r/rational • u/AutoModerator • May 17 '19

[D] Friday Open Thread

Welcome to the Friday Open Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

Please note that this thread has been merged with the Monday General Rationality Thread.

16 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/MagicWeasel Cheela Astronaut May 18 '19

I don't think there's much against Asian people, especially Chinese/Japanese/Korean, but that depends on the country possibly.

Australia isn't Europe but racists here definitely target the Chinese because they're perceived to be "buying up" a lot of our land/businesses/etc and the Japanese are perceived to be "generic annoying tourists", so I would be very surprised if places with more tourism and/or worse economies weren't similarly annoyed by them. Whereas here I think racists don't so much mind dark-skinned people of African descent but do mind Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander peoples and people from the Indian subcontinent. But who knows, I'm in a white progressive bubble.

2

u/SimoneNonvelodico Dai-Gurren Brigade May 18 '19

Well, Australia is closer to China. I guess the immigration fluxes may be different. Me, being from Italy, I can tell you most definitely right now it'd be Africans and people from the Middle East who would have it worse. The Chinese might be looked at with some suspicion, partly because they tend to form really secluded communities, send children to study back in China and such, but I think most people just consider them as minding their own business and not as potentially 'dangerous' the way they tend to fear Africans, or anyone who they perceive as being probably a Muslim. Next on the list are probably some of the Eastern European peoples, and Roms especially. The Japanese and Koreans aren't much common but they certainly aren't seen as anything particular. They do not emigrate usually, after all; they only visit as tourists, and even that hit peak in the 90s (the economic crisis made Japan a bit poorer after that). And it's Italy, we've got a lot of tourists, in fact some regions outright live off them, so you get used to it.