In the late 1990s I lived with a headhunter in Taipei, and I don’t mean the HR recruiting type.
He was a member of the indigenous Paiwan tribe, which did in fact practice head hunting until the late 1800s. He shared stories of his life as the first indigenous person in Taiwan to be elected to the legislature, and he sparked my curiosity about the plight of the first peoples of Taiwan.
When I learned that the Biden “administration” recently made the Proclamation on Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage month, I wondered what the indigenous people of Taiwan would think.
They might think it was culturally insensitive of the American “government” to throw Asians in together with “Pacific Islanders.” Do we not have enough months in the year to give them each their own months?
And what’s with the term “Pacific Islander” anyway? Why not use their more inclusive name, the Austronesian peoples? After all, the Pacific Islanders, including the Native Hawaiians, trace their heritage back to one ancestral home, that glorious and beautiful island, Taiwan. Yes. Taiwan is the birthplace of the Austronesian peoples.
If the lumping of these two historically dissimilar groups together weren’t bad enough, the proclamation talks about discrimination faced by the AANHPI people in America. I’m sure they’re referring to the story about the interment of Japanese Americans. This one has gotten a lot of millage in the anti-white canon. But did you know that America also rounded up people of German decent during WWII, and that anti-German sentiment was just as fierce as anti-Japanese sentiment? I don’t hear any apologies to the Germans nor do I remember ever hearing about a German history month.
The Biden admin is probably also talking about the anti-Chinese sentiment of the late 1800s. I did a bit of research on this topic for a novel I plan to write one of these days. The reasons anti-Chinese sentiment existed then are multiple, not just the catch-all excuse of racism. First, mostly men came over from China, indicating that they probably didn’t intend to stay and raise families. There were approximately 3 Chinese women for every 100 Chinese men. And those women were, by and large, prostitutes. The men wore the hair in a queue, signifying their allegiance to China, not America, and they sent all of their savings back to China. Poor white people, who were killing each other in large numbers over gold, felt the Chinese were draining the economy and taking jobs. And it didn’t help that in several cities the Chinese had dug tunnels in which to house gambling, opium and prostitution dens, all of which were illegal.
In America, there may have been anti-Asian sentiment, but it was never motivated exclusively by racism. That’s true, I believe, of racism around the world. There is always a reason (though still no justification I’m sure) for mistreatment. Economic competition, misunderstandings, poverty, lack of education, etc. Though there were some pretty bad events in American history, it is not likely you’ll find large-scale massacres of Asians on par with the Japanese treatment of the Pacific Islanders’ and Native Hawaiians’ ancestral peoples.
During the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the indigenous people (as well as the ethnic Chinese on the island) were treated with great contempt. To this day, many Taiwanese, including the indigenous austronesians, still hate the Japanese.
I think the featured image for this page says most of what needs to be said. You see the Japanese (Asian) officer in the 1930s sitting behind around 90 severed heads of “Pacific Islanders.” He’s surrounded by the family of those men, women, and even children whose heads he and his fellow officers had cut off.
The severed heads of the indigenous peoples are mute, but they still say a lot.
They say to me that no race is free of the evil of feeling superior to another. All races have done harm to other races. All people have done harm to other people. All of us need forgiveness. And it does no-one any good to keep bringing this crap up or making up new acronyms, or lumping us into groupings based on victimhood.
RL Martin 