Aggro Man

I've tried in this space to give David Aldwinkle (Arudo Debito when he made Japan his home) his due, but with his 'micro-aggro' obsesssion, David no longer merits our serious consideration; this will be the last post about Monsieur Aldwinkle.

The Japan Times's resident sage, having run out of meaningful things to say, asserts:

 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."

They include, in Japan's case, verbal cues (such as "You speak such good Japanese!" — after saying only a sentence or two — or "How long will you be in Japan?" regardless of whether a non-Japanese (NJ) might have lived the preponderance of their life here)...

Wow.

Someone compliments me on my Japanese- how dare they.     

Someone wants to know how long I plan to be in Japan- the nerve.

Someone observes that I use chopsticks properly (not all Japanese do)- how presumptuous.


I can't take it anymore. I'm bein' oppressed!

No wonder David left Japan- he couldn't enjoy himself here.  In Dave's disordered mind, racism rears its ugly head in every social interaction, however harmless on the surface. 

And by the by, don't you just adore people who use fancy-sounding words such as 'preponderance' (which doesn't work in this context anyway) when a humbler term ('most', in this instance) does the business?

Dave, dude- get over yourself.


 

Activist Arudo

Japan watchers are probably familiar with the name Debito Arudo.  Born David Christopher Schofill (surname later changed to Aldwinkle) in the US in 1965, Arudo made Japan his full-time home from the early 1990s until 2011, becoming a naturalized Japanese (and proud owner of a new cognomen) in the process.  Arudo has been an indefatigable campaigner for the rights of foreigners in Japan, successfully suing a business owner in Hokkaido whose spa refused foreign guests. While Arudo has done the expat community susbstantial good, I find his unrelenting criticism of Japan and the Japanese debilitating; rarely does he have anything positive to say about the country.  The activist continues to comment on the expat experience, submitting a monthly column to the Japan Times. But now that he's back stateside, he should consider human rights abuses closer to home. For starters, he might want to take up the cause of Moslem Americans, increasingly targeted by their own government in its domestic war on terror- seems to me they have a much harder time of it than expats in Japan.