In many parts of SE Asia a paler skin implies that you haven’t had to work outside in the Sun and that you are of a higher social class.
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Agreed. Even in the case of Japan, which was never colonized, issues of race impacted their actions during their colonial period. Their ideology which backed their claims of regional hegemony was most certainly impacted by the white supremacy inherent in European imperialism. This book does a great job of positioning Japan in the global conversation that was happening around race in the late 19th and early 20th century, the period that preceded their imperial expansion. And certainly policy about the Ainu people came to be influenced by these ideologies as well…
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Holy heck. I did not know that. Cosmetic surgery should be outlawed unless it’s really causing psychological issues to the person due to medical reasons (burns, scars, etc). But I’m fortunate enough that all my scars are funny stories so I wear them as pride.
Oh, and I already have a big nose. Ain’t gonna change it 
I’m actually kind of baffled as to why it seems unthinkable to some people that european imperialism and its overt racism could impact people who were not colonized when nobody seems to have trouble grasping, say, that the rise of communism impacted countries that were never communist.
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Primarily because they want to believe that the Soviet Union and communism were unique evils while racism and imperialism were something that had to happen to improve the world.
I read this article once in the AHA’s monthly magazine talking about one of the recent time travel shows, and they noted that the plot of these shows when they involved historians included plots where the historian insisted that the “timeline must be preserved”… But… you know… WHY, the article asked? When history often involves a great deal of suffering? Imperialism involved a great deal of suffering and violence, and acts of outright genocide. If we had the power and ability to avert those things, shouldn’t we? We obviously can’t change them, but we can understand them and learn from them in order to improve the present situation for all of us. Real change demands a deeper understanding than “that was just the past.” It demands we engage with that on a deeper level to understand how it shapes right now.
But to your point…a communist state was beyond the pale, but these things are not, but were in fact necessary? Well no. They were not necessary, except to ensure the centrality of a capitalist economy around the world.
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Dig deeper. It was still bigotry then (at least what I’ve learned of Japanese history from Japanese people) and it remains bigotry today.
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The point isn’t to isolate. The point is to determine cause and effect. To fix a problem, it’s extremely helpful to know the primary causes, even if it’s linked to effect. Saying racism is the cause is to say that eliminating racism will fix the problem. That’s looking at skin whitening through Western eyes. Skin color = race to most Westerners (which is also linked to race here). That’s less true (but admittedly not zero) in many Asian cultures.
Westerners were happy to take advantage of the pre-existing bias towards pale skin. And reinforced it. But eliminating any western influence would not eliminate the root cause that existed before and still does today: People with darker skin are perceived as dumb hicks who work in the fields. Lighter skin is seen as desirable, which gets entangled with definitions of beauty. That root cause has a knock on effect for people with naturally darker skin.
We call discrimination based on skin color racism and use the tools of fighting racism. But that wouldn’t be as effective as addressing classism in Asian cultures. Sure, maybe you can eliminate discrimination based on skin color. But what about clothes, accent, etc.associate with class? You can hope, only hope, those aren’t still used to discriminate. We don’t discriminate against a country accent, right?
Or you can identify the core cause today and be more effective in fixing things.
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This strikes me as a great way to solve an engineering or code based problem, but kind of a poor strategy for solving complex social issues really. Isolating something and eliminating it isn’t really realistic in terms of ideas and their consequences as they are being enacted by living breathing people who think, feel, and will continue to be who they are based partly on those influences. Also, honestly, I’m way too close to some Asian cultures to be naive enough to ignore that skin color and race definitely have meaning to them just as much as class does and and that all of these things intersect with their colonial history while still also allowing for the fact that they have their own bigotries around both class and other races. Realistically though there is no such thing as eliminating western influence. It strikes me that even this discourse we are having is beginning to take a tone that implies we are trying to solve racism and/or classism for Asians through the products marketed to them. To me that is looking at Asians through “western eyes” more than anything else.
The article is about a product choosing to remove more overtly racist language from its branding. No one should imagine for an instant that this will solve either classism or racism in any place. Slowly eroding the prevalence of those sort of memes may actually help over time though, and in that sense it really doesn’t matter if this product was racist in origin or just used language that happened to be racist if the effect is more or less “normalization of racism through ad copy.”
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Based on the rest of your comment, you didn’t need to tell us this for us to know.
Well, sure, if you’re the privileged “default” race in your country. Others don’t have the luxury of limiting themselves to that narrow viewpoint.
