Letter from the Assistant Head Editor

Our time together as your 2019-2020 CONNECT team is ending, and as it happens, so is the world as we know it. As much as I’d like to meditate on the past year, I have to speak to the present moment, specifically to the long overdue global outcry that the lives of Black and indigenous people matter.

To compare my experiences as a white foreigner here in Japan to experiences of anti-Blackness around the world feels, in many ways, impossible. But I think it is fair to say that for many white Americans, living in Japan is the first taste of anything like racism. As the one of a few non-Japanese staff members in my school, I get a taste of the alienation and pain felt by BIPOC* who are part of predominantly white institutions: the stares, the chilliness, the exclusion, the feeling of being talked down to, the stereotypes, the invasive questions, the exhaustion of being repeatedly asked to represent a huge, heterogenous group of people. It’s just a taste of discriminatory treatment—I don’t, for example, feel that my health or safety is threatened on account of my race and nationality—but it’s a taste that stays in your mouth.

White foreigners, especially white Americans, are a privileged “other.” As I hope you know by now, people of color living in Japan, and especially Black people living in Japan, have it far worse. Anti-Black racism is rampant. On many occasions, just a single mention of my home state, New York, elicits some comment about how New York is full of scary black people who commit crimes. Just a few weeks ago, in an attempt to explain the social unrest in America to Japanese children, NHK aired a horrifyingly racist and, frankly, inaccurate cartoon which bordered on minstrelsy. Google it. I’ll spare you the details here.

You probably know this. And white readers, you probably know that you are being called to reckon with your privilege and to step up to the plate. White foreigners should grapple with our privilege as part of an antiracist practice, AND we should use our experiences with discrimination here in Japan as an opportunity to develop empathy, understanding, and a shared (if different) sense of struggle. If we are able to engage with both our pain and our privilege, we will be able to more sustainably invest ourselves in this fight. We must show up not only when it’s trending, but every day, all the time, again and again and again. At the end of this letter, I’ve listed some resources and some concrete ways that you can support BIPOC with your money, time, and skills.

Okay, preamble over. TLDR: I’ve chosen to highlight three articles which showcase Black experiences in Japan.

The first piece I’ve chosen is “Finding Community Against the Odds” penned by CONNECT’s own Web Editor, Rhema Baquero, originally published in the November 2019 issue. Rhema builds up a picture of what daily anti-Blackness looks like in Japan, from being pushed out of a train to people touching her hair without permission. But the piece also points to opportunities for genuine cross-cultural understanding and exchange. Rhema describes her practice of featuring pictures of black and brown kids in her lessons and calling out her students’ and colleague’ offensive comments—something that all of us working in Japanese schools can commit to doing.

Next up is “Slaying the Cosplay Game” by Amadara Oguara, published in October 2019 as part of Art Section Editor Valerie Osborne’s “Creating Through Cosplay” piece. Amadara discusses how she became interested in cosplay, and how it eventually became a huge source of joy and even a form of therapy for her. She also talks discrimination in the cosplay world. “As someone who has been called ‘inaccurate,’ ‘the black version,’ or even racial slurs while cosplaying,” Amadara writes, “it was meaningful to know that in essence, the color of my skin SHOULDN’T and DOESN’T dictate what characters I can and can’t be. I AM Sailor Venus […].”

The last article I’ve chosen to highlight, which will be linked but not reprinted here, is Christina Bellvue’s “#MelanainAndJBeauty,” originally published in the April 2020 issue. Christina provides an impressively comprehensive look at Japanese cosmetics which work well with darker skin tones, covering everything from base makeup to brow makeup. Here, I would also be remiss not to give a huge shout out to Fashion and Beauty Editor Devoni Guise, who did an excellent job of cultivating fashion and beauty content which put people of color at the center.

Going forward, I ask that CONNECT’s 2020-2021 editorial team actively seek out and publish even more work which centers BIPOC experiences in Japan.

In love and solidarity, Hannah Lukow

*BIPOC stands for Black and Indigenous People of Color, and is preferred here over the term “people of color” in order to speak specifically to Black and indigenous experiences.

DONATE

(Note: Due to the large number of people and organizations donating money right now, a few popular organizations have asked that money be redirected to less supported organizations. I’ve done my best to research and identify organizations most in need right now. If you aren’t sure about an organization, do your research—it’s always good to double check that your money is going to a deserving place.)

⩾ Black Trans Travel Fund ⩾ My Block, My Hood, My City ⩾ Color of Change ⩾ National Lawyers Guild ⩾ National Bail Fund Network ⩾ American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ⩾ The Marsha P. Johnson Institute ⩾ Emergency Release Fund ⩾ The Loveland Foundation ⩾ The Bail Project

The following organizations are accepting donations, but are well-supported:

⩾ The Black Visions Collective ⩾ Reclaim the Block ⩾ NAACP Legal Defense Fund

ACT

⩾ Connect with your nearest BLM chapter on social media: ◊ Black Lives Matter TOKYO: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter ◊ Black Lives Matter KANSAI: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter ⩾ Support black businesses. You can use sites like We Buy Black, The Black Wallet, and Official Black Wall Str eet. ⩾ Commit to one of the actions in this article, “75 White People Can Do For Racial Justice” by Corrine Shutack (published in 2017 but still relevant).

READ and EDUCATE

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn How To be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi