For the group of teenagers waving and shouting at me, the word gaijin was merely a way of identifying their rare and exciting discovery. For me, a citizen of a country whose history has its share of prejudice and violence, the impersonal identification of me, based solely on my appearance, sounded like the racial and ethnic epithets hurled at Italian immigrants, African-Americans, Asians, Native Americans, Irish immigrants, Jews and millions of other people in the United States.
The word gaijin simply means "foreigner." It is not a derogatory term. But in Italy and the United States, two countries rich with immigrants from all over the world, the act of impersonally identifying a person's racial or ethnic background based solely on the person's appearance, is considered insulting. In Italy this is because foreigners are usually tourists and insulting tourists means losing money. Also, the population in Italy has been growing rapidly over the last decade thanks to massive immigration from the surrounding European countries and Asia. Today, about 7% of the country was born in another country or was born to a foreigner. Before the immigration boom in Italy, the population was rapidly shrinking.
In the United States this is because the country prides itself on being a "melting pot," which meant that any race, ethnicity or culture was accepted in, as long as one's name and appearance looked and sounded "American" or white and of Anglo origin. This compelled thousands of Jews, Italians, Poles, Russians, and other Europeans to assimilate by changing their names into more English-sounding monikers: My friend's grandfather changed his last name from Zlotniki to the English translation "Gold," for example. Another friend of mine changed his family name back to the original Italian name and he is now "Fantigrossi" instead of just "Fanta."
Many immigrants came to America to escape difficult conditions in their native countries. Once settled on American soil, many new residents worked hard to assimilate into the new American culture and shed their old ways. To point out someone's difference, therefore, was to point out how one had failed to become accepted into American society. The newest wave of immigration in Italy has not had the same effect on its newest citizens. Instead, Italy is more like a salad where different cultures and backgrounds keep their distinct traits, but they all work together to make a great country.
Another reason I reacted so strongly to being called a gaijin was because of the history of racial discrimination in the United States and around the world. For centuries Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Aborigines have suffered from discrimination in employment, housing and education. Down in the southern United States, Jim Crow laws made it illegal for a people of one race to use bathrooms designated for the other race or to sit in the wrong place on the bus or at a lunch counter. Despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act and numerous other laws that strive to provide equal rights to all races, genders, religions and creeds, people today still discriminate based on appearance. In South African, Apartheid made it legal to discriminate against Black Africans and New Zealand and Australia are just beginning to treat their aboriginal citizens better.
The Japanese teenagers calling out to me were blissfully ignorant of all these offenses. Unlike the United States, it is nearly impossible for a non-Japanese person to gain...
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