Politics, Pets and the Policies of Evicting Crack-heads

The other night I went to Justin’s house (Justin is my ten-year old Korean student), to tutor him in English and eat delicious bibimbap with him and his family. Over dinner we had quite an intelligent discussion – mixing English, Korean and Russian – about politics in the US and Kyrgyzstan. His father said that even though he knew very little about the policies of either Obama or McCain, if he were an American he would vote for Obama. His reasoning was that the election of a black man to the US presidency would prove that the US really is a nation of immigrants, a nation for everybody, a nation without prejudice. I heard so many racist comments against blacks when I was in South Korea, that this was a pleasant surprise. (Of course, I’m currently listening to an NPR podcast on race in the current presidential election, which makes it seem as though such an enlightened view might actually be rather rare...)

With regards to politics in Kyrgyzstan, Justin’s parents were telling me about the similarities between Bakiev (Kyrgyzstan’s current president) and Akayev (the president who was ousted in Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 revolution). Nepotism was a huge problem under Akayev, with his children holding prominent places in the government. Apparently the situation under Bakiev is even worse, specifically with the power held by Bakiev’s son, Maxim:

[larger version]

There were local elections here in Bishkek this past Sunday. Very few of my students voted; they all fervently believed that there was no reason to vote as the results had already been pre-determined. It was consensus among my students that whoever could pay the President the most money would earn seats in local government, no matter who received the most votes, so why bother? Several students said that if they lived somewhere where their vote counted, “like the US or Russia” (!!!) they would vote, but here in Kyrgyzstan, there’s just no point.

This guy was one of the candidates:
Doesn't he look like Frodo with a mullet???

And speaking of voting... my ballot arrived! :-) Perhaps I can finally manage to *not* be disenfranchised in a presidential election. I was able to download the mp3 of the most recent debate between Obama and McCain (better late than never; at least I’m not completely out of touch), and while I continue to be amazed by the fact that the Republicans have an intelligent and articulate sounding candidate, I definitely think Obama won. I understand that repeating your message is something politicians do in order to drive their point home, but the way McCain repeated himself verbatim so many times made him seem to me like a doddering old man. And the whole “that one” thing? Sheesh. Also, citing working across the aisle with that party-traitor Joe Lieberman is hardly a good example!

On a totally different note, the theme of the module I’ve been teaching this past week in my advanced class was honesty and dishonesty, which of course meant we did a lot of talking about boyfriends/girlfriends and husbands/wives cheating on each other. Today one of my students said that all husbands will cheat, and that it’s a wife’s duty to ignore the cheating, and not to confront him, but to do her best to be the perfect wife in order to lure him back. Everyone else in the class agreed with her (and there were five women and man in that class). Depressing! (And given recent events, duly so.)

What else? Minsk, my new kitten, continues to have diarrhea. Instead of receiving medicine at the vet, my vet wrote down the name of a medication to buy at the pharmacy – as in the pharmacy where *humans* buy their meds – and instructed me to give the cat 1/6 of a pill twice a day. I hope it works. With the lack of the “good” cat litter at my pet store and five cats in my apartment, Minsk’s digestive problems are definitely raising the odor level in my home. Gross, huh? And of course, I can’t even begin to look for a home for the poor girl until she’s healthy and 100% litter box trained. She uses the box about 90% of the time, which is an improvement over 0%, but still not acceptable. Sigh. But on the plus side, she is incredibly sweet and snuggly – the others are quite jealous!

And finally, the part of the tale you’ve been waiting for: If you’ve been following this blog for a while now, you’ve no doubt heard of Ronnie, my crazy old-guy neighbor in the Waycross ghetto who got high, then took off all his clothes in order to “show me his biologicals” as he said. Anyway, he used to squat in an empty house a block away from my Waycross home. (And I do mean squat: it wasn’t his and had no electricity or running water.) Then, for some reason, my mom hired him to paint this extra house that she owns. (She bought it super-cheap hopes to sell it one day, although given the current financial situation, god knows when that will be.) Anyway, while Ronnie was painting the house (in a style described by my mom as “a fuck-up”), he decided to move in and start squatting there. After all, that house has electricity and running water, and as the painter, he’d been given keys. Then he got arrested for possession of crack. As soon as he got arrested, my advice to my mom was to have the locks changed ASAP. She didn’t. That was a few months ago. A couple days ago she saw Ronnie riding his bike, and decided to make arrangements to have the locks changed. That was when she learned that he’d been out of jail and living in her other house for the past two weeks! Because she’d originally given him the keys and permission to be in there, the police said that they can’t do anything about it. After learning this, my mom drove around the ghetto (that being *my* neighborhood, btw) until she found him, then royally bitched him out until he promised that he’d be out by the end of the week. We shall see. Either way, she's having the locks changed at the end of the week, whether he's gotten his stuff out or not.

The thing is, I’d recently decided to try to sell my house and move into the other house (the one currently inhabited by the crack-head painter/flasher)! At the very least, I’d like to put my four Kyrgyz cats in that house so they won’t have to deal with a two-day world-wide trip followed by introduction to all those cats that live at my house. Neither of those things is going to happen if Ronnie’s living in there. I may well have to move myself and the Bishkek Four straight into the Spartan :-)

Rock, thefts and racism

I didn’t write much about the rock festival that Katy and I went to last Saturday, as I was more concerned about my stolen wallet. (I’m still rather concerned about the loss of the drivers license, as according to the GA DMV website, you need to know your license number in order to replace it, and I don’t.) Anyway, as I mentioned in the post about the wallet, the sound quality at the rock festival was definitely sub-par. Even groups which we had heard before, which we knew normally sounded good (such as our friends in the band Cadillac), sounded terrible at this event. As such, I won’t bother wasting my time uploading any videos. I will, however, post some shots of Cadillac performing:

While at the festival, we ran into Lyuba, a girl of 17 who is one of Katy’s former students. I told her how I’d just had my wallet stolen, and her reaction was, “But you’re OK, right?” She then gestured to a vertical scar bisecting her lower lip and told me the following story:

One night as she was walking home, she was surrounded by a group of Kyrgyz men. (I should probably mention that Lyuba is ethnically Russian and doesn’t speak any Kyrgyz.) They began shouting at her in Kyrgyz, then one of them pulled out a knife. At this point she gave them her wallet, saying (in Russian) “Take my money, but please don’t hurt me.” They took her money, then one of them punched her in the face, splitting open her lip and knocking her to the ground. They kicked her repeatedly as she lay on the ground. Later, Lyuba was told by several ethnic Kyrgyz to whom she related this tale that “her people” often attack/injure/kill Kyrgyz people in Russia, so she probably deserved it.

The thing is, there definitely are racially motivated attacks against non ethnic-Russians in Russia, but that hardly justifies retribution against 17 year old girls in Kyrgyzstan! Additionally, I find it fascinating that both in Russia and here in Kyrgyzstan, my students have insisted that racism is a problem endemic to America (I was told just last night that in America all whites hate all blacks and vice versa!) and that there is no racism in either Russia or Kyrgyzstan...

On a lighter note, I bought a new wallet:

I could have told you that!

This morning my friend Brooke sent me a link which her mom thought I'd find interesting. It's to an NPR segment entitled Ethnic Bias Seen in South Korea Teacher Hiring. You should all definitely go give it a listen.

The Korean middle-school take on racism

In one of my middle school classes, we are currently working our way through a conversation book. We read a short (2-3 page, fairly large print) article on a topic and then discuss. We've only had the book a short time, but so far we've discussed habits, world population, the future and most recently, racism. The article we read essentially defined racism and then talked a good bit about why racism is bad. After reading the article, I began to ask my students some questions.

I started off with this one: What is racism? I was looking for an answer along the lines of what was presented in the article, which was that racism is when someone thinks his/her race is superior to other races. Well, the answer I got was a little different. My students were unanimous: Racism is when white and black people don't get along. But only white and black people. What about Asians? Can Asian people ever be racist? No. Racism is something that happens when white and black people don't get along. Period. Um, okay.

What about Hispanic people - can they be racist or experience racism? I was told that Hispanic people don't count; they're not important.

Is racism good or bad? Bad. Why? Because black people are sad and poor.

Are Korean people ever racist? No! Never!

