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Farang-Racism?
ThailandTom
Veteran
Farang is a Thai word for basically white people or foreigners. It was the first word I learnt in Thai before I even came here on research into the country itself.
I know this country has not exactly got a deveolped status, but there are many situations where I consider there to be racism existing against farang. I shall give some examples.
For a start, if you are white AKA a farang, you cannot work here unless it is teaching English or you magically have a letter from a Thai employer that wants you to work in their company. But forget about that, Thais are willing to work for far less and the employer will have to pay for a business work permit and you getting the correct visa, which by process is so damn difficult.
You can own a business however, but you need a business visa which has many many rules and restrictions on applying, a lot of them to do with how much money you have in the bank account. You cannot own land here, if you want to own a house you need to have it owned under a Thai nationals name, i.e a partner or something.
As I understand and can speak Thai fairly well, I often listen in to conversations between Thai people when I am say, waiting in line for something, waiting for food or whatever. I often hear that buzz word, 'farang' and then start to listen. Some Thai's really do hate us, and some accept and some want to be us. Everything here is about the colour white. Most cars are white, houses are beautiful if they are white, there are skin products to make your skin white, people hide from the sun etc. But going back to those who hate us farang, we bring a HUGE amount of the GDP to Thailand through tourism. If that was to decline somewhat then Thaland would have a very big problem on it's hands. It is why prostitution is illegal but nothing is done about it, all of the girls/lady boys are most of the time well looked after and pay taxes through that money and send it home to their families. Not exactly a virtuous line of work but if it did not exist trust me, Thailand would be crippled.
I would like to finish by saying this. Going back 50 or so years to when black people were discriminated in the US and the UK or wherever, it feels almost the same here. If you look at all the facts and what I have said, then research into it you will see it is pretty much racism. Rant over
I know this country has not exactly got a deveolped status, but there are many situations where I consider there to be racism existing against farang. I shall give some examples.
For a start, if you are white AKA a farang, you cannot work here unless it is teaching English or you magically have a letter from a Thai employer that wants you to work in their company. But forget about that, Thais are willing to work for far less and the employer will have to pay for a business work permit and you getting the correct visa, which by process is so damn difficult.
You can own a business however, but you need a business visa which has many many rules and restrictions on applying, a lot of them to do with how much money you have in the bank account. You cannot own land here, if you want to own a house you need to have it owned under a Thai nationals name, i.e a partner or something.
As I understand and can speak Thai fairly well, I often listen in to conversations between Thai people when I am say, waiting in line for something, waiting for food or whatever. I often hear that buzz word, 'farang' and then start to listen. Some Thai's really do hate us, and some accept and some want to be us. Everything here is about the colour white. Most cars are white, houses are beautiful if they are white, there are skin products to make your skin white, people hide from the sun etc. But going back to those who hate us farang, we bring a HUGE amount of the GDP to Thailand through tourism. If that was to decline somewhat then Thaland would have a very big problem on it's hands. It is why prostitution is illegal but nothing is done about it, all of the girls/lady boys are most of the time well looked after and pay taxes through that money and send it home to their families. Not exactly a virtuous line of work but if it did not exist trust me, Thailand would be crippled.
I would like to finish by saying this. Going back 50 or so years to when black people were discriminated in the US and the UK or wherever, it feels almost the same here. If you look at all the facts and what I have said, then research into it you will see it is pretty much racism. Rant over
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Comments
Did you have some expectation that people would not discriminate against you because of your culture or heritage? As you have stated, some people in Thai culture are even trying to fulfill some fantasy being white or possibly more Western? That is still a form of prejudice - whether its the favorable kind or not. You shouldn't have that same fantasy about Thailand, because everybody has their own level of ignorance to struggle with. There will be prejudice. Just work on your own.
You raised a good point, even thought they want to be whiter, that is still kind of wrong. I joked with my partners son that farang come here and want the sun to be brown, but Thais want to be white. Nobody is ever happy with what they have. I do not have any fantasy about Thailand, well at least anymore, I am spent too much time here to know the ins and outs. It is a deceptive country to say the least, but I still would rather live here than back in merry old England.
Occasionally, worse.
However I would like to add, how easy is it to obtain a work permit? Not work in itself, but the chance to work?
I heard from several people that the young people in the sex trade often help their families up north by sending them money. To me it sounded like a rationalization for using the opportunity to have sex with with young women by older men. Still I'm sure it happens in some cases.
What I saw up north was what appeared to be relatively prosperous small cities and towns and hamlets where sex tourism is nonexistent or no more so than any city or town anywhere. The farms looked tidy and productive.
If I was a Thai farmer living and working up there I would do anything to keep my daughter from moving south to have sex with farang for a living. And if she did you can bet that my hatred for farang would be more obvious than it was in almost any Thai people that I encountered.
