What is the deepest root of the domestic and global conflict: Race/ethnicity, religion, or something else?
Xena Crystal LC Huang·Saturday, September 2, 2017
In a chat with my colleagues yesterday about week one casual events (9/1 F, 2017), ended up with our commonality: race and ethnicity issues (embedded in domestic and global stratification), for we three, are teaching sociology and diversity studies).
I shared my thoughts that Taiwan might not exactly experience “racial” conflict, but much about ethnic clashes/warfare (usually intersecting with socioeconomic status). My colleague showed interest to know more about it. In addition to this event, recently, Foxconn’s gigantic deeds have also opened up a window for curiosity about Taiwan. Coincidentally, last night, I found a reflective paper written a while ago, resonating now more than ever, whether in the US, or in the world. Though today, I might not fully agree with some old thinking addressed in the following paper, I would like to share here with its originality.
A penny for your thoughts, a nickel for your patience, and a quarter for _____________ (ya, no-fluffy stuff, your fill-in-the-blank
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Pedagogy of the Oppressed vs. Oppressors and Taiwan - A Reflective Paper as a Grad Student at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 2008
Introduction
This paper is based on my understanding of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as the common perceptions of pedagogy of the oppressor to examine a two-stages colonial state that occurred in Taiwan’s history, in particular, during 1985 to 1945, and subsequently during 1945-1989.
The main point motivating my approach to this topic is due to a small episode happening in our classroom. I heard peers mentioning that Freire’s ideas were vague and seemingly foreign to their experiences. This is understandable for several reasons. There are different languages signifying unique experiences between post-modern societies such as America, and societies where people struggle for the basic human needs on daily basis in the developing and underdeveloped countries. I value Max Weber’s concept of Verstehen, which can mean either a kind of empathetic or participatory understanding of social phenomena. With well-disposed and deep awareness, people can comprehend the situations which they might not have the chance to experience firsthand. Furthermore, C. Wright Mills provides his “sociological imagination” or the cognitive transferring to capture the reality which could be alien to the observers or thinkers. Nevertheless, my real-life narrative is tied to a vivid history that is ongoing and is timely value-added to the Verstehen of Freire’s case. In short, the main purpose of this paper is trying to reexamine my understanding from Freire’s perspectives which make more sense to me when I recall things happening in Taiwan in the past and present. And I hope such understanding can be more objective to me, and, probably more sharable with my peers.
The following is a brief socio-cultural context to outline such concerns.
A brief Geo-historical contexts of Taiwan
Geo-politically speaking, Taiwan, also known as Formosa,[1] has been noted as a "trouble spot in Asian waters." Historically, Formosa inherits most of its cultural traditions from Mainland China. The Chinese migration to Formosa began in the 16th century. For the most part, settlers came from neighboring mainland provinces of Fukien and Canton. During four-century-long isolation from Mainland China under foreign colonization (e.g., Dutch 1620-64, Spain 1624-42, and Japan 1895-1945), Formosa developed a distinct sociopolitical-cultural identity of her own.
During World War II, two important events influenced the future of Formosa. First, in 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and intended to use Formosa as a base for a push southward into Indochina. Second, in 1943, the Cairo Declaration by the Allies pledged the restoration of Formosa to China, which would end Japan's half-century occupation of Taiwan.
Yet, the Chinese civil war (1945-1949) posed a dilemma in terms of rival claims of the governments of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung. These governments split China into two parts--the conflicting claims of the Kuomintang (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Since the early 1960s, Taiwan has progressed impressively in terms of economic growth. One significant factor contributing to its success is the last four decades of "political stability." From 1947, when Martial Law was proclaimed, until 1989, a diverse range of social movements and dynamics were totally prohibited. Behind her remarkable economic achievement, a leviathan of control hung over Taiwan's socio-edu-political life.
In the coming section, I borrow Freire’s instruments of oppression of the oppressor correlating to Taiwan’s experiences to illuminate his theories and practices.
A Reflection on Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the Oppressor
Under the above socio-cultural contexts, I interwove Freire’s ideas and concepts: conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, and cultural invasion into two stages of events happening in my parents’ generation and my first-hand experience (Japan’s occupation transiting to the Nationalist Party’s (KMT) practices on the local Taiwanese people).
