[KS] Racial matters in context

Hyung Il Pai hyungpai at humanitas.ucsb.edu
Mon Sep 11 13:36:35 EDT 2000


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Dear list,
I have been fascinated at the direction the discussions are going esp. when
personal memoirs/fiction seemed to coincide with indelible colonial legacies
of racism that resonate with severe repurcussions in contemporary times.

As an anthropologist and always trying to see broad cultural and social
patterns, I just wanted to add that we have to understand that Japanese,
Chinese and Korean intellectuals in the early 20th century ( who were trying
to come up with discourses on their own national identities and place in the
historical/world development and power scheme of things), they were all
heavily influenced by European/American theories on race, class, and stages
of cultural evolution. At that time, probably Social Darwinism had the most
impact.
As a result, racial studies were all the rage- they had all read, translated
and were fascinated with racial types, classifications based anthropometry
(measurements of body parts, skin/hair color), phrenology (head-shapes), and
of course blood types that had categorized gradations of
"primitive/prehistoric to barbaric and more advanced races (who were
naturally mostly "white."). In East Asia, racial classifications were
further complicated by adding the traditional concept of lineage (chong) and
chok (clans). So the hypothetical "Korean racial Lineage" is usually
depicted as : Stone Age Paleo-asiatics- Bronze Age/ Tungus-Yemaek (The
direct Han minjok racial ancestors and founders of
Koguryo/Puyo)-Silla-Koryo-Yi dynasty like an extended family. The Key point
in this scheme is that the line is UNBROKEN and therefore the Korean people,
civilization and history is unique and has kept the "pure" line of ancestral
descent and untouched by mixing with "foreigners."

Countless number of serious anthropological volumes have been written
classifying types/ sub-types/racial lineages based on such spurious criteria
( which unfortunately still are cited in certain circles even in
contemporary Korea).  Japanese racial studies were also heavily influenced
by Nazi ideology that argued that racial superiority and technological
advancement will result in strong nations that were justified in conquering
lesser and weaker races.

 Of course all these studies in recent times, have been exposed as false and
heavily biased by race and culture depending on who were conducting the
experiments on whom as Steven J. Gould has eloquently written in the "The
Mismeasure of Man."

For example: Torii Ryuzo and an entire generation of Japanese
anthropologists travelled around Korea and Manchuria comparing skull and
body measurements between 1905-1930's and concluded that "Koreans" are
remarkably similarly to Japanese in skull shape and skin color , hair type
and body shape ( no surprise here).  Such studies conveniently coincided
with the popular Nikkan hypothesis ( Korea/Japan common racial origins) that
were promoted during the time of the annexation.

Therefore, in all racial matters, past and present, no matter how skewed, I
believe it is important we have to figure out the social
/cultural/class/gender contexts (since all these were biases strongly
inter-twined with racial/lineage hierarchies)  before we go around
condemning "racial slurs" or personal/ethnic biases in memoirs or novels
( that were probably written to sell books or promote one's own agenda)







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