That said, being that I did not see much of Thailand it is likely that there are vast areas where people are not prosperous at all, and perhaps they welcome the money that their beautiful daughter can earn by prostituting herself.
If that is true then I can see why they have strict laws preventing foreigners from working and buying up their land. They are surrounded on three sides by people who are pehaps even less prosperous than they are. Anytime a foreigner takes a job that a Thai can do it contributes to the conditions that cause people to lose their kids to the sex trade.
On a side note to that. My sister said to me that she had not considered Thailand as a place she would visit because of the sex tourism. Im certain that many people think like her. So you have to deduct the loss of mainstream tourism caused by the sex tourism from the total before you can assume that sex is keeping the country afloat. Of course you have much more experience there than me so I respect your opinion on this.
As for overt prejudice, I only felt it a couple of times. And since 90% of guys my age are there to have sex with young Thai people, I wasn't surprised. In fact I expected to experience more hostility than I did. Perhaps, as you pointed out, if I understood Thai I would have noticed it more.
As far as work visas and all that goes, the US is extremely exclusive with their visa policies, so I wouldn't say that falls under racism. It's fairly common immigration policy, with the exception of countries within the EU. The wanting to be white issue, actually, is a type of self-hatred, but it's caused by global marketing of products, films, and other media from developed countries, which makes white skin seem like a status item. So there may be subconscious (or conscious) resentment of that aggressive marketing. The Thais need to start a native pride movement, or something. Brown is beautiful.
Just wondering: does "farang" apply only to foreigners of European heritage or descent? Or does it also apply to Japanese, Taiwanese and other wealthy Asian tourists and businesspeople? Given the pedophelic undercurrents in some of Japanese society, I'd think that not all the sex trade patrons are white. Is there resentment of East Asian tourists as well?
I feel a couple of posts allude to some kind of relationship between sex tourism and "farang". I could be wrong.
And, if anything, "farang" is from the French language, not English.
I agree with you about the sex trade. I've actually talked to Westerns who will tell you they are doing the prostitutes a tremendous moral favor by helping them support themselves that way...as opposed to, of course, donating money to them.
http://baheyeldin.com/linguistics/thai-word-farang-variations-in-other-languages-arabic-origin.html
It turns out the word "farang" pre--exists the French in SE Asia, and even the Portugese. It dates back to the days of the Franks, and the presence of Arab communities in Spain.
@ThailandTom I don't know what your skillset is, but I found a number of websites offering jobs for farangs in Thailand. Not just teaching English, but office administrative jobs, etc.
take a deep look at our own attitude when we are in our country
there is nothing to complain about
I was looking through a discussion in one of the expat forums and they were discussing how if the sex trade was gone then the economy here would crash, which pretty much true. But also that the girls prefer not to be rescued anymore for the most part. There is a team set-up to stop this from going on and rescue these girls, but some the team members have be known to sexually assult the girls and then just get off.
The notion of this post was not really to link the sex-trade with the whole farang thing, it was to point out how it is made almost impossible for us to work here, own property etc, how we are thought of and so forth. But yes, as it has been pointed a lot of the time farang come here and act like fools and disrespect the culture. Some people have lived here 10 or so years and they cannot speak a simple conversation in Thai.
Also, the us has bleaching products for black, Indian and people of color.
I don't get it.
@ThailandTom Who are these teams made up of--Thais or foreign aid workers?
The girls prefer not to be rescued? They prefer to work until they're killed by AIDS or an abusive client? They just don't think ahead? I bet if education were widely and readily available to girls, far fewer would be choosing the oldest profession.
Yes the title of the discussion came from a news report and was called something like "Thai sex girls don't want to be rescued" I believe that the team is made up of Thai's, but don't quote me on that. I will post the thread here
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/538603-thailands-sex-workers-dont-want-to-be-rescued/
I actually call my husband that sometimes...do you guys think it's racist.
"Gringito "
My friends call their husband's a variety of colorful names :
Jefe :boss
Viejo : old man
El guardia : jailer
Fidel
...I wonder what they call us...lol
Yeah, that's me!
I don't care about their race..I won't discriminate..if they suck they suck, if they are cool they are cool.
Isn't it true there are sucky and cool people in every culture and of every race?
this is why racism is too narrowminded.. if you really want to hate a lump sum, hate people in general! lol (that doesn't sound very buddhist) so I guess have compassion for those more sucky than yourself...
Morality of family.
A myriad of other things.
flower bouquets on the table.
I have no idea what the data is now re HIV in Thailand.
....but seriously... sorry to joke up your thread. hands palm to palm.
@ThailandTom Here are a few:
jobs4farangs.com
http://www.asiajobs77.com/q-jobs-for-farang-in-thailand
http://www.indigoguide.co.uk/thailand/jobs.htm
http://www.pattaya-discovery.com/en/site-160-jobs-for-farangs.php