Stage one- Japan’s colonization
Freire pointed out that “the conqueror imposed his objectives on the vanquished, and make of them his possession. He imposes his own contours on the vanquished, who internalized this shape and become ambiguous beings: ‘housing’ another. From the first, the act of conquest, which reduces persons to the status of things, is necrophilia” (p.138). These concepts of conquest, ambiguous beings, and necrophilia phenomena can be illustrated by one of the most significant events happening in Taiwan’s history tied to Japan’s developing imperialism:
In reviewing part of the mid-19th-century history of Japan, the conspicuous transition was the Boshin War of 1867–1868 which led to the resignation of the Shogunate. Hereafter, the Meiji Restoration established a government-centered on the emperor and adopted Western political, judicial, and military institutions that transformed the Empire of Japan into an industrial world power. A consequence of embarking on a number of military conflicts to increase access to natural resources and human capital was to change the outlook of several Asian countries. Among them was Taiwan.
After victories in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japanese militants seized more power and gained momentum. This conquest asserted the superior power of Japan over the senile, immobile, and deteriorating China’s last dynasty-Ching empire. Taiwan was annexed to Japan under 1895’s Shimonoseki treaty. As a ceded territory, local Taiwanese were reduced into a military-production base for Japan’s further southward actions. Being an oppressed state, the oppression is not only military, or economic, but cultural as Freire mentioned. I vividly remember that my parents gave me a cognitive dissonance when I was a student: I perceived my parents’ favoring Japanese governmental policies which were totally opposite to what I was taught at schools based on the Nationalist KMT’s political ideology (in particular, high school, and university that I attended). Not until as a grown adult later, had I understood my parents’ generation when cultural invasion, hegemony, and manipulation were beyond their comprehension.
In cultural invasion, Freire quoted from Fromm’s analysis that the objective conditions which generate whether in-home, such as parent-child relations in a climate of indifference and oppression or of love and freedom, or in a sociocultural context…And the atmosphere of the home is prolonged in the school, and on of the precepts is “not to think” (p.155.) To investigate such statements from my experience, I would admit my generation that this analysis has some validity, but in speaking for my parents’ generation, the issue was not just “not to think”, but with no such “a capacity to think”. I will have more details in the following section.
To be able to think, one of the premises was to expose the learning opportunities. Without learning, knowledge won’t be shared, challenged, and disseminated within and between socio-cultural contexts. In real life, the case was that not only my parents’ generation was not allowed to learn their own language and cultural practices, but also bought into glorified and internalized values, words, belief from the invaders. My father was allowed to have 4 years’ Japanese elementary education and was more or less, unconsciously, assimilated into a Japanese than a Chinese-Taiwanese (made me guiltily thinking of the pejorative term of “Zip Coon - without blackface”, and my eldest sisters and brother who were born during Japanese occupation era have Japanese names (Teroko 照子, Akiko 秋子, and Takeo 武雄) instead of like mine Li-chin (麗琴), a typical Han’s name since I was born much later than my older siblings).
There are enormous examples to allude to those situations. Due to space limits, I use some mundane cases. One of them was that my younger sister was born with a pretty face. My parents would feel a sense of strange pride when friends praised her as cute as a “Japanese doll.” Seemingly, Japanese food was more expensive than that of Taiwanese or well-known Chinese cuisines; kimono was more elegant than our own clothing (even though we know its style was borrowed from China’s Tang Dynasty in the 10th century); Japanese kids were well-educated, well-behaved, smarter, and cleaner than my own folks (even subconsciously we are aware that we are much outsmarting to Japanese). Such an internalized mixed inferior-superior complex was fostered via visible and invisible cultural domination through the colonial state.
In the rule and divide section, Freire provided his insight in the following statement, “As the oppressor minority subordinate and dominates the majority, it must divide and keep it divided in order to remain in power. The minority cannot permit itself the luxury of tolerating the unification of the people, which would undoubtedly signify a serious threat to their own hegemony” (p.141, 2000). In relating to the divide and rule to ensure the invader’s continuous domination, the local Taiwanese were selected by the royalty or submission to the Japanese magistracy. Certain “valuable” Taiwanese families were allowed a small quota to enter into Japanese high school and to emulate Japanese ways of life. Their Japanese diplomas would grant them better life chances to obtain office jobs, for example, being police officers (a hot job) who in terms guarded against their own people. The rest of the Taiwanese people with good health conditions were sent into basic Japanese elementary schools, in particular boys, who, in the long run, were the main productive force for Japan’s southward and source of military drafts. Women like my mother, who was in low SES status never got a chance to go to elementary school, except for a small group of daughters from elite Taiwanese families. 95% of women were encouraged to reproduce more offspring, in particular, boys, which reinforced the gender ideology that males were more valuable who could serve the grand destiny of the Japanese Emperor. The rice/food ration was given according to the children being reproduced. My parents ended up having 10 children without specific life skills, education, training, or other life chances to survive.
