Gender, the socially constructed role of and relationship between women and men, is deeply related to our lives. Our thoughts and our behavior are very affected by gender. Migration is not an exception here. In the article published in 2000, the sociologist Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo argues: “We now have a clear understanding that migration is gendered and that gender relations change with migration processes” (116). Women and men take different jobs in destination countries, use their money differently, and so on. Migration is also gendered and gendering. It is very important for researchers to know how and to what extent the lives of migrants are affected by gender. Without taking gender into account, we can easily misdescribe the whole picture of migration.
Sociological scholarship on gender and migration has a relatively short history.
In the late 1970s, women were depicted in the migration process and became a subject of many studies, however, scholars at the time only focused on women and men or only on the experience of women. They presented women migrants as a special case.
By the late 1980s, the evidence had grown large enough to require redrawing the map of gender and migration scholarship and then, theoretical formulation emerged. Scholars started to look at household economy as a critical site for revealing the relationship between migration and women, but still they were considering men as household heads and by doing so, they limited the data on women. At this point, the scholars studied men and women separately.
By the mid-1990s, the effective use of qualitative methods to understand the dynamics of gender and migration emerged and the new scholarship showed how migration processes are related to the social construction of gender.
From above, we can see the shift of sociological scholarship on gender and migration from the emphasis on documenting and explaining the gendered character of migration towards exploring its gendering effects.
In spite of this progress, many studies often degrade gender analyses to the level of the family or household and let scholars to ignore gender in other domains of the migration process.
There are still some parts that are missing in gender and migration studies. For instance, there are very few data on the consequences of women’s migration while there are many studies on the effect of men’s migration on their families, their communities, and on how gender is exercised in their home countries. What happens to the men and children who left behind when their wives or mothers migrate? Does women’s migration change the gender relationship of their countries? If so, how? Is it positive or negative?
Right now, the sociological scholarship on migration is more like gender-segregated rather than gender-integrated. It is necessary to look at gender as a central element to explore unexplained phases of migration. I hope that migration Studies in the 21st century will integrate gender more than it has done in the past 30 years.
Reference
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. (2001). Doméstica: Immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.
Afsar, Risa. (2011). Contextualizing Gender and Migration in South Asia: Critical Insights. Retrieved from http://gtd.sagepub.com/content/15/3/389 on 25th May, 2013
I remember watching a film about Brazil. It was a film titled Tropa De Elite, or Elite Squad. The film was about special police forces named the BOPE hunting down drug dealers in Brazilian slums known as the favela. As I watched the movie, I realized that most of the population consisting the favela were dark colored. There were only a few completely black men, and most of the population had brownish skin. At first it didn’t matter because I thought Brazil was a “dark country”. But when the movie suddenly showed the image of a Brazilian medical university, I was surprised to find out that most of the students who are introduced as Brazilians were white. That’s when I realized that Brazil was not free from racial problems.
I found out that Brazil’s major populations were white people, who took up 49 percent of the entire Brazil population. Then followed brown, or pardos, which took 42 percent of the population. Blacks, contrary to my original belief, took only 7 percent of the entire population. However I also found out that due to the long history of Portuguese colonization, most of the population were of mixed ancestry regardless of skin color. These include mulato, a black-white mix, mestiso, an indigenous-white mix, and cafuzo, an indigenous-black mix. To my surprise there were also considerable numbers of Japanese Brazilians. Because of this mixed ancestry, Brazilians have no point of discriminating each other with racial ancestry. It was no wonder that the Brazilian government would promote that, since there are so many races living together in harmony, their nation is a “racial paradise”.
While it would have been the best if what the Brazil government claims are completely true, I unfortunately found out that even in a “racial paradise” discrimination exists. Even if the ancestry is mixed, Brazilians would still discriminate race by fundamental means – the skin color. To simply put, the whiter you are, the more advantageous you are in Brazilian society. These discriminations can apply in job interviews, education, and environment. As I mentioned the Favela in the film, Tropa De Elite, most of the populations in the favela are dark skinned people. On the contrary, in university, which requires a large amount of tuition, most of the students are white, implying that white Brazilians have more economic benefits than darker ones. The most difficult part in solving this discrimination is that it is hidden. Everyone in Brazil says that they are not racists and they respect all races, but when they face a situation which involves other races, they would subtly engage in discrimination. Sometimes they don’t even know that their act is a racial discrimination.
