatening to American jobs.

Here lies the reason why America is the least racist country in the world – it’s one of the few countries that racial minorities are in a position to threaten the racial majority, and it’s the only one among those countries that is by and large successful in curbing the racist sentiments that inevitably follow from such a situation.

Notice that the Korean is not saying Americans are somehow morally superior by not engaging in the evils of racism. No inherent goodness makes Americans less racist than others – only decades of experience in an interracial society do.

To understand this, you have to see racism for what it truly is. As the Korean said several times previously (here and here,) racism is a heuristic; it’s an instinctively created survival mechanism. (On some level, it’s very easy to understand – wouldn’t there be something different about a person if he looks so different from the rest of us?) In a vacuum, racism has no moral implication. However, racism in our modern world, in which people of different races must live next to one another, it becomes an evil that it currently is.

For example, consider an act of running for your life and pushing away things that get in your way. That action, in a vacuum, has no moral implication. But what if you are a healthy young person, you are running out from a club caught on fire (and has only one narrow fire escape,) and the thing you are about to push away is a disabled man who can’t walk without his crutches, which were lost in the stampede? Pushing him away to die in fire in order to save your own skin is an evil act, but most people would do it anyway. And unless you are forced to make that moral choice by being in that situation, you can never claim that you are morally superior to the person who pushed away the disabled person to escape. Why? Because if you were actually in that situation, most likely you will do the same thing.

Similarly, a country that has no significant number of racial minorities cannot possibly claim that it is not a racist country. How can you confidently say that your morals will overcome your survival instinct, if your survival was never tested?

In fact, left alone long enough without a decisive intervention from the central government, a country will manage to find the differences within itself to hate upon each other. Northern Italians and Southern Italians bitterly hate each other; Walloon and Flemish Belgians hate each other so much that one New York Times commentator wondered how Belgium manages to stay together; Southwestern (Jeolla) Koreans and Southeastern Koreans (Gyeongsang) don’t get along to the degree that, until recently, each region would give 90 percent support to the parties representing the respective regions; the hatred between Hutus and Tutsis in Congo/Rwanda ended in genocide; same in Sudan, in Darfur.

Of course, in all the situations above, the Korean fully understands there are deeper underlying causes for the hatred – difference in wealth, colonial legacies, and so on. But regardless of the reason for the initial spark of hatred, that hatred is escalated through the same mechanism as racism – i.e., people falling into such bigoted logic as “if he is from so-and-so region, he has this-and-that characteristics.” It is hardly a leap to think that, if a significant number of racial minorities were to be introduced to a country that can be swayed by such bigoted logic, the country will inevitably fall into a heat of racist hatred. In fact, the race riots in France is exactly this. Korea is the same way, with the new wave of immigrants from China, Southeastern Asia, and the mixed-race children born in rural areas – the Korean sincerely believes that Korea will find itself in massive race riots in 20 years unless Korean government anticipates the problem (and most likely they won’t.)

America is the least racist country in the world because Americans have the longest experience in living in a truly multiracial society – more than a century. White Americans have stood in the middle of the burning club the longest. At first, they panicked like everyone else in the world. Those minority people – those chinks, wetbacks, and jungle monkeys – will take everything they had! Such fear of losing their position to the minorities is no different from the fear of fire. Just like everyone else in the world, white Americans pushed aside and oppressed the weaker, minority people, to maintain their superior position.

And then something remarkable happened. Because of an amazing collective effort, white Americans began to see that minority people were not out to get them. The fire was not real. And what they used to do in order to maintain their superior position has been unfair and evil. Here is a stark truth: most Americans renounce racism, to a degree that people of no other country in the world does. Racism has become such a social taboo that even those Americans who remain racist cannot dare speak up on their views without instantly becoming a social outcast.

Here is how much America is not racist. In 2002, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was attending Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. Praising Sen. Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948, Sen. Lott said this: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” Problem was that the main thrust of Thurmond’s 1948 campaign was to maintain racial segregation. Controversy rose, and Sen. Lott resigned from his majority leadership.