Is there racism in Korea? Not now. There was racism back during the early part of the 20th century when the Japanese invaded Korea. The Japanese thought that they were superior to the Koreans, and beat them and made them work for the Japanese. Also, all Japanese are monkeys. All Japanese are monkeys? Isn't that racist? No. [As an aside, the sheer hatred my kids display towards the Japanese is unnerving. The other day we were learning adjectives for nationality in one of my classes of sixth graders. There was a picture of a Japanese woman. I caught one of my students drawing very graphic images of blood coming from various parts of her body. But only the Japanese woman - the people of other nationalities on the page were untouched. I asked him why and was told, "I don't like Japan"]

So, there are many white people in Korea. Why are there so few black people? (I know that this is because one must submit a photo with one's job application... this is so non-white/Asian people can be weeded out. Even Asians have a hard time getting jobs here.) Well, according to my kids, black people are too poor, that's why they're not here. I decided not to get into the photo thing.

Are you racist? No.

Do you think that Koreans are better than people from other countries? Yes.

One can't blame the kids for having these opinions; it's their parents and teachers who are propagating such views who are at fault.

On being a foreigner in a homogenous society, Part 2

This post was inspired by the following comment, left by Megan on this post:

Do you find it in any way EASIER being a foreigner in a country where you physically look foreign than you did, say, in Russia? I ask because although I've lived abroad for some time now, I've only been to European countries, and I always feel like I should try to fit in as much as possible and sometimes feel scared of being publicly "outed" as a foreigner (moreso in Russia than in Sweden). I sometimes think if I were in a place where I just COULDN'T fit in it would be in some ways more difficult, but in other ways somewhat liberating. Am I making any sense?

Do I find it easier… For me, Korea is easier than Russia in that strangers and service industry staff are more helpful and more patient with my foreignness than their surly counterparts in Russia ever were. However, my scant Korean skills make life over here far more challenging in a lot of ways. But that's such a simple answer, and this was such a complex question, one which has spawned all sorts of thoughts in my head. So prepare yourselves for a bit of a long post, oh readers.

First one must consider one’s race, the country in which one is located, and one’s country of origin. During my three extended periods in Russia, I spent a lot of time trying to blend in. True, I’m not as hot as so many of the devushki, but given the right clothes (and you know how I *love* Russian clothes) and the right facial expression, I can be (and often have been) mistaken for one. This meant that during my time in Russia I could (usually) walk the streets in anonymity. Unless someone stopped to talk to me, my status as an inostranka (foreigner) would remain my little secret.

Now, if you’re a foreigner in Russia, the ability to blend in definitely has its advantages. For one thing, Russians love to charge one price for Russians and another, much higher, price for foreigners. Getting into museums and the like for the Russian price can be done, assuming one looks the part and says as little as possible. Other than times when I wanted to avoid foreigner rates, I never really worried too much about being outed as an American while I was in Russia. I’ve spent a lot of time in Russia (including my first trip in 1999 when, owing to the presence of US troops in the former Yugoslavia anti-Americanism in Russia was - according to the US State Department - at a ten year high) and I have never personally encountered anti-Americanism.

But racism now... that’s something a little different. Being a whitey who spent most of her time in Russian cities where the overwhelming majority of the population was also white, racism was never a problem I encountered personally, although it’s something that is a lot easier to spot. Let me give you some examples:

In the American Home, I taught students who ranged in age from teenagers to retirees. Students of all ages were very candid about their views on race, and these views came out when we watched Forrest Gump in class. I was very surprised to hear some of my students say, “Oh yes, I’m racist. I don’t like black people,” quite calmly and candidly in class.

My friend Youngmee, a Korean-American who taught at the same school as I did last year was unable to blend in as I could, since the Western Russian city in which we lived was populated nearly entirely by whites. As far as I know, Youngmee never ran into any trouble on account of her race, although on more than one occasion she was told “Russia for the Russians!” by passersby. (“Russia for the Russians!” is a nationalistic slogan that frequently appears in Russian graffiti these days. Obviously, the morons propagating this slogan have never ventured into the Russian East, which is chock-full of Asians.)

Two years ago, a tan-skinned Italian-American working at the American Home was arrested and harassed by the police on more than one occasion; because of her skin color, she resembled a Chechen, and was therefore suspected of being a terrorist. Things got so bad for her that she ended up leaving the country several months earlier than she had planned.

