#8 Reflection (ym)

     Spoke up for the first time in class! (probably the longest record a global scholar will ever have lol) Although it was so unexpected. I completely thought we are going to discuss about Drawing the Global Colour Line by Marilyn Lake and Henry Renolds, so I have been preparing for that... so let me introduce some points that I wanted to make :)

1. About the Japanese culture / language
The article talked about how the Japanese wanted their language to be one of the official languages in Australia. Japan is such an isolated country, that it is difficult to integrate to other cultures. As a Japanese who has somewhat of an international perspective, this has both advantages and disadvantages. I have talked about in my previous blog post, but one of the advantages of our country being isolated (kind of) is that we can keep our tradition and culture. Because we do not have so many various types of new cultures coming in (we do have a lot of course, but it is unidirectional in a way to phrase it), there is a distinct line between our traditional cultures and our new cultures. However, for an example, connecting to the Japanese language, one of the disadvantages is that Japanese is only spoken by the Japanese people. It is difficult to spread our cultures such as the languages to other countries. That being said, since Japanese is only spoken in Japan, it is not necessary to bring Japanese as the official language in Australia.

2. From a Realist perspective
After I read the article, one of the things that was noteworthy for me, was that Australia was not aware of the consequences that: the Japanese will start dominating the nation. Although from a realist perspective, they [Australia] want their people to be the strongest in the nation. Then I had this question of: Why did Australia bring Japanese as the workforce? Why didn't they bring white people to pursue their "whiteness"?

     Also, I had some thoughts when we were discussing about the question: Is racial hierarchy resolvable? so I will share them here :)
     
1. Eli's point of communism being the best ideology
I disagree with this point. I totally understand that the principle of communism is great and idealistic to any nation in the world. However, if you look at the communist nations today (i.e. China, Russia), the government is not acting according to the principles at all because of their human nature capitalism.

2. Relating to climate change
I just wanted to share this with the class. I have read before, that from a developing country point of view, it is not fair that the developed countries are arguing and trying to solve climate change when it is time for the developing countries to develop economically and become strong industrial countries. I consider this as racial hierarchy too. When I was reflecting about this topic, I have finally realized how difficult it is to solve this issue. Because the earth is our priority, if we run out of resources, we cannot do anything. However, if we take actions to solve the climate change issues, inequalities between the developed and the developing countries will increase by the developing countries not being able to develop to catch up to the developed countries.