The below article is written by Agnes Chan who is a singer, an UNICEF ambassador, a writer and a professor. This essay named "The Right Track" is used as English course-4 textbook at my Univ. I will write down all of the article little by little to gain my comprehension, and remark my impressions of each unit last.
Unit 1: Not "halves" but "doubles"
I recently watched a television program whose theme was "children born to parents of different races or nationalities." It featured people who are opposed to international marriages because they believe that children born to these parents suffer bullying and other hardships.
Discrimination arises from ignorance, fear and the need to feel superior to others. We have to teach our children to respect one another and to be kind to all people, regardless of racial differences. We adults must be careful not to discriminate against other cultures ourselves. Children will adopt our attitudes. And prejudice, once planted, is hard to root out.
Japan is not the only country that gives children of mixed heritages a hard time, but because being foreign is still rare in most Japanese schools, "halves" are an easy target. However, as many people on the TV program pointed out, "halves" are actually "doubles", because they are exposed to two different countries. Many of these children are bilingual, and they have more than one place to call home. In this global world, this "extra" background definitely gives them an edge in having a wider range of choices. But I can also understand how difficult it is for a person who is young and self-conscious to be seen as "different" and an "outsider."
If mixed-race children are made to feel unwanted by their peers, they must turn to their families for spiritual support. Their parents must teach them not only to accept the hard facts of life, but also to feel proud of themselves as individuals. These children should be given every opportunity to "feel natural" by forming friendships outside of school and in more "international" circles. They must know that being different is not a disadvantage at all, but great chance, and that having a "double" background is a lot of fun.
The those on the TV show who spoke out against cross-cultural marriages pointed out that half of these unions end in divorce. Marrying a person of a different heritage raises the risk of a ruined relationship, they said, and the children born to these parents suffer the consequences. It is probably true that the risk are higher, but one must also remember that 50 percent of such marriages do work.
A successful marriage depends not on whether the husband and wife were born in the same country, but on how much they feel they belong to each other and to the family that they have set up. If you are thinking about marrying a person of a different race or from a different country, trust your heart and that of your partner. If you feel you are made for each other, do not hesitate to get married. After all, love is the best thing that can happen to us.
Still, I must admit Japan is not an easy place for foreigners to feel a sense of belonging. I hope this will change, because Japan needs more oreigners to come and boost the country's work force. Japan not only needs goodwill between newcomers and Japanese, but it also needs them to fall in love with each other so more families can be set up and more babies can be born to stop society from aging at the present alarming pace. We must understand that these families are the families of the future. As interactions between different peoples become more frequent and more inevitable, mixed marriages will become the norm. A more open attitude toward mixed couples and their children is not a choice, but a necessity for the survival of the country.
# My impression #
I don't agree her about last paragraph. I think preventing discrimination will link to stopping the declining birthrate, but it should not be the purpose to drop the discriminatory society. Most of the Japanese think like that, most of the colored races people staying in Japan come to earn money to feed their family living in their home country.
As America is often referred to as meltingpot, the nation is ethnically and religiously diverse. But they usually make a community by themselves because there are many people of same country or same race in the U.S. They can do that because America has a huge land to share with a huge number of immigrants. So, the community can also make a mosque for Islam in even mainly Christian country.In contrast, Japan is small country, and the population is already over 100 million. I think that most of the foreigners staying in Japan want to just earn money, and go back to home country. Because they know that Japan is not a stable country to leave a offspring.
As Agnes mentioned it in the essay, discrimination arises from the need to feel superior to others. So, I think it is rare to be opposed to international marriages between white people and Japanese because Japanese think white people staying in Japan are rich. To the contrary, colored races people are regarded as poor.
Don't you think the discrimination is the same as the labor class. The white-collar workers earn good salary, but the blue-collar workers can not earn enough money regardless of their hard work. They say there is a clear correlation between poverty and crime. It might be natural that coward Japanese try to keep crime away. That means, Japanese think human being is "homo sapience" not "homo patiens". Agnes said, Japan needs work force, and needs babies. But the point of view might cause another discrimination. It is dangerous to think of foreigners as labors like a horse.
