> In a sense, they were Japanese because they behaved like Japanese. It seems that behavior plays a big role in how people can identify another one as being one of them.
I find this to be the case too in the Netherlands.
There is a large immigrant population and they cannot be identified by the color of their skin, but easily by their body language. It is strangely reproducible to spot a Pole from a rather far distance from the way he walks.
A friend of mine is “Turkish”, but he came to the Netherlands quite young and thus did not undergo Turkish socialization and walks and speaks as any Dutchman, so many are quite surprised when it's eventually revealed that he speaks Turkish fluently and was born in Turkey, as many Turks, though not visually very distinct from the Dutch, have a certain body language that often identifies them that often disappears within a generation with those that did spend their formative years in the Netherlands.
Similarly, I am not white but since I spent my formative years in the Netherlands my body language and accent are completely Dutch, but my parents both have a hint of Surinamese accent and body language that instantly identifies them, though one of them is white.
> Robert Sapolsky has a great series in Youtube about Behavioral Biology. One of the insights he brings is about Arabs: According to him, Arabs adopted very long names so that they can avoid racial conflict. When two persons recites their names and find a family name that's similar, they assume that they are family and this helps them co-operate. Now that's BS (given a long enough last name, you are going to find a similar grand-parent name) but it happens to work. Islam had this too: Your fellow muslim is your "brother".
> It's time some countries realize that this has been a solved problem: To uproot racism, you need to rally your population behind common denominators and values.
Yet what this simply seems to create is conflict with external parties until it reaches the entire world.
It seems as though many men have a drive to be part of an ethnic, tribal conflict. I even find that, most ironically, what brings men together is the combined struggle against other men.
There is nothing quite like a war with another nation, that makes a nation forget it's petty differences.
I find this to be the case too in the Netherlands.
There is a large immigrant population and they cannot be identified by the color of their skin, but easily by their body language. It is strangely reproducible to spot a Pole from a rather far distance from the way he walks.
A friend of mine is “Turkish”, but he came to the Netherlands quite young and thus did not undergo Turkish socialization and walks and speaks as any Dutchman, so many are quite surprised when it's eventually revealed that he speaks Turkish fluently and was born in Turkey, as many Turks, though not visually very distinct from the Dutch, have a certain body language that often identifies them that often disappears within a generation with those that did spend their formative years in the Netherlands.
Similarly, I am not white but since I spent my formative years in the Netherlands my body language and accent are completely Dutch, but my parents both have a hint of Surinamese accent and body language that instantly identifies them, though one of them is white.
> Robert Sapolsky has a great series in Youtube about Behavioral Biology. One of the insights he brings is about Arabs: According to him, Arabs adopted very long names so that they can avoid racial conflict. When two persons recites their names and find a family name that's similar, they assume that they are family and this helps them co-operate. Now that's BS (given a long enough last name, you are going to find a similar grand-parent name) but it happens to work. Islam had this too: Your fellow muslim is your "brother".
> It's time some countries realize that this has been a solved problem: To uproot racism, you need to rally your population behind common denominators and values.
Yet what this simply seems to create is conflict with external parties until it reaches the entire world.
It seems as though many men have a drive to be part of an ethnic, tribal conflict. I even find that, most ironically, what brings men together is the combined struggle against other men.
There is nothing quite like a war with another nation, that makes a nation forget it's petty differences.