Perhaps it’s that people are finally getting sick of the sight of the police singling out African-Americans for persecution and looking at other instances of institutional racism. You’d be surprised what you’d learn by watching the news and following current events (as surprised as you might be if you were capable of showing empathy to people who have been discriminated against due to the colour of their skin).
Because it is more than that for some people who feel that they’ll get further ahead in a white supremacist society if they can pass for white. If you want to risk skin cancer for purposes of vanity, that’s your choice. That doesn’t put you in the same position as someone who causes painful damage to their skin and risks mercury poisoning because a racist society rewards them for looking whiter.
Especially not one whose quality of argument indicates he’s working for free because that’s the only job he can get.
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For those interested in the horrific history of skin whitening creams, I recommend this episode of the “You Must Remember This” podcast.
For those who want the short version, Oberon was a talented actor in the Hollywood stuido system who was one of the most renowned beauties of her day. But she wouldn’t have gotten far in that racist system and society if she hadn’t concealed her ethnicity, both through a BS story and
According to biographers of the actress, Oberon opted to use bleaching makeup to lighten her skin complexion.
Using these creams caused Oberon to suffer painful effects for years to come. With her use of the formula beginning at an early age, it is reported that Oberon began to suffer rashes on her face, particularly around her mouth area.
Described as cosmetic poisoning, Oberon would even have to stop the filming of a movie due to the severity of the rashes on her face and neck. The actress would have to be flown to New York to undergo extensive dermabrasion treatments to alleviate the painful effects.
On addition to seeking medical help, Oberon’s second husband was a film cameraman and even developed a special light to compliment his wife. The camera was designed to whiten the appearance of the skin and removed signs of scarring. Oberson’s husband dubbed his invention ‘the Obie’.
It is often reported that Oberon had extremely sensitive skin, which was likely a result of using skin-lightening creams. During this time, the US Food and Drug Administration discovered that products on the market contained concentrations of ammoniated mercury, likely the cause of the actress’ extreme skin sensitivity.
[Source]
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Oh hell yes it was bigotry! Bigotry towards the commoner, the the worker, the different. What makes you think I thought otherwise? You don’t think I condone it, do you?
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An excellent reminder that the racism in America had a direct impact on class in African American communities, including some seeking to get out altogether by passing as white when possible. Colorism was/is class based, but is not disconnected from white supremacy. Much can be said of skin whitening cream in Asian countries, too. Race was/is a global ideology that helps inform of class is deployed, and you can’t entirely disconnected the two. They intersect rather than run parallel. 
I’m uncertain why that’s a hard concept to grok, but it appears to be for some.
Faulkner is handy here:
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I heartily agree.
Which may be a good point. Some want to distill it down to being caused by racism. I’m making the counter argument that it’s classism. Following your lead, it really doesn’t matter what we call it. It’s its own thing. Maybe trying to shove it under one heading or another or both is pointless.
So my apologies. I’m an engineer and my job is as company problem solver (technical, legal, financial, marketing, etc.). Means I can’t help but pontificate and try to solve problems using the tools I know.
I’ve written far too much today. Sorry about that folks.
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You seem to simultaneously be recognizing and obfuscating that people in different countries have different connotations of racism. For most people in this thread, racism is a systemic cultural discrimination that could not possibly be eliminated without eliminating all intersecting cultural stratifications based on skin color. You seem to be arguing that the term racism should only refer to western based white supremacy, and that even if that is ended other types of social stratifications based on skin color would remain (which you insist is classism but not racism). I’d argue as long as societies are stratisfied on skin tone than there is still racism
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Okay, I’ve been slammed at work today, so I haven’t had time to chime in 'til now.
And I have this to say:
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Just so you know I struggle with this also, with the fact that the strategies I can get results with in some areas don’t work for others. I guess I mean to say I keep engaging you because I do think that expanding and challenging the way we go about considering and trying to solve problems can lead us to better solutions over time.
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Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean that in Asian cultures they don’t see race and skin color as intertwined. I meant that in the context of skin whitening, they aren’t seeing the skin tone difference between their neighbors as a matter of race. I was mixing contexts.
What I was trying to point out is that in western societies, we believe that if two otherwise identical people are being treated differently based on skin color, it must be due to mostly due to race (which isintertwined with class here). So we assume that the same think must be true elsewhere. That’s looking at a problem through Western eyes. But in Asia, the reason for the difference in treatment isn’t due as much to race as it is presumed social class.
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