How much do you know about hafu in Japan? Hafu means that they have a Japanese parent and a foreign parent. Actually, I have never thought about hafu, because there were no hafu around me and there are not many mixed blood people in Korea (I am a Korean). However, through my English class, I have learned a lot regarding hafu and how Japanese society treats hafu. I read some articles stories about how hafu are treated in Japan, how do they feel and so on.
There are bunch of hafu who are suffering from the way they are treated in Japan and even in some other countries. Even if hafu have Japanese nationality and fluency in the Japanese language, Japanese people divide them into non-Japanese because of their non-Japanese look. Although many hafu have Japanese nationality by law, they have difficulty to fit in Japanese society and to be admitted by other Japanese as Japanese. Then, is the law not an important thing? Why are they treated differently in Japan?
On occasion, a fixed idea plays a more powerful role in treating people. Japan is so-called a homogeneous society and that is why Japanese people feel uncomfortable with others and fine it hard to understand others. Many of hafu said that they feel they belong in Japan and try to fit in Japanese society. However, somehow Japanese people do not recognize them as Japanese. Therefore, the most important thing to change the situation facing hafu is conversion of the way people think about hafu.
To change over the way people think about hafu, people should reconsider that all of us have a unique gene which is make us different from others and at the same time we all have something in common. To put it simply, people should stop othering hafu and dividing them into non-Japanese due to the foreign look so that the situation facing hafu will be improved. Letting people know regarding hafu might be a very useful work to make new progress and improvement for hafu such as The Hafu Project.
In addition, making more interchange programs with hafu in school educations helps students to understand hafu and expand their point of views. Without any information about hafu, it is hard to understand them. Even if the situation facing hafu in Japan seems difficult to be solved, globalization is widely spread in Japan and many of Japanese young people have an open-minded and flexible attitude, hence, the situation could be improved in Japan.
With the efforts of hafu, change of times, and conversion of a fixed idea, hafu could be provided better environment to live in Japanese society without being othered or classified.
Recently, in Japan there are a lot of “hafu” who is one parent is a foreigner who is white people. Their faces are different from so-called “Japanese” and they are often thought as a foreigner in Japan, because consciousness of Japanese people is “Japanese is Japanese”. This means that people think Japanese has a similar face as Asian ethnicity, so they are thought as a foreigner. Another reason why people think they are foreigner is also that Japan is said to be a mono-racial country. Hafu is rare to ordinary Japanese. These facts result in that situation in Japan.
Hafu has a Japanese citizenship, and they have lived in Japan since they were born. Some of the hafu has an identity as a Japanese citizen. However Japanese people have a consciousness as mono-racial country. This is a serious problem to hafu. In order for them to be accustomed to Japanese society comfortably, Japanese government should create a class about multiculturalism or different culture from the elementary school. By taking a class in the early period of children, they can understand or learn hafu or another culture and foreigner. International school is a good example. In our class, we watched a movie about discrimination and the identity of hafu. In the movie, one hafu said that his company forced him to use his French name because he could be forgiven by customer when he mistook. This is a terrible discrimination. I think that the boss of him who forced him to use the name hasn’t touched another culture or foreigner in his childhood and he doesn’t understand the feeling of them. If he understood the feelings, he would not say such a terrible thing. In Japan, a lot of people don’t have an opportunity to contact with foreigners who have different culture and racial background. This contributes to that discrimination indirectly, so it is important for children to take the class.
I think that it is difficult for us to change this situation because Japan is said to be a mono-racial country and people don’t have a consideration as to foreigner or hafu even today when globalization has progressed. Besides, Japan doesn’t have a lot of immigrants and the policy toward foreigner is also hard or rigid. I don’t intend to say that Japan should take an action drastically to multiculturalism because the measures about it are not prepared for. However Japanese education should be changed to multiculturalism because globalization is progressing now and from now, more people will come to Japan from foreign countries. In addition to it, the number of the hafu will increase more and more. According to it, for children to take the class must be so valuable and to be a person who can understand foreign stuff is important.
After protests by local non-Japanese residents, the Genky store in Minokamo, Gifu prefecture, has taken down the signs that warned foreign customers that they were being watched as potential criminals.
My Portuguese skills are limited, so hopefully a reader can help translate the video. I am encouraged by the response of the local non-Japanese community in standing up for their rights, and by the fact that the store management responded to those concerns.
