crossroads

I am in doubt. Don't know if I should broach this topic or maintain silence. Everyone I know has thought about it and experienced it at some level - for some it is central to their lives here - but nobody talks about it. Its taboo, not part of your polite coffee table or pub conversation. If anyone goes near it, an all encompassing, oppressive silence almost physically takes hold of the group. The question is this: Why are foreigners amost always welcome in Asia yet why are Asians so unwelcome in the West?

Don't get me wrong, I do not claim to have any answers. I seldom have them actually. I have thoughts though, loads of them, that bring no respite, only momentary attempts to rationalise.
One of them goes like this. Having grown up listening to stories of the great assimilative nature of the Asian/Indian culture, it was but logical to assume that perhaps, just maybe, we are more all-embracing, tolerant and loving people - a thought quickly dismissed given the reality of the situation - we are more than capable of horrific acts of intolerance, violation and violence.

So what could it be? I hope it is clear that I take the initial question not as a hypothesis but as a fact. So you see, the starting point of my shaky conclusions itself may be challenged. But we shall leave that to another day.

I am slowly inclined to think that the problem is actually more basic than we are ready to accept. Could it be that it is a matter of unwelcome guests? When the few western tourists go to Asia, they are a) sources of income, b) guests, for a few days, weeks or months, c) lovely people who admire our culture in case the odd one decides to stay back forever.

We Asians, on the other hand, come to the developed world for better opportunities, in plane and ship-loads. And we don't go back. So we outsiders in the West are a) a threat to the natives' jobs, b) unwelcome guests who never go home, c) culturally, behaviourally, attitudinally very different for any significant assimilation to take place, at least for the first generation of immigrants.

I have not touched upon the issue of perceptions and that is intentional. Perceptions make things subjective and we 'modern' Asians like to be as scientific in our thinking as our Occidental 'equals'. That is the assumption at least, that everyone is equal, and outdated, old fashioned concepts such as racism and inequality just don't exist. How do you explain a glass ceiling for an Asian man? You deny the existence of such a thing. You yourself try to justify the situation in several different ways, almost trivialising your experience. Looks to me like a variation of the stockholm syndrome, but it is for you to judge.

Like I said, I have no answers, and after the anger and sense of wrong fades, only the thoughts remain. And some great friends both Asian and British. What I don't have are answers to the many questions in my head.