But an even more perplexing condition was yet to come which happened right after 50 years’ Japanese colonization. Ironically, the most horrendous blood-shedding did not occur under the alien’s oppression but in the hands of her folks. Such cultural dissonance and tragedy is another variation of the post-colonial state where the colonial masters’ retreat created a power vacuum or cultural dissonance between the newly dominant group and the old world practice.
Stage Two – The Tragedy of Taiwan
After Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, meanwhile, Mao’s political power overshadowed Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government. The Chinese civil war created another peculiar stage of domination and hegemony on Taiwan under a complicated socio-political context.
After 50 years’ hegemonic enculturation from Japan, the Taiwanese lived under a double consciousness- on the one hand, Japan presented herself as a well-organized powerful regime, which deserved some credits in constructing Taiwan’s early stage of industrialization. On the other hand, and she was a foreign invader depleting both natural and human resources from Taiwan. No one could forget that sporadic uprising and minor rebellions were ruthlessly oppressed by the Japanese government in the early stage of subjugation of the Taiwanese people.
The Nationalist Chinese governments retreated to Taiwan to take over Japanese’s leftovers gave local people a complex hope that the “mother country” would take care of this “Asia’s orphan,” heal those unspeakable wounds, and live a better life in the future. However, what happened was quite opposite and unexpected. The defeated Chinese government by Mao’s communist party led more than one million ill-equipped, weary soldiers and various rank and files living under Chiang’s promise – bring them back to China with future prosperity. Taiwan again became another springboard for a promise that returning to China was the hope for those followers of Chiang.
50 years of Japan’s domination and culture invasion might not be successfully altering Taiwanese’s mind, but the legacies and influence did happen on local people. For instance, the early Nationalist government realized that Mandarin/Chinese would not be more communicable than Japanese, thus most government news, documents had to be promulgated in Japanese or bilingually. The Taiwanese acted and behaved more like the disliked and hated Japanese from the Nationalist Chinese’s point of view. Unavoidably, the suspicion and miscommunications derived from language barriers, mixed norms, and values between China-mainlanders and local Taiwanese culminated in the February 28th, 1947 massacre maneuvered by the Nationalist government on local 20,000 Taiwanese elites and dissents who demanded more cultural understanding and political autonomy. (Note, as of today - 9/1, 2017, I read this old paper, some new lights and discoveries found or published by other scholars since the massacre, though without controversies, I would like to add here: Japan’s involvement after she left Taiwan, and the infiltrators engaging in inciting insurgence from Communists of China and Taiwan. More research can be done in this regard).
After the atrocity, the art of “white terror” was enforced on the Island. The Martial law was enacted. And the most powerful social institution was proved to be the most effective hegemonic instrument which was education, playing an outstanding role in confining intellectual activities under the name of national security and confronting Communist China. The pronged approaches were exercised. One of the prongs was that all the Japanese and Taiwanese languages and cultural events were not allowed to speak or practiced in public. Many stories had been told that Taiwanese kids were severely punished and publicly humiliated by school teachers and administrators (mainly were China mainlanders) for their treasons or unpatriotic behaviors by speaking Japanese and Taiwanese or acting like ones. The other prong was about the super banking curriculum designed to reclaim China and to indoctrinate the detestation toward Communism China and Japan. The curriculum and instruction were fully condensed and aligned with the Nationalist Party’s ideology. Taiwanese students were taught to fight and scarify for the great cause of “the recovery of the lost land of China”, and one of such effects was my joining the military right after my graduation from National Taiwan University – a quality education opportunity did not mean to employability (plus I was an inexperienced young woman) under the rampant favoritism and nepotism practice at that time, except the door, opened up to be the war zone machine Thus responding to the calling of patriotism (Taiwan’s membership in the United Nation was replaced by China during the Nixon to the Carter presidencies) enthused by Nationalist government’s policy to ensure my parents who could have health care and medication accessibility became my one-way ticket. Beyond my own small world, in the larger society, the intellectual activities, newspaper agencies, social organizations were under scrutinized in the name of Marital Law which was sanctioned right after the February 28th local uprising, 1947 (this social upheaval was a research topic of my theses, published at UW-Madison).