The Korean is willing to bet the lives of his as-yet-unborn first two children that something like this would not have happened anywhere else in the world in 2002. Running for President is an achievement in and of itself, as Rev. Jesse Jackson reminds us all the time. It would be nice to be recognized on that achievement, on your hundredth freakin’ birthday. For god's sake, if someone lives until 100, he deserves to hear anything he damn well pleases. If the Korean ever lives until 100, he would like to be recognized for saving the Earth from alien attacks in the year 2046. On top of that, the presidential campaign happened in fifty-four years ago! Who the hell cares? American people did, and Trent Lott was gone.

This is, of course, not to say America is a racism-free country. Quite the opposite is true. But those who are quick to decry that America is more racist than other countries by focusing on racist incidents in America, are simply clueless. In fact, America is one of the few countries in the world where such incidents would even be recognized as racist. The first step to cure alcoholism is to recognize that you have an alcohol problem. Even if you slip and have a few drinks, you are still ahead of those who don’t even realize they have a problem.

The world is getting more diverse by day. World economy is more integrated than ever, and no single country can afford to live in racial and cultural isolation. Immigration will be a greater and greater trend. People who are not accustomed to living with different types of people will soon find themselves sharing a subway car with a strange-looking person; their sense invaded by unfamiliar smell of exotic food; their streets covered in signs of incomprehensible languages; their jobs eliminated by those willing to work harder, cheaper. And inevitably, a racist fire will build in their hearts, stoked by the fear of losing what is theirs. But even when the whole world is on fire, Americans, by and large, will remain calm.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

More about Korean Names

Note: See another post about Korean last names here.

Dear Korean,

My mother's side of the family is from Korea. My mother always says to be very proud of my Korean last name Kim. My mother and grandmother told me our family "Kim" comes from the "An Dong Kim she." What is that supposed to mean? When I ask my grandmother she says her great grandfather was Kim An Dong. She says he was someone very famous and our family comes from the royal family. Is that true? And if so can you tell me a little about this man?

Jen D.

Dear Jen,

The Korean dearly hopes that you are no older than 12 years old, given the incredibly poor grammar through which your email was written. (The Korean fixed it up.) Bad grammar by Americans kills a little part of the Korean's soul -- the Korean spent all that effort learning English, and Americans can get away with incorrect English? (If you are indeed younger than 12, cover your eyes whenever you see a foul language on this site.)

But your question supplements a post that the Korean wrote a while back, so it's worth addressing. The effort that Korean people put into their last names truly redefines the concept of sticking with your family.

Let's start from the top. Why do we have names? Simple - for the purpose of identification. But the way in which we identify ourselves has changed drastically over time, and Korean last names are prime examples.

Now, imagine yourself being in a world two millennia older, when Korea first began. Farming was the only way to live, and you are tied to your land. Therefore, you generally live around your extended family. Nonetheless, from time to time you run into strangers. What is the way in which you identify yourself that succintly gives the maximum information of who you are? Answer: you tell who your family is. That way, you convey the information about where you live, and who you live with.

This is not exclusively a Korean phenomenon. The same process happened with Anglo last names such as Ford and Underwood. Mr. Ford used to live by a stream, and Mr. Underwood lived downhill from the wood. The difference between Mr. Ford and Mr. Kim, however, is that Mr. Kim knows exactly who the first Mr. Kim was.

In other words, each last name in Korea has one clear starting point. For example, father of all Kims is a man named Kim Suro. "Kim" originally means gold. Why gold? Because the very first Kim (really "Gim" in Korean pronunciation,) i.e. Gim Suro, was born from a golden egg.

So at first, it was possible to identify yourself as, say, Kim-ssi 5-dae-son. Ssi means Mister. (It's the same word that Jen mis-Romanized as "she". Although ssi is now used for both men and women, it only meant Mister in the old days.) Dae means "generation", and son means "offspring." So when you say "I am a Kim-ssi 5-dae-son," you are saying that "I am Mr. Kim, and I am 5th generation offspring from the very first Kim."

Simple enough? But there's more. As time passed by, clans grew and split up. Especially for a big clan like Kims, it was not enough to say "I'm in the Kim clan" -- you needed more in order to identify yourself. So people began adding the name of the region in which they clustered. Sometimes the region might be the place where the clan simply happened to live; other times, the region is a gift of land given from the king to the head of the clan. It's important to note that just like clans, each subclan has a single starting point. "Andong" is a region in southeastern Korea. So when you say you are an "Andong Kim", that means you are a Kim clan member, originally from Andong region.