Stereotypes are harder to maintain when the person the stereotypes supposedly describe is standing right in front of you. In that case, we sometimes fall victim to what Tim Wise has called “enlightened exceptionalism.” That is, have prejudiced views about a group but making an exception for individual members of that group. This approach lets prejudiced whites vote for Barack Obama, while still holding racist views of African Americans. In this case, clerks at the Genky store might have said to the protestors, “Of course the sign doesn’t describe you. It refers to other foreigners.”
The protestors used the uncomfortable tension the staff likely felt when confronted with protests to their advantage, in demanding that the signs be taken down and in rewarding the removal of the signs with applause. In so doing, they hopefully have taken a step toward turning a foe into an ally. But whether the staff at Genky will still watch non-Japanese customers with suspicion or not, at least that suspicion is no longer publicly posted for all the world to see. The public posting of the signs reproduced and reinforced negative stereotypes of foreigners in Japan.
Miki Dezaki, who first arrived in Japan on a teacher exchange program in 2007, wanted to learn about the nation that his parents had once called home. He taught English, explored the country and affectionately chronicled his cross-cultural adventures on social media, most recently on YouTube, where he gained a small following for videos like “Hitchhiking Okinawa” and the truly cringe-worthy “What Americans think of Japan.” One of them, on the experience of being gay in Japan, attracted 75,000 views and dozens of thoughtful comments.
Dezaki didn’t think the reaction to his latest video was going to be any different, but he was wrong. “If I should have anticipated something, I should have anticipated the netouyo” (spelling corrected from original post), he told me, referring to the informal army of young, hyper-nationalist Japanese Web users who tend to descend on any article — or person — they perceive as critical of Japan.
But before the netouyo put Dezaki in their crosshairs, sending him death threats and hounding his employers, previous employers and even the local politicians who oversee his employers, there was just a teacher and his students.
Dezaki began his final lesson with a 1970 TV documentary, Eye of the Storm, often taught in American schools for its bracingly honest exploration of how good-hearted people — in this case, young children participating in an experiment — can turn to racism. After the video ended, he asked his students to raise their hands if they thought racism existed in Japan. Almost none did. They all thought of it as a uniquely American problem.
Gently, Dezaki showed his students that, yes, there is also racism in Japan. He carefully avoided the most extreme and controversial cases — for example, Japan’s wartime enslavement of Korean and other Asian women for sex, which the country today doesn’t fully acknowledge — pointing instead to such slang terms as “bakachon camera.” The phrase, which translates as “idiot Korean camera,” is meant to refer to disposable cameras so easy to use that even an idiot or a Korean could do it.
He really got his students’ attention when he talked about discrimination between Japanese groups. People from Okinawa, where Dezaki happened to be teaching, are sometimes looked down upon by other Japanese, he pointed out, and in the past have been treated as second-class citizens. Isn’t that discrimination?
“The reaction was so positive,” he recalled. For many of them, the class was a sort of an a-ha moment. “These kids have heard the stories of their parents being discriminated against by the mainland Japanese. They know this stuff. But the funny thing is that they weren’t making the connection that that was discrimination.” From there, it was easier for the students to accept that other popular Japanese attitudes about race or class might be discriminatory.
The vice principal of the school said he wished more Japanese students could hear the lesson. Dezaki didn’t get a single complaint. No one accused him of being an enemy of Japan.
That changed a week ago. Dezaki had recorded his July classes and, last Thursday, posted a six-minute video in which he narrated an abbreviated version of the lesson. It opens with a disclaimer that would prove both prescient and, for his critics, vastly insufficient. “I know there’s a lot of racism in America, and I’m not saying that America is better than Japan or anything like that,” he says.
Also on Thursday, Dezaki posted the video, titled “Racism in Japan,” to the popular link-sharing site Reddit under its Japan-focused subsection, where he often comments. By this Saturday, the netouyo had discovered the video.
“I recently made a video about Racism in Japan, and am currently getting bombarded with some pretty harsh, irrational comments from Japanese people who think I am purposefully attacking Japan,” Dezaki wrote in a new post on Reddit’s Japan section, also known as r/Japan. The critics, he wrote, were “flood[ing] the comments section with confusion and spin.” But angry Web comments would turn out to be the least of his problems.
The netouyu make their home at a Web site called ni channeru, otherwise known as ni chan, 2chan or 2ch. Americans familiar with the bottommost depths of the Internet might know 2chan’s English-language spin-off, 4chan, which, like the original, is a message board famous for its crude discussions, graphic images (don’t open either on your work computer) and penchant for mischief that can sometimes cross into illegality.