Additionally, there have been several well-publicized murders of non-white foreigners in Russia in recent years. Suffice it to say that Russia isn’t exactly the friendliest of places for non-white travelers. Of course, if you read Caitlin’s comment on my previous post, you’ll see that this is not a problem endemic to Russia:

I did find that the Swiss (based on a year's worth of experience in Swiss high school classrooms) can't comprehend a Western society with black, Asian, or otherwise not-white people as citizens on equal terms with whites. I brought my high school yearbook in and the kids pointed and laughed at -- you guessed it -- EVERY SINGLE black face in the damn thing. And if you know Lake City, you know that they did a lot of laughing. I had another kid (Dutch kid) get really puzzled when I explained to him that people in Vancouver, Canada, could be of Asian decent AND STILL BE Canadian. He pulled back the edges of his eyes with his fingers and said, "What? Canadian???"

But let’s shift the focus of this post to South Korea. Now, I have no hope whatsoever of blending in over here. Even if I spoke fluent Korean and owned a 100% Korean wardrobe, my foreignness would still be obvious a block or two away. I am a very, very, very light-skinned whitey; I’m always going to stand out over here. Luckily for me, most Koreans are incredibly helpful to white foreigners. I find that nearly everyone is very patient with my fumbling attempts to communicate in their language, and they tend to laugh good-naturedly when it becomes obvious that I understand little more than a handful of Korean phrases. I’ve had complete strangers offer to help me numerous times. And let’s not forget the frequent greetings!

Anti-Americanism is present here, although it is most commonly associated with the US military presence, and we civilians are rarely bothered by it. I did have the misfortune during my first trip to Korea back in 2001 of having an Anti-American psychobitch as my boss (she told me to my face that she hated all Americans and had only hired me because parents preferred American teachers); however, I have personally encountered no other anti-Americans during my three trips to Korea.

But, then we come back to racism. Luckily for me, Koreans apparently view white people as second on the totem pole of quality, below Koreans of course. When applying for a job teaching English in Korea, native-English speaking candidates are required to submit a photograph. White teachers are preferred. Jobs can be found for Asians, but it’s difficult. If you’re Hispanic, chances are low; if you’re black, they’re essentially nil.

As a result, non-white foreigners don’t get the same fabulous treatment by the Korean masses that we whiteys do, and that’s damned unfortunate.

Let’s take what happened recently to African-American woman Leslie Joanne Benfield. She speaks fluent Korean, and in 2004 she became South Korea’s first foreign civil servant. That in itself is awesome and shows amazing progressiveness on the part of the Seoul government. Recently, Benfield took part in a Korean talk-show, featuring sixteen young, hot, foreign women, all of whom reside in Korea. They were supposed to talk about their lives in Korea, answer questions, and do the rather absurd things that people on Korean shows tend to do (sing and dance and make an ass of yourself, in my opinion). But anyway, the idea of the show supposedly was to break down cultural barriers. Instead, one of the panel of Koreans put on an afro-wig and got up on stage with Benfield and began mocking her. [check out the Marmot’s Hole for the full story]

The Metropolitician, an African-American living and working in Korea has created an online petition demanding an apology from KBS (the tv station which produced the talk show). The following is an excerpt:

I, as a black person and foreign national living in Korea, continue to be shocked and offended at the Korean media's continued racist and sexist stereotyping of foreign people. From the Bubble Sisters to now, the excuse has always been "we didn't know" or "the intention wasn't to offend" – but is that really an excuse? Many of your general viewers and citizens' organizations seem to know. Why doesn't a national television station?

I am one foreign national who works in Korea, pays taxes, rent, utilities, and otherwise participates in the economy here. I have done good work here that has benefited the Korean economy as well as the countless Korean students, researchers, professors, and other working professionals I have come into contact with, as much as I have benefited from working with them.

I am tired of seeing overtly crude representations of foreign workers as supposedly being unable to speak proper Korean (most foreign migrant workers here speak Korean very well, actually), or hearing the "ching chong" parodies of supposedly Chinese speech, ridiculing Japanese for the wooden footwear they rarely even wear any more than Korean wear traditional rubber shoes, or the constant efforts of the Korean media or the Kyeonggido chapter of the Korean Teachers' Union implying or outright saying that foreigners have "low sexual morals" when in fact no scandal involving foreign teachers and student minors has ever been reported, even against the context of a media that constantly reports about incidents involving Korean teachers and students, as well as "wonjo kyojae", a set concept that doesn't even exist in American culture, are regularly reported as major social problems.

This distorted view of foreigners is merely on example of the simplistic stereotypes through which foreigners are seen in Korea. [click to view and sign the full petition]

I'm not really sure how to conclude this, so I suppose I'll stop typing now and go to bed.