{"id":103081,"date":"2026-06-20T03:00:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T07:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=103081"},"modified":"2026-06-17T11:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:37:22","slug":"get-off-your-high-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/06\/20\/get-off-your-high-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Get off your high horse&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Devon_Eriksen_\/status\/2067110449112387798\" target=\"_blank\">Devon Eriksen<\/a> responds to a post from a Japanese man who claims not to understand American racism:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_103084\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-Canadian-and-Japanese-flags-on-Seventh-Avenue-by-Jim-the-Photographer-CC-BY-2.0.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-103084\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-Canadian-and-Japanese-flags-on-Seventh-Avenue-by-Jim-the-Photographer-CC-BY-2.0-480x320.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-103084\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-Canadian-and-Japanese-flags-on-Seventh-Avenue-by-Jim-the-Photographer-CC-BY-2.0-480x320.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-Canadian-and-Japanese-flags-on-Seventh-Avenue-by-Jim-the-Photographer-CC-BY-2.0-853x569.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-Canadian-and-Japanese-flags-on-Seventh-Avenue-by-Jim-the-Photographer-CC-BY-2.0-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-Canadian-and-Japanese-flags-on-Seventh-Avenue-by-Jim-the-Photographer-CC-BY-2.0-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/US-Canadian-and-Japanese-flags-on-Seventh-Avenue-by-Jim-the-Photographer-CC-BY-2.0.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-103084\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;United States, Canadian and Japanese Flags on Seventh Avenue&#8221; by <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/72744295@N00\">Jim, the Photographer<\/a> is licensed under <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/?ref=openverse\">CC BY 2.0 <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mirrors.creativecommons.org\/presskit\/icons\/cc.svg\" style=\"height: 1em; margin-right: 0.125em; display: inline;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mirrors.creativecommons.org\/presskit\/icons\/by.svg\" style=\"height: 1em; margin-right: 0.125em; display: inline;\" \/><\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/japan_nobunaga\/status\/2066856747747459438\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>NOBUNAGA<\/strong>\ud83c\uddef\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\udfef_\u590f\u6a39\u84bc\u4f9d @japan_nobunaga<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Honestly, racism is one of those things many Japanese people struggle to understand.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If we see a white person, we think, &#8220;Oh, they&#8217;re white.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If we see a black person, we think, &#8220;Oh, they&#8217;re black.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If there were blue people, we&#8217;d probably think, &#8220;Oh, they&#8217;re blue.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And that&#8217;s about as far as it goes.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If someone is nice, we think they&#8217;re nice.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If someone is an asshole, we think they&#8217;re an asshole.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If we like them, we like them.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If we don&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>We grow up being told not to cause trouble, not to fight, and to get along with the people around us.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Maybe that&#8217;s why judging someone by their race feels so foreign to a lot of Japanese people.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>We&#8217;re usually too busy judging people by whether they&#8217;re good people or not.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is what we, in America, call a &#8220;Luxury Belief System&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>That means something you can believe, and advertise your belief in, precisely because your privileges shelter you from the negative consequences of believing it. <\/p>\n<p>You, @japan_nobunaga, live in a nation that is 99% Japanese, just like you. <\/p>\n<p>You have plenty of time to evaluate <em>gaikokujin<\/em> as individuals. There are only a few of them around, and they probably aren&#8217;t going to stab you while you are trying to figure out the content of their character. <\/p>\n<p>So you have the luxury of telling everyone &#8220;look at me, I am not a racist, I am an enlightened being who makes no judgments about wolves&#8221; &#8230; because you do not live near any wolves, and run no risk of being bitten.<\/p>\n<p>In America, we have another saying &#8230; &#8220;Get off your high horse&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>This does not mean a literal horse. <\/p>\n<p>But it is meant to make you think about how the <em>daimyo<\/em>&#8216;s son, on his expensive thoroughbred stallion, does not understand why the peasants have muddy boots. <\/p>\n<p>If you get down off the horse, and walk, you will understand why the farmer&#8217;s boots are muddy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There were some dissenting comments to the original post:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-17-at-11-29-52-Devon-Eriksen-on-X-This-is-what-we-in-America-call-a-Luxury-Belief-System.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-17-at-11-29-52-Devon-Eriksen-on-X-This-is-what-we-in-America-call-a-Luxury-Belief-System.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"602\" height=\"322\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-103082\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-17-at-11-29-52-Devon-Eriksen-on-X-This-is-what-we-in-America-call-a-Luxury-Belief-System.png 602w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-17-at-11-29-52-Devon-Eriksen-on-X-This-is-what-we-in-America-call-a-Luxury-Belief-System-480x257.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-17-at-11-29-52-Devon-Eriksen-on-X-This-is-what-we-in-America-call-a-Luxury-Belief-System-150x80.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard similar stories of Japanese racism toward other East Asian peoples, never mind what they said (and probably still do say) about American black servicemen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Devon Eriksen responds to a post from a Japanese man who claims not to understand American racism: NOBUNAGA\ud83c\uddef\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\udfef_\u590f\u6a39\u84bc\u4f9d @japan_nobunaga Honestly, racism is one of those things many Japanese people struggle to understand. If we see a white person, we think, &#8220;Oh, they&#8217;re white.&#8221; If we see a black person, we think, &#8220;Oh, they&#8217;re black.&#8221; If [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,13],"tags":[343,262,1481,139,99],"class_list":["post-103081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-usa","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-culture","tag-luxurybeliefs","tag-psychology","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qOB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103085,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103081\/revisions\/103085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}