Therefore, Jen, what your grandmother said does not make sense -- there is no one named "Kim Andong," as Andong is a name of a place, not a person. What she may have meant was that her great-grandfather was the very first Andong Kim, i.e. the starting point. But that doesn't make sense either, because that would make you Andong Kim-ssi 7-daeson, i.e. 7th generation Andong Kim. Right now, Andong Kim is at around 29th~31st generation. But read on, because there's more.

Even the regional designation was not enough as subclans got bigger. Currently, the largest Kim clan is Gimhae Kims, which has more than 4 million members. So people began to add sub-subclan designation, called "-pa" (literally means "branch".) "pa" is usually preceded by a name of a famous person. Imagine yourself in old Korea again. A famous person, usually a high official to the king or a distant relative of the king, gets a large tract of land and huge house. All of his family would live off that land and house. So that's another good identifier.

But there's even more!! pa could branch off even more, if it gets long enough. In such a case, the root-pa is designated as "hu". So the full Korean last name actually looks like this:

[region] [last name]-ssi [subclan]-hu [sub-sub-clan]-pa [number]-daeson.

Let's try and apply this. If the Korean were to live roughly 300 years ago, this is how he would identify himself:

Milyang Bak-ssi Gyujeonggong-hu Nakbonggong-pa 26-daeson.

Milyang is a region in southeastern Korea. Bak is usually Romanized in English as Park, and that's the Korean's regular last name. Gyujeonggong was a high official to the king, and so was Nakbonggong. The Korean himself is 26th generation offspring from Nakbonggong - i.e. Nakbonggong's grandson to the 26th power. (The Korean knows this is not exactly correct, but please don't nitpick about math. The Korean hates math.)

This allows people to count exactly how far the Korean is removed from the very first Park/Bak. For example, the first Milyang Bak, Prince Milseong, was 30 generations removed from Bak Hyeokgeose, the first Park. The first Milyang Bak Gyujeonggong-pa (Gyujeonggong himself) was 15 generations removed from Prince Milseong. The first Milyang Bak Gyujeonggong-hu Nakbonggong-pa (again, Nakbonggong himself) was 10 generations removed from Gyujeonggong when he branched off. The Korean is 26 generations removed from Nakbonggong. That makes the Korean 81 generations removed (30+15+10+26) from the very first Park.

(All those information is kept and updated in a book called jokbo, literally meaning "family book." The head of each pa is in charge of keeping and updating jokbo.)

Take a step back and think about how incredible this is. Sure, this is a sexist system, because women are not counted. Sure, modern-day Koreans mostly don't really care about tracing their clan names. But just think about it. If each generation is roughly 30 years, the Korean has the knowledge of every single grandfathers, uncles, and cousins for the last 2,400 years! Twenty-four hundred years! Can you even imagine how amazing it is to definitely know that a part of yourself can be traced to a single person who lived 24 centuries ago?

But you asked about Andong Kim. There are actually two families with the names Andong Kim. They are distinguished as Gu-Andong Kim and Sin-Andong Kim, meaning old and new Andong Kim. Both families put together produced 19 jeongseung (= Prime Minister), 6 daejehak (= National Scholar), and 3 queens during Joseon Dynasty, the most recent dysnasty of Korea before it was colonized by Japan.

The new Andong Kim family was especially powerful in the late phase of Joseon Dynasty. The queens of the three Korean kings from 1790 to 1834 were all from Andong Kim family. None of three kings was especially a strong leader, allowing their in-laws wield power by proxy. The strength of Andong Kim family survived into modern era, as it includes very prominent independence movement leaders such as General Kim Jwajin.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Happy New Year too!

The Korean has been incredibly busy for the holiday season, but the posts will come.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Korea has a new president for the next five years: New York Times article

Ask A Korean! News: Violation of Rules 1, 2, and 3 of Fight Club

The Korean has not been talking much about it, but South Korean presidential election is actually just four days away. And whenever the presidential election is near, we have news like this -- suffice it to say that it involves a chainsaw and beating with a phone.