Under such a Banking system, my generation learned the most detailed information about China (music, art, history, geography, philosophy, literature, politics and economics…etc.) but meagerly know about what Taiwan was, is, and will be. The China mainlander was portrayed as social elites due to the majority of them under Chiang’s promise granted the prominent social-economic positions that used to belong to Japanese’s rank and files in Taiwan. These social elite statuses mainly clustered in the educational systems, government officialdom, military, and state-owned industries. Thus the top 4 social institutions were under the Nationalist’s control: education, government, military, and economy.
In the previous section, I mentioned a perplexity of mine - why my parents paradoxically preferred the Japanese government’s treatment to the Nationalists, even though they were fully understanding it was a repressive foreign regime. Here is one episode to provide some explanation for the choice of the less evil, even though it sounded like an impossible joke! In the Japanese occupation era, the more children were produced, the more food ration was given- what a “great” policy! Under the Nationalist regime, due to the heavy military build-ups to fight against Communist China, the overloaded taxes were imposed on local Taiwanese farmers, workers, and businessmen. One of such taxes was on the headcounts in a household- the more people in a room, the heavier tax the household head had to pay. I vividly remember how my father was constantly intimidated by the Mainland China policemen and had to escape from the arrests, and then they just came into our shanty house lived with three generations, searching for any meager things left at home. Nobody questioned that there was no food on the table, no education, skills, and jobs available to have an income for the 10 children, grandparents, and some young uncles and aunts. My parents just had no energy to feed so many stomachs, not to mention to pay all kinds of taxes! It was a déjà vu of the peasants in the medieval feudaldom, or workers in the newly industrialized England.
Freire’s remarks on the oppressor who cannot permit or tolerate the solidarity of the subjugated people because it signified a serious threat to their own hegemony reminds my school days. I vividly recall if some students wanted to organize study groups, they had to report to the security agencies for approval and under necessary surveillance. Many rumors and speculations about several professors and social dissents who dared to criticize the government was mysteriously disappeared from our campus – the major mental power plant of this country – National Taiwan University. Under the white terror, most civilians were aware that there were “professional/secret agents” similar to America’s CIA's and FBI's or KGBs residing in major universities and research institutes. The mission of the culture of silence was completed. And this is what I meant by the high human cost in order to reach “stability”/status quo in exchange the economic growth as the totalitarian policy proclaimed.
Today I still can exactly remember my mother’s anxiety (grew up from the culture of fear) with tears in her eyes when I was heading for the U.S. to study sociology after I won a full scholarship via a 3 days’ national competition (in particular, on “social movements” as part of my social psychology discipline). She wanted me to promise her never to get involved with any politics and never say anything “inappropriately” – just “not to think” for the safety’s sake (as I mentioned she was never allowed to have a day of formal education. She could neither read nor write but love). As Freire’s remarks “Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves, at attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think” (p.149, 2000).
Conclusion
Due to space limitations, this narrative presents a small part of my lived experience and observations scaffolded by Freire’s concepts depicted in the book- Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It is also subject to my personal biased even under my own careful self-scrutiny. My resonance to his thoughts, obviously, is quite strong. The Taiwanese people endured two significant stages of dehumanized processes echoing Freire’s argument: “Within an objective situation of oppression, an ideology is necessary to the oppressor as a means of further oppression – not only economic but cultural: the vanquished are dispossessed of their oppression has been limited, anti-dialogue becomes indispensable to its preservation” (p.139, 2000).
I would like to partially adopt Marx’s famous “religion” quote in this conclusion: “’ Hope’ is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Such a strong hope finally was reified after the Martial Law was lifted in 1987. The dynamic democratic movements took on the next stage of the dialogical pedagogy in Taiwan that has been fostering the resilience for Taiwanese people to achieve socio-economic development in the international community during the last two decades.
Thinking of my mother (passed away two and a half year ago) who was never allowed to enter school a day, but with strong “hope” that one day her daughter will become a “female” doctor or professor to preside “social justice” yet with the contradictory notion of wanting the daughter “not to think” too much!!
Finally, I mentioned at the onset of this paper that the main purpose of this paper was to reexamine my understanding from Freire’s perspectives via my recollections of events happening in the past which still have impacts on today’s practice in Taiwan, and hoping such understanding can make more sense to myself, and, could be sharable with peers.
[1] Portuguese sailors, passing Taiwan in 1544, first jotted in a ship's log the name of the island "Ilha Formosa", meaning Beautiful Island. In 1582 the survivors of a Portuguese shipwreck spent ten weeks battling malaria and Aborigines before returning to Macau on a raft (Mateo 2002: 2-9).