Some 2chan users, perhaps curious about how their country is perceived abroad, will occasionally translate Reddit’s r/Japan posts into Japanese. When the “Racism in Japan” video made it onto 2chan, outraged users flocked to the comments section on YouTube to attempt to discredit the video. They attacked Dezaki as “anti-Japanese” and fumed at him for warping Japanese schoolchildren with “misinformation.”
Inevitably, at least one death threat appeared. Though it was presumably idle, like most threats made anonymously over the Web, it rattled him. Still, it’s no surprise that the netouyu’s initial campaign, like just about every effort to change a real-life debate by flooding some Web comments sections, went nowhere. So they escalated.
A few of the outraged Japanese found some personal information about Dezaki, starting with his until-then-secret real name and building up to contact information for his Japanese employers. Given Dezaki’s social media trail, it probably wasn’t hard. They proliferated the information using a file-sharing service called SkyDrive, urging fellow netouyu to take their fight off the message boards and into Dezaki’s personal life.
By Monday, superiors at the school in Japan were e-mailing him, saying they were bombarded with complaints. Though the video was based almost entirely on a lecture that they had once praised, they asked him to pull it down.
“Some Japanese guys found out which school I used to work at and now, I am being pressured to take down the ‘Racism in Japan’ video,” Dezaki posted on Reddit. “I’m not really sure what to do at this point. I don’t want to take down the video because I don’t believe I did anything wrong, and I don’t believe in giving into bullies who try to censor every taboo topic in Japan. What do you guys think?”
He decided to keep the video online, but placed a message over the first few sentences that, in English and Japanese, announce his refusal to take it down.
But the outrage continued to mount, both online and in the real world. At one point, Dezaki says he was contacted by an official in Okinawa’s board of education, who warned that a member of Japan’s legislature might raise it on the floor of the National Diet, Japan’s lower house of parliament. Apparently, the netouyu may have succeeded in elevating the issue from a YouTube comments field to regional and perhaps even national Japanese politics.
“I knew there were going to be some Japanese upset with me, but I didn’t expect this magnitude of a problem,” Dezaki said. “I didn’t expect them to call my board of education. That said, I wasn’t surprised, though. You know what I mean? They’re insane people.”
Nationalism is not unique to Japan, but it is strong there, tinged with the insecurity of a once-powerful nation on the decline and with the humiliation of defeat and American occupation at the end of World War II. Japan’s national constitution, which declares the country’s commitment to pacifism and thus implicitly maintains its reliance on the United States, was in some ways pressed on the country by the American military government that ruled it for several years. The Americans, rather than Japan’s own excesses, make an easy culprit for the country’s lowered global status.
That history is still raw in Japan, where nationalism and resentment of perceived American control often go hand-in-hand. Dezaki is an American, and his video seems to have hit on the belief among many nationalists that the Americans still condescend to, and ultimately seek to control, their country.
“I fell in love with Japan; I love Japan,” Dezaki says, explaining why he made the video in the first place. “And I want to see Japan become a better place. Because I do see these potential problems with racism and discrimination.” His students at Okinawa seemed to benefit from the lesson, but a number of others don’t seem ready to hear it.
Here’s my response: I applaud Dezaki-sensei for his efforts to raise students’ awareness of issues of racism and discrimination in Japan. In my classes at Ritsumeikan, I’ve found students very open to learning about Japan’s modern history, of which they are unfortunately often ignorant. Students have told me that they have gone home after class and asked their parents about the Burakumin, Zainichi Koreans, and other groups. The fact that many of these students grew up in the Kansai area, which is home to many Burakumin and Zainichi, shows how students in high school are not being taught even local history, let alone national history. Of course, many of my students also pass as mainstream Japanese, preferring to conceal their ethnic ancestries rather than constantly out themselves as non- or mixed-Japanese.
As for present-day issues of discrimination, we should not confuse the absence of slurs with the acceptance of minorities. Buraku children still face low expectations and stereotypes from teachers. They are also less likely to attend high school, to graduate from high school or university. They are also more likely to receive government welfare benefits. Plus, groups such as the Zainichi, South Americans, Chinese, and Filipinos routinely face discrimination in employment, education, and other realms of social life. Much of this happens discretely, but it still happens. And let’s not forget the right-wing sound trucks and Zaitokukai protests against Zainichi and other non-Japanese.
