Living abroad in a country that is almost 100% people of the same religion, culture, race, etc., has provided me with some unique opportunities regarding racism. I've talked before about how one of the possible "good" results for people in this type of society is that everybody being the same gives each person a very strong sense of pride and confidence so that they don't feel the affects racism because they find strength in such a large group, so anyone looking down on them is views as just an idiot. While on the flip side it can cause arrogance, looking down on all other groups, and refusing to see things from the point of view of others.
I've also have seen living in this culture affect my own views as well. Being in a culture where everybody is so similar can cause you to become very lazy in your thinking. It becomes very easy to find yourself thinking that "Taiwanese are this and that" because that is all you see and interact with. Forgetting that really it's "All humans are this and that." Granted Taiwanese have some views, habits, and thoughts, which are unique to just Taiwanese, or perhaps the people of East Asian countries. However for the most part all humans are the same, with some being good, and some being bad. Just sometimes I have to remind myself that things people do that I don't like, aren't always because of something uniquely Taiwanese, but rather just cause some people are just jerks.
The picture above is a great example of this. A park near my home has a nice fenced in area for dogs to run around and play. This fenced in area has a few benches for people to sit on, which recently has attracted people who don't have dogs to come in and take a load off. The problem is that a lot of these people don't close the gates, meaning dogs can just escape from this area.
Over the weeks it's gotten worse as a lot of these visitors will eat food in this area and just throw the trash on the ground. Which is troublesome as it being an area for dogs, the dogs will come over and try to eat the left over food.
But the biggest offense was last night. Not only was there a ton of food, but they bad guys had also stolen the charity box you see in the picture. It's a box for donations for a charity which helps orphans in Taiwan. Somebody had stolen this box and taken all the money out.
The troublesome thing is that for a split second I was thinking "Evil Taiwa..." then I corrected myself with "Evil humans!!!" While I am a logical person and I know that all humans are equally horrible, when you only interact with one group day after day, year after year, it's hard to stop yourself from demonizing or evangelizing that one group. I sometimes find myself wanting to move, just so I can reset my barometer. I already have an extremely negative view of Americans, which is why I left America. But my time in Taiwan has shown me that Americans aren't that bad. Perhaps moving yet again will allow me to realize more of the great things about Taiwanese, while at the same time I am reminding myself that it's not that people of that new country which are bad/good, it's all humans who are bad/good.
