The Asian Minority

At one point, on the river, Ju and I realized that we hadn't seen Fangbai for a while. We decided to wait for her, since we didn't know what she might have gotten into. So we found a quiet part of the river and stopped paddling, just drifted and ate some more of our lunch. A long time went by and we started to think that maybe we had been mistaken, and that Fangbai had been ahead of us. At this point some other people, not from our group, were going past.

Ju: "Why don't we just ask them if Fangbai is behind us?"

Me: "But they don't know who she is?"

Ju: "Excuse me! Are there three Asian people in a boat behind us?"

Guy: "Yeah."

Ju: "See? Was that so hard?"

Haha. No, not really. But believe it or not I think I felt the effect of having been to Japan. On a river in Mid-Missouri, yes, it makes sense that an Asian canoeist would be unusual enough that someone would remember seeing them and know who we were talking about with just the one adjective. I might have come more quickly to that conclusion a year ago.

But my trip to Japan seems to have changed things a bit. I no longer take it for granted that Caucasians form the majority. In some ways, that's a good thing. But then again, this situation demonstrates the usefulness of categories, and yes, even 'stereotypes' in a sense, for efficient communication.