I also applaud Desaki-sensei for bravely not giving in to the netouyo. Like Desaki, I’m an American teaching in Japan and I consider this place home. And just like sometimes you have to tell to a friend or family member something they don’t want to hear, Japan needs to hear about problems it would rather ignore. As a country with the third-largest economy and tenth-largest population in the world, Japan is not a child that needs to be protected. It can handle the truth, even if the netouyo would rather avoid it.
Inequitable situations appear while the globalization is being advanced in the world. Japan is generally said to be an affluent country, but inequitable situations are also coming to Japan and I think it is a problem for which we have to find a solution. So I am going to pick up one of the inequitable situations about contract workers, in Japan and am going to write how the situation is going on compared to regular workers.
The number of contract works has been increasing since the beginning of 1990 while the number of the regular workers has been decreasing. Then don’t we have any problems about these situations between the regular workers and the contract workers? The answer would be “NO”. So I am going to talk about why the answer is “NO”.
I pick up four inequitable situations of the contract workers. Firstly, the pay style is totally different from the regular workers. The contract workers don’t have both bonus and retirement allowance, which the regular workers could get. Also the pay per unit time is much lower than the regular workers. These situation makes the other situations that they could not get to buy such a car and home by loan because of low pay. Secondly, employment is less stable compared to regular workers. Most companies employ contract workers for only 1 year to 2 years, and lay off them after that. As I said previously, they could not get the retirement allowance even if they get laid off. Thirdly, their career is not guaranteed at all too. The regular workers usually have some chances a year for advancement and then they could get higher pay and position than before. But the contract workers could get not as same as the situation the regular workers have. Finally, the contract workers don’t have social and employment insurances.
I wrote about four inequitable situations for the contract workers but the four situations are only a few examples of all problems about it. If both of them are working and doing same jobs in same company, they should get same situations with the regular workers. We usually say, the globalization brought the equal society, new society and situations but we haven’t focused on the real situations of inequality yet if we keep saying such a thing.
There is inequality, such as economy, education, income, ability, wealth etc. Some people claim that we should avoid inequality because inequality contributes economic growth, according to Lane Kenworthy. However, I argue that they are not connected each other, and we need inequality to keep creating valuable things. Kenworthy is talking about the country base, but I would like to apply it to the nation base.
In Japan, some elementary schools have stopped the competition on a sports day because the competition is not equal. For example, children start running toward a goal, and just before the goal they have to wait for their friends who have not been near goal yet, then reach the goal together. So everyone can get 1st prize. They do this because children should be equal, no discrimination.
For another point of this, in the United States there is no public insurance, which is different from Japan. Japan thinks every nation should have equal opportunity for medical care because everyone has the same human right to live. However, there is a problem that this insurance is paid by taxes from nations, so in the theory poor people use the money of rich people. American people point out this problem. They think the richer should get the richer quality of medical care to use their own money for themselves. This is too reasonable.
In Japan people used to think that inequality is not good, so it should be removed. Thus even Japanese society reflects this trend. Japanese companies raise their employees’ salary as a reward for long service because everyone can get their salaries as the term of their engagement. However, this idea has been changing in this recession into the base of people’s ability, which means employees can get their salaries based on their results. More good companies would like to hire more good people who have the ability to grow that company up because it has to survive in this competitive society of this recession. So the company has to pay more to the people who have good abilities to motivate them. It works; this kind of companies such as consulting companies or foreign investment banks can earn more money and they can also get more good people.
In conclusion, in this changeable, international, and competitive society, inequality is unavoidable or necessary to survive. Considered this situation, Japanese people have to understand this trend, and train their children to survive in this society. I would like to warn people who think the inequality is discrimination. Since every person is not the same as everyone knows, they cannot say the inequality is discrimination.
Inequality has always been one of the common issues in many aspects of society, such as labor market and education. Here I define inequality as the situation in which an individual or a group of people is socially or economically disadvantaged for factors he/she is not responsible for. The idea that inequality should be reduced is based on humanitarianism that suggests “those who have suffered through no fault of their own should be helped” (Aguirre & Tuner, 2011, p. 55). But depending on what kind of inequality to look at, equalization could not contribute to growth. To take income inequality as an example, Kenworthy (2007) argues that “the smaller the income share of the rich (i.e., the less inequality), the less investment there is” (p. 29). The wealthy are expected to invest much of their money to accelerate capitalist economy. Otherwise, widened income gaps “may weaken consumer demand”, reduce “employee motivation and work place cooperation”, and “reduce the share of the population that is able to invest in higher education” (p. 29). Therefore, a certain degree of inequality should be kept to maintain economic well-being.
