Google Earth Raises Discrimination Issue In Japan 457
Hugh Pickens writes "The Times (UK) reports that by allowing old maps to be overlaid on satellite images of Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, Google has unwittingly created a visual tool that has prolonged an ancient discrimination, says a lobbying group established to protect the human rights of three million burakumin, members of the sub-class condemned by the old feudal system in Japan to unclean jobs associated with death and dirt. 'We tend to think of maps as factual, like a satellite picture, but maps are never neutral, they always have a certain point of view,' says David Rumsey, a US map collector. Some Japanese companies actively screen out burakumin-linked job seekers, and some families hire private investigators to dig into the ancestry of fiances to make sure there is no burakumin taint. Because there is nothing physical to differentiate burakumin from other Japanese and because there are no clues in their names or accent, the only way of establishing whether or not they are burakumin is by tracing their family. By publishing the locations of burakumin ghettos with the modern street maps, the quest to trace ancestry is made easier, says Toru Matsuoka, an opposition MP and member of the Buraku Liberation League. Under pressure to diffuse criticism, Google has asked the owners of the woodblock print maps to remove the legend that identifies the ghetto with an old term, extremely offensive in modern usage, that translates loosely as 'scum town.' 'We had not acknowledged the seriousness of the map, but we do take this matter seriously,' says Yoshito Funabashi, a Google spokesman." The ancient Japanese caste system was made illegal 150 years ago, but silent discrimination remains. The issue is complicated by allegations of mob connections in the burakumin anti-discrimination organizations.
Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Most tools can be used for discrimatory purposes. Just because I buy a Ford at a used car dealership over an indistinguishable GM (because I like then better) doesn't mean the dealership should get blamed.
Can't be google (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely the problem is with the discrimination within the Japanese people and has nothing to do with Google.
There is no difference between a person from one linage to another other than maybe their name and genetic make up.
Just because their great great great grandfather might have killed people for a living doesn't mean that the person applying for a job now is strange in some way.
It is obviously an old custom which is not equal and fair into days society thus the problem is not with Google.
Mike Rowe as a good will ambassador (Score:5, Insightful)
How not to fix a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If your solution to a problem is, "We need less truth" then you are probably trying to solve the wrong problem.
The cost of freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
History is ugly. It's full of all the crappy things we did, and exists in part as a document to study so we can try and improve. "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it", but if the ugly parts are expunged, then we are erasing exactly what's needed to avoid recurrence.
Also, all oppression begins with "We must do this to protect the innocent". Whether the darkest part of the oppression comes a month later at the hands of the current controlling authority or a century later as a result of ignorance, it still exists and is the inevitable result of censorship.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Most tools can be used for discrimatory purposes.
Maybe we should outlaw photographs because it shows skin color.
Oh, and grammar, because the word "color" is discriminating to the colourful British.
Reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
What the fuck? (Score:0, Insightful)
What the flying fuck does Google have to do with any of this? The problem is cultural, not technological. Get a fucking grip.
Stupidest story ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if a hammer is used to build a cross that the KKK burn on someone's front yard, the hammer is "enabling" racist pigs? I guess white sheets and fire enable racism too?
Please.
Google Maps is a map. If some racist/classist/hidebound Japanese use it for perpetuating reactionary stupid stereotypes, how is Google at fault?
SLOW NEWS DAY, +1
Best to shine a light on this (Score:5, Insightful)
At least now the bone-headed practice of this discrimination is known by the outside world, and the appropriate amount of scorn, ridicule, and disapproval can be heaped on the superstitious throw-back practitioners of the discrimination.
Companies and governments from elsewhere could check whether this practice is occurring, and blacklist Japanese companies that are shown to practice this human-rights violation.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but if you buy a car and it arrives with "Nigger" on the license plate, because Ford bought random license plates from a racist company, then Ford (amongst others, including the individuals who chose that plate) should probably be blamed.
Re:How not to fix a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, when it comes to employment discrimination, it seems that allowing the less of such information to be known to anyone involved in the chain of employment is desirable.
I mean it's easier to judge applicants for their qualifications when it's all you see than when you're told that one is a young married white Presbyterian from Connecticut and the other is an old transsexual black-hispanic communist Nation of Islam-muslim from the South Bronx.
Re:Mike Rowe as a good will ambassador (Score:5, Insightful)
Um... no. The fact that a job is difficult, or necessary doesn't somehow make people more respective. Notice the lack of respect for blue collar jobs in our own culture (and probably Japan as well).
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity, how do you call a person who has three white and one black grand parent?
How about 'American'? I can't be the only one that is sick of the practice of identifying ourselves based on our racial background. If I wanted to I could call myself a Polish/German/Jewish/Native/English-American. Why I would do that when those connections are generations old is beyond me. I'm an American. Plain and simple.
Re:Can't be google (Score:5, Insightful)
Yah, I read this article as: "Japanese people are racist (classist, I guess), and it's somehow Google's fault."
But really, is this a surprise to anybody? The least-diverse country in the world in racist! Shocking!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowledge is knowledge. How a bunch of inbred tribals use that knowledge isn't the responsibility of the people who discover and/or make it available.
