Screen grab from San
Francisco's KTVU: Whether one attributes the
station's error in
identifying the pilots on last week's tragic crash to
insensitivity, racism, or
incompetence, it is undeniably embarrassing.
Asiana
Tragedy: American 'Racists' Should Face Django (JoongAngIlbo, South Korea)
"San Francisco television station KTVU aired a broadcast
that included racially bogus and insensitive names attributed to the pilots of
the Asiana aircraft. ... making a mockery of Asian
names - especially in an Asian tragedy - is nothing but discrimination. ... It
is truly unpleasant that some Americans mock Korean culture at a time of such a
tragic accident. The antidote I would propose is a movie. I’d recommend Django Unchained, a 2012 American western
directed by Quentin Tarantino. Let Djangodeal with
these racists."
Jamie Foxx as Django: Dees the insensitivity of American media in the wake of the Asiana air crash in San Francisco warrant his brand of rough justice?
A
Tokyo correspondent for an American newspaper told me - as if he had made a major
discovery, "When I visited the house of a Japanese friend, he offered me a
pair of slippers. Perhaps he was afraid of a foreigner’s feet touching his
floor. It succinctly revealed how Japanese culture distinguishes inside from
outside."
In
fact, by offering him a pair of slippers, the reporter's Japanese friend was
simply trying to be nice and make him comfortable. The American told me that before
coming to Tokyo, he had read many books on Japanese culture. His overly
analytic approach caused him to interpret every incident in Japan from a book-based
perspective. I realized that even with an educated journalist, "bias"
can lead to a distinct loss of common sense.
Rather
than under conditions of complete ignorance, prejudice against other cultures comes
about when one has only partial knowledge of it. American media are diagnosing
the causes of the recent Asiana Air crash in San
Francisco based on half-baked ideas of Korean culture. They report on certain
aspects of Korean culture, highlighting a respect for seniority and hierarchy, an
authoritarian streak, top-down communications and the uses of honorifics in Korean.
They argue that these aspects of our culture may have prevented a prompt
response to the crisis in the cockpit. So before investigating the objective
causes of the crash, they have rushed to a very subjective judgment: "That’s
how Koreans act."
But
how about military aviation, in which the culture is far more authoritarian and
hierarchical? If Western pilots are so free from authoritarianism, are they also
free from the risk of accident? How about pilots in Japan, where the language
has extremely complicated honorifics? Blaming the accident on Korean culture reflects
a complete lack of logic.
The
temptation to explain complicated phenomena with a single theory often leads to
cultural determinism. There are many scholarly examples of this. In the 1960s,
American political scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba
came up with a theory
on political culture, which outlined three types of citizen orientation and
highlighted that the participant culture of the West best suits a democracy: parochial
[political sleepwalker, not involved, no knowledge or interest in the domestic
political system]; subject [somewhat aware of political institutions and rules],
and participant [possessing a strong sense of influence, competence and
confidence in understanding the domestic political system]. Essentially they
argued that the superior are superior because they are born that way, and the
inferior are inferior because they, too, are born that way.
Similarly,
other Western scholars have sought the Confucian secret behind the development of
the four Asian dragons - Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. They claim
that state-led economic development has been supported by Confucian values. The
unavoidable question is where Confucian culture was in the era before the
abrupt acceleration in state-led growth? If Confucian culture helped promote
economic development, why had Asian countries fallen so far behind in
industrialization compared to the West? This theory on Confucianism completely
fails to address these questions.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Of
course, understanding cultural differences is important. But one cannot expect it
to explain everything. This is how ideas of cultural supremacy and even racial
discrimination emerge. San Francisco television station KTVU aired a broadcast
that included racially bogus and insensitive names attributed to the pilots of
the Asiana aircraft, which, amazingly, were confirmed
by an intern at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. When the hoax
was uncovered, Americans claimed it was a bad joke - not racial discrimination.
But making a mockery of Asian names - especially in an Asian tragedy - is
nothing but discrimination.
Of
course, it would also be a mistake to blame deeply-rooted American racial
discrimination. The United States has elected Barack Obama as president twice.
In any society, one finds third raters. In Korea, a news anchor also made
ignominious remarks about the fatalities in the crash being Chinese.
Trying
to explain everything through culture is foolish and risky. It is truly
unpleasant that some Americans mock Korean culture at a time of such a tragic
accident. The antidote I would propose is a movie. I’d recommend Django Unchained, a 2012 American western
directed by Quentin Tarantino. Let Djangodeal with
these racists.
*Nahm Yoon-ho is an editorial writer for the JoongAngIlbo.