Now the question is how much (or what kind of) inequality should be kept to encourage people’s consumption, sustain people’s motivation to work, ensure opportunities to go on to higher education, and ultimately achieve the society that satisfies everyone’s will? At the same time, another big question is what should be equated? As mentioned above, income inequality should not be completely equalized because equal distribution of wealth is too egalitarian to encourage further economic growth. In order that individuals get higher standards of living and the whole society grows economically, individuals should be responsible for their own effort and every outcome of their effort. In this sense, they are even responsible for inequality of income.
At this point, inequality of outcomes is individuals’ responsibility. But it should be noted that they become really responsible for outcomes of their efforts as long as they are given opportunities to make efforts. For instance, if they have no access to school, simply they have no chances to make own efforts and expect responsive outcomes such as graduation degrees and other qualifications. Equal opportunities to learn should be guaranteed for everyone to allow everyone to participate in the given society.
In summary, I discussed how much individuals are responsible for their fate and the nature of inequality in relation to individual responsibility. At least they are responsible for outcomes of their effort including test scores and the amount of income. However, they become responsible only if the opportunity to make their own effort is given. By “own effort” I mean a certain amount of effort that an individual needs to make depending on his/her prospect about what he/she wants to achieve. In other words, everyone should have the right to decide how much effort he/she makes. If an institution like school controls how his/her make an effort for his/her own sake, it would manipulate the outcome of his/her effort. He/she then has no idea about how to be responsive to the outcome that does not depend on his/her own effort. Therefore, equal opportunities to make own effort are more essential than immediate financial control like redistribution of income. Inequality of outcomes is OK; inequality of opportunities is not OK.
Reference
Aguirre, A. & Turner, J. H. (2011). American Ethnicity: The Dynamics and Consequences of Discrimination (7th edition). New York: McGraw Hill.
Kenworthy, L. (2007). Is Inequality Feasible? Contexts, Vol. 6, Number 3, pp 28-32.
The term ‘environmental inequality’ is defined as the unequal allocation of pollution across the globe that unfairly falls onto poorer communities. Take for example landfills being built close to poorer neighbourhoods, or the construction of environmentally unsustainable factories in poorer countries where environmental regulation is not as strict. I also believe that the destruction of the environment by businesses or the government at the expense of indigenous populations also falls under the category of environmental discrimination and injustice. The majority of indigenous populations still choose to live off the land, and many times the devastation of the environment comes at a cost to their livelihood and the lands that they own and live on.
This issue can be seen currently in British Columbia, Canada, where the proposal to build an oil pipeline from neighbouring province to Alberta’s oil sands is currently on the plate. The creation of the oil pipeline would bring in a large amount of money into the Canadian economy, create jobs, and strengthen trading ties with Asia. However, because a large portion of the pipeline will be built on native land, and the chance of an oil spill could destroy the habitat of fish, the construction of the pipeline has been met with protest from native groups.
Although the construction of an oil pipeline and the chances of a possible oil spill are environmental issues that affect everyone in the area, the pipeline still effects and causes the most damage to the minority group of natives more than it does the typical Canadian. If the pipeline directly affected more people, it’s very likely that there would be more opposition, and that the idea for the pipeline would maybe not have been proposed in the first place. Is it fair to sideline a minority group for the ‘greater good’ of the economy? Just like discrimination of any other nature, overlooking the rights of a group of people is unethical. Utilitarianism may seem like the better option, but it’s not necessary the best choice for the long run. One could argue that the money from made from the pipeline could go back into programs and support to the effected native populations, but there is no guarantee this payback will be sufficient or will make up for the environmental damage to their lands. Instead, we need to protect our environment and vulnerable groups of people, and look into plans that are more sustainable for the long term.
It’s good to see that the protests against the pipeline in British Columbia have been fairly successful, and others are also adding their voices to the protest alongside the native bands. As of now the whether the project will go through is still up in air, and there is a chance it may never come into action.
I remember watching a film about Brazil. It was a film titled Tropa De Elite, or Elite Squad. The film was about special police forces named the BOPE hunting down drug dealers in Brazilian slums known as the favela. As I watched the movie, I realized that most of the population consisting the favela were dark colored. There were only a few completely black men, and most of the population had brownish skin. At first it didn’t matter because I thought Brazil was a “dark country”. But when the movie suddenly showed the image of a Brazilian medical university, I was surprised to find out that most of the students who are introduced as Brazilians were white. That’s when I realized that Brazil was not free from racial problems.
JAPANsociology 