Asian Discrimination

In English class we have been dealing with the racial issues that plague America. I've been reading the book Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. The book focuses on the trial of an Asian man for the murder of a local fisherman. During the trial we see clear discrimination against the Asian immigrants in the Seattle area.

Recently, New Zealand Asian immigrants have been seeing more and more 

discrimination. An attack on 4 Korean students helped to bring about the realization of this disturbing fact, but most discrimination occurs from the government. In fact, “42% of the reported case of discrimination came from government," says James Liu of Victoria University (“Asians may be facing more prejudice”). The second most discriminated group is people who are overweight, “with 68%, up 6%”(“Asians may be facing more prejudice”). The government is currently trying to enforce certain laws such as the Human Right Acts and the Sentencing Act. So far the Human Rights Commission has seen a decrease in complaints of discrimination; a hopeful sign that discrimination is on its way to extinction.

Although it's not the USA, New Zealand is considered one of the more "advanced" countries. It is democratic and capitalist based, much like most of the major Western Countries, and is very similar to Australia one of

 the most forward thinking countries in the world. This is why it is so scary to se

e a trend like this to exist in a country such as New Zealand. With its close location to Asian countries, one would expect for there to be greater tolerance of their culture in New Zealand than even the USA, but apparently not.
Another scary fact is that this isn’t the first time this has occurred in New Zealand. According to the article “Asians may be facing more prejudice”, Asians first started meeting discrimination in the seventies, but according to Joris de Bres, “there has been [ignorance and prejudice] about Asian peoples in the nineties and this decade” leading to the discrimination and open violence against Asians in New Zealand.
This trend is scarily similar to the book I am currently reading, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson in that there is a horrible trend of discrimination against Asians. Although in Snow Falling on Cedars the main occurrence took place in the USA when Asian discrimination was still common after WWII, the similarity to the current day discrimination in New Zealand is scary. Especially with the discrimination against people of Japanese descent when during WWII they 

were forced to abandon their homes and belongings and live in internment camps. Hopefully the situ

ation in New Zealand is far better than in the book, where Asians weren’t allowed to own property, quickly accused of murder, and treated as second rate citizens, regardless if they were a citizen or not.

The fact that the article mentions a decrease in the amount of complaints seen by the Human Rights Commission provides a hopeful outlook that New Zealand is on its way to a more accepting society like they did in the 70’s. The only problem is that there has to be constant attention to these issues, otherwise ignorance and prejudice will once again take root and lead to more discrimination, like what occurred in the 90’s and this decade. One can only hope that as time carries

 on-hopefully in the near future-understanding will be able to replace discrimination of not only Asians, but of all races and cultures. But there is only one thing that will be able to make this happen: education. People must be educated in each other’s cultures and be taught to respect them as equal-not inferior-to their own.