First, just a little bit of background. There are three major candicates in this contest: Lee Myeong-bak from Grand National Party (GNP), Jeong Dong-yeong from New Democratic Party (NDP), and independent candidate Lee Hoi-chang. A lot of Mr. Jeong's hopes rode on an investigation against Mr. M. Lee on a possible corruption charge. Unfortunately for Mr. Jeong, the national prosecutor's office of Korea (equivalent to Department of Justice in the U.S.) last week announced that Mr. Lee had no involvement in the corruption scheme.

Dismayed, Mr. Jeong mobilized his party to submit a bill to impeach the prosecutor in charge of that case, essentially arguing that there must have been some type of collusion between the prosecutor and Mr. Lee. However, the bill was pressed for time, given that it has to start before the presidential election. Uri Party did have the majority in the National Assembly (=Congress in the U.S., except there is only one house), but GNP minority was none to happy about the bill
, and vowed to stop it. And so follows the story....

(The Korean's note: the following is a direct translation from this article on Dong-A Ilbo, except for parenthetical comments. On the link, you can also see some awesome videos as well.)

Although roughly 100 of GNP Assemblymen, occupying the Main Chamber of the National Assembly, locked the door from inside, at approximately 5:20 p.m. roughly 100 of the NDP Assemblymen stormed the Main Chamber and took over the chairman's seat in 45 minutes.
....

At 5:20 p.m. this day, upon orders by Chairman Lim, deputies of National Assembly cut the steel wire that held the inside door knob with a chainsaw. As the Main Chamber doors opened, NDP Assemblymen rushed toward the chairman's seat occupied by GNP Assemblymen. (Steel wire! Chainsaw! Ladies and gentlemen, the National Assembly of Korea -- just as screwed up as U.S. Congress, but a whole lot more entertaining!)

NDP Asm. Seon Byeong-ryeol ran toward the podium and choked GNP Asm. Jeong Du-eon, and Asm. Jeong Bong-ju attempted to jump on the chairman's seat but pushed out by GNP Assemblymen's defense. (Defense! uh uh defense!) One NDP Assemblyman slapped Asm. Bak Gye-dong, causing him to fall off the podium. Asm. Bak chased after the NDP Assemblyman, but was blocked by NDP Assemblymen and failed to exact his revenge. (Way to protect your slap-back!)

NDP Assemblymen yelled "Come down you [expletive]," and GNP Assemblymen did not back down, responding "Apologize to the people." Both sides pushed and shoved, trying to occupy the chairman's seat. Asm. Seo Gap-wo was poked in the eye by Asm. Sim Jae-cheol during the pushing and shoving. (There is no holding back people!)

Around 5: 50, the defensive line began to crumble as Asm. Gang Gi-jeong hit Assemblymen Choe Gu-sik and Gim Yeong-suk, who were guarding the right side of the podium, several times with a phone, and as Asm. Jeong Bong-ju jumped on top of GNP Assemblymen. (The phone! The defense's only weakness -- how did he know? Also, note that Gim Yeong-suk is a woman. There truly is no holding back.)

Asm. Jeong Bong-ju was trying to push out Asm. Sim Jae-cheol, but was pushed by Asm. Sim's cane, which he carries to assist his walking. (The cripple did it! Get the cripple!) Despite Asm. Sim's resistance, Asm. Jeong pulled him out, and also pulled out Spokesman Na Gyeong-won, who was also guarding the chairman's seat.

Finally, NDP occupied the chairman's seat 45 minutes after the entrance to the Main Hall. At that time, as Minority Leader An Sang-su relayed the message by Chairman Lim to both parties' leaders, "Judiciary Committee shall deliberate on [the bill] until [Decenber] 17th," GNP Assemblymen retreated from the chairman's seat.

Asm. Cha Myeong-jin, who was guarding the podium, was carried to a nearby hospital's emergency room, as he hurt his back while being thrown down by NDP Assemblymen. However, NDP Spokesman Choe Jae-seong said "Asm. Cha fell because GDP Assemblymen pushed him" in a briefing shortly after the occupation of the chairman's seat.

In addition, GNP Asm. An Hong-jun was injured when Asm. Jeong Bong-ju bit his finger (Looks like Mr. Jeong was the top gun), and Asm. Ju Seong-yeong was treated at a hospital for chest injury. Asm. Gang Gi-jeong also received hospital treatment after suffering bruises on his neck. (Oh no! I had those two in my fantasy Korean Assemblymen Fight League!)

Previously on this day, Minority Leader An and other 100-odd GNP Assemblymen occupied the Main Hall and locked the door with a steel wire. They also piled on furniture in front of the door, blocking the entrance.

Majority Leader Gim Hyo-seok and other 100-odd NDP Assemblymen protested in front of the main entrance as they attempted to enter main hall since 2 p.m., when they decided to open the Assembly. By their side, GNP staffer heckled them by singing "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, good bye~"

(Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Guide to Year-End Gift-Giving Period

Dear Korean,

My boss is Korean. He, along with his wife and family, owns many formal/bridal dress shops. They fluently speak Korean and are very religious and proud. My co-workers and I are having an extremely hard time coming up with a Christmas gift for him/his family. Any suggestions?

Laura

Dear Laura,

The Korean would like to note that your email arrived on Nov. 16, before Thanksgiving! For God’s sake, can people just wait until Thanksgiving to start thinking about gift giving? What’s the rush? Right about now is a good time to think about it, so the Korean waited until now.

(Of course, now is also a time where the Korean has a little bit of break from work as well.)

The Korean will go a little off-tangent here: The Korean does not take kindly to all this “Happy Holidays” thing. It’s not because the Korean is a psycho “Christian” who thinks “Merry Christmas” is the only possible year-end greeting. It’s because thanks to Christmas, which involves gift-giving, people are forced to dig up relatively obscure holidays (e.g. Chanukah) or make one up (e.g. Kwanzaa) in order to join in the commercialism without being involved with the Christian faith.

Truth is, virtually every culture (on the Northern Hemisphere) has a year-end celebration, and Christmas is just one of them. Why does every culture have a year-end celebration? It’s the winter solstice! The sun is the most vital source of life before the advent of electricity, so the shortest-sunlight-day was very significant. Koreans are not an exception either. Winter solstice for Koreans is called dongji, and Koreans celebrate it by having red bean porridge (patjuk), because the color red repels evil spirits that occupy the long night. So tracking the day’s length, Jesus happened to be born near winter solstice and resurrected near spring equinox – how convenient is that?

Just like dongji is a relatively obscure holiday for Koreans, so was Chanukah for Jews. The most important Jewish is NOT Chanukah – it’s Yom Kippur, in which a year’s worth of sin is atoned in one day. (Or as Jon Stewart puts it, “the best deal in all of religion.” Note that Yom Kippur generally falls around autumn equinox too.) Chanukah only gets the attention it currently gets because it happens to fall about the same time as Christmas – start getting them gifts!

The Korean is sick of learning the names of 25 different winter holidays, not because the Korean doesn’t care about other culture – quite the opposite is true – but because those holidays are relatively unimportant in any given culture, and are only dug out of obscurity so that we can step away from Christianity while buying into one true religion of America – Commercialism. This actually stops people from learning different cultures – the Korean would wager that Chanukah is the only Jewish holiday that many folks know, while Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah dwarf Chanukah in terms of their relative importance. So from now on, the Korean will call this holiday season thusly: the “Year-End Gift-Giving Period”.

Okay, tangent over. What is to be given to Koreans in the 2007 YEGGP? First of all, there is no set Korean gift for YEGGP. (In fact, there is no set Korean gift for ANY occasion, except maybe for a gold ring for a baby’s first birthday, seaweed soup on birthdays, and a large party on the 60^th birthday. Please stop asking the Korean questions like “What do Koreans give each other for birthday/Valentine’s Day/anniversary/etc.?”)

Actually, middle-aged Korean men are very difficult to give gifts to – even Koreans themselves (usually the children of these men) have a lot of trouble buying gifts. There is one universal hobby for all Korean men – drinking. So a very common gift for Korean men is fine wine or scotch, because Koreans simply love scotch. But Laura’s boss might be the devout Christian type who may not drink, so that might not be good. Golfing is a very common hobby for Korean Americans, so something golf-related is a solid gift as well. Other good generic gift ideas are usually good for Koreans as well – that may include sweaters, tie, gift cards, and so on.

Anyone have a better idea? Please tell the Korean. He still needs to do his Year-End Gift-Giving Period shopping for everyone.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.