The Japanese have a problem with discrimination, not Google, not the web, and not the United States. Let Japan solve the problem, don't make it a Google problem, a web problem, or a United States problem.
Re:Can't be google (Score:1, Insightful)
> Surely the problem is with the discrimination within the Japanese people and has nothing to do with Google.
The world isn't black and white. Just because Japanese society is at fault, doesn't mean Google is without fault.
Certainly, the discrimination of burakumin is a problem of the Japanese society, but as the summary already put it, Google (unwittingly) provides tool, which simplifies the practice of ostracism of burakumin by reviving the old ghettos maps on modern maps. The discrimination is largely based on where the people have lived and currently do live. So, publicising those maps is not helping them.
In an ideal world, the Japanese people would just stop the discrimination. But we don't live in a ideal world, and if the minority in question feels this short gap measure is necessary, I think it is sensible to comply. Or do you have a good idea, how to eradicate discrimination? The Nobel Price for Peace would be yours for sure.
Re:Stupidest story ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
So I'm assuming you knew all about the burakumin before reading the story, and were already sympathetic to their plight. Google helped the outside world to understand a social wrong occurring in a civilized country where it shouldn't be happening, I'm not sure how that counts as a slow news day.
Re:Kinda like TRAILER PARKs today (Score:0, Insightful)
Says the person who uses the phrase, "that's how I was learned."
Re:Irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget Canadians as they spell it the correct way too and are more likely to run into an American who spells it color.
If 300 million people agree "color" is correct, it is correct. Just ask the question: for whom?
Re:Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How not to fix a problem (Score:2, Insightful)
If your solution to a problem is, "We need less truth" then you are probably trying to solve the wrong problem.
Damn, that's about the most insightful thing I've seen on Slashdot in a while. Too bad you posted AC.
Yes it is insightful alright: an anonymous coward posting about the need for more truth, and nothing less about the uncovering of identity of a certain group people in Japan.
Re:Mike Rowe as a good will ambassador (Score:2, Insightful)
and down right absurd and categorically wrong to say that the target culture is not in need of enlightenment to the universally held beliefs of the equality of Man.
What "universally held beliefs of the equality of Man" would those be? A good portion of this planet thinks that women should cover themselves at all times and need the permission of a male household member before leaving the home. A good portion of this planet thinks that chopping off the foreskin of males or the clitoris of females is an acceptable practice. A good portion of this planet believes in capital punishment while the remainder dismisses it as cruel and barbaric. A good portion of this planet thinks that freedom of speech should take a backseat to the security of the state.
There are no universally held beliefs in the equality of man. The fact that the UN has a piece of paper listing them means nothing.
Re:Can't be google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mike Rowe as a good will ambassador (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Knowledge=Discrimination (Score:2, Insightful)
discrimination: secernment (the cognitive process whereby two or more stimuli are distinguished)
You are not discriminating among different meanings of word discrimination, but giving a privilege to one of its meanings.
Re:Mike Rowe as a good will ambassador (Score:3, Insightful)
Japan needs a Title VII (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mike Rowe as a good will ambassador (Score:3, Insightful)
True enough. Based on the history of Imperial Japan, they would deliver said enlightenment at gunpoint. Ask their neighbours about the details, the Japanese themselves seem to dislike talking about their glorious deeds for some strange reason.
I'm really getting tired of this West-bashing. While it is indeed unlikely that a Discovery Channel special will dispel someone's silly notions about people being tainted because their ancestors buried corpses rather than made them, that doesn't change the fact that said notions are indeed silly, and making decisions that negatively affect other people based on them is downright evil. If Japanese culture is still subject to such stupidity, and Western culture is not, then Western culture is indeed superior to the Japanese one in that respect.
This whole thing is simply the Japanese equivalent of Ku Klux Klan, nothing more. We should look down to such people with disgust and contempt, here and abroad, rather than pretend that their illogical and petty positions are somehow valid or acceptable because they have existed for a long time. Such people retard the growth of their culture and shame their ancestors by ensuring that they are remembered by their worst, rather than best; and in the process they hurt plenty of innocent people too. Way to go, Japan/Klan!
Re:Kinda like TRAILER PARKs today (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Irrelevant (Score:1, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with this article though.
The original guy got it right but didn't expand on it. If I buy a Ford and use it to run down blacks, whites, jews, catholics, muslims, whatever, that doesn't mean the car is at fault for my racism. It means the person who uses it is at fault.
Like gun laws, really.
Re:Numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
* First off its apparently 251,388,301 English speakers in the US not 300 million.
Ok, +1 pedant, but the number you've quoted has changed since you posted it, so you're wrong as well.
And consider this: if even two people agree to use a specific spelling amongst themselves, it's correct amongst themselves by definition.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, if you want to judge by the lowest denominator, that's fine. There's plenty of teenaged brits out there for the opposing side to use.
"Innit?" "Cos." ;)
etc
Re:Irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)
First explain why "thru" is inferior to "through" a word in which 42% of the letters are not pronounced. Older doesn't make something more correct somehow either, just stupid longer.
Also, we'd like you to please apologize for "worcester," whomever is responsible for it.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Then why aren't you speaking proto-indo-european? Languages change and you *know* that troll, the moderators are on crack today.
Re:It is a part of fallen human nature-- the Bible (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you asking me for a solution to the problem of evil? I mean, we are not using a certain word the same way; it seems you call "sin" any unethical behaviour, did I get this right? No, I understand "sin" strictly as whatever violates a religious taboo.
Now, some taboos are sensible; don't steal, don't murder, that's fine, got it. But these are so obvious, I don't need religion to teach me those; and many believers fail to do follow them anyway. On the other hand, some taboos are just nonsense, such as jewish and muslim dietary laws; some are hateful, as in religiously motivated violence against unbelievers, heretics, or homosexuals; some are quasi-genocidal, as the pope's statements against condoms; some are suicidal, like Jehovah's witnesses' rejection of blood transfusions.
Re:Definitely irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowledge is knowledge. How a bunch of inbred tribals use that knowledge isn't the responsibility of the people who discover and/or make it available.
The Japanese have a problem with discrimination, not Google, not the web, and not the United States. Let Japan solve the problem, don't make it a Google problem, a web problem, or a United States problem.
It is true that racism is ultimately a problem with the racist. However, that doesn't mean there's not any issue here. The maps Google is using use what is apparently a racial slur to describe these areas.
That's probably unintentional, and I doubt they had any idea that the term was a slur. However, if it was brought to Google's attention that a map overlay in America referred to certain areas as "nigger ghettos", do you think people wouldn't expect Google to find a map that didn't use such terms, even if their use of that map was through oversight rather than malice?
Re:Reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mike Rowe as a good will ambassador (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but look what you yourself wrote. "...rising above their station..."
You wouldn't say that about a doctor or an astronaut or a scientist. The fact that their blue collar existence is a "station to be risen above" is a subtle form of bigotry.
Re:The cost of freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
--George Santayana"
I liked the "study" misquote because it gave me an excuse to repeat my High School history teachers frequently used smart arsed remark.
I enjoyed seeing his the teachers go right over the 1st responders head even more.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that what the Burakumin do is productive and necessary, whereas rapists simply hurt their victims. Or would like to have corpses pile up in the streets?
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
As he should.
I once had a psych teacher refer to Africans (living in Africa, mind you) as African-American, because the discussion centered on skin color.
I have nothing against cultural sensitivity, but people should just say 'black' if they're planning on being retarded.
Re:"maps are never neutral" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, maps do have a certain point of view. The finest thief in history was the first person who drew a property map.
Re:Slavery = Stupidity ? How un-multicultural of y (Score:1, Insightful)
Nah, I actually tend to think that it's probably the same as my attitude to Isreal. Isreal is an abomination, a horrendous crime in progress that must be stopped. Jews, on the other hand, are absolutely fine.
Calling something or someone anti semitic because they don't like Isreal is getting a bit old.
Re:Slavery = Stupidity ? How un-multicultural of y (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that EVERY major religion EXCEPT Christianity actively encourages the subjugation or extermination of non-believers in one form or another.
Hmmm... and yet, catholics strived to eliminate all competition from the countries they controlled (only the Jewish religion managed to survive, all others were wiped out of middle-age Europe). Contrast that with moslem countries where you have jews, christians, Zoroastrians... Or even better India where hinduism, jainism, buddhism, sikhism and ayyavazhi sometimes share the same temples.
Re:Slavery = Stupidity ? How un-multicultural of y (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you a troll, or a sincere idiot?
In either case, I feel compelled to say something nice about /., since the rating system left you invisible to me. I only stumbled across your post by the replies. If you're a troll, you're evidently a mighty troll.
Unfortunately, I don't care. In either case, my only request is that you designate me as a foe so I'll have an even lower chance of seeing you in the future.
My qualifications to be your foe? Well, first of all, I'm highly educated, including a degree in history. Second, I'm a highly devout agnostic, and I have nothing but contempt for people whose own religious beliefs are as weak and indefensible as yours. I could come up with more reasons, but you obviously have no interest in reason, and I've already wasted far more time than you're worth.
Re:Slavery = Stupidity ? How un-multicultural of y (Score:2, Insightful)
They're all wrong. Contrary to popular belief, history is nonsense. We can't use it to learn to avoid future mistakes because noone can agree what actually happened; either through lack of information or deliberate re-writing of history.
In my opinion, we should avoid constantly re-hashing the disputes about who's most correct on the subject of what happened n years ago and concentrate on trying to come to a collective agreement on what kind of world we want to live in.
Re:God story apocryphal (Score:1, Insightful)
The early teletype code was BAUDOT, which had only 5-bits, limiting it to u/c.
That doesn't make sense. The gp said that they were limited to either upper case or lower case and of the two they picked upper case because of the (probably apocryphal) need to avoid writing "god". You replied by saying that having only 5 bits limited them to upper case. But it obviously didn't - if there was room for upper then there would have been room for lower instead- someone chose between the two and picked upper case, just like the gp said.