Well, I met Debito today. I got into the room late (they switched it at the last minute and didn't tell me) and stayed to listen to his presentation for a bit over an hour, then went to lunch with him and some of the law students who had attended the lecture. Knowing most of his work pretty well, the majority of stuff covered was quite familiar, but it was still interesting to hear him speak about it in person. Seemed like a nice guy - reasonably down to earth, genuine and very friendly, though obviously with a keen talent for self-promotion. I spoke to him for a while and took a photo - it's below, just for the grandchildren. Not that most of the rest of the world knows who he is, anyway.
Lunch afterwards was good - in Faculty House, which has a wonderful prospect view over most of Harlem. Got to talk in rather more relaxed surroundings and ask him a few questions. The guy's not exactly a hero of mine, but I have a lot of respect for him and it kinda made my day to meet him in person. I asked him if he didn't think that onsen and restaurants with discriminatory signs were small beer and that the real target should be discrimination in places where it can really ruin people's lives, like Japanese academia, and he answered that the stuff he did was much more clear-cut and easier to do, so that's what he worked with.
There was a Japanese law student there too, Toshi, who I think at times thought that he was kind of being attacked by proxy - and Debito did take exception to his talking about "we Japanese" when of course Debito himself is one of them. But I think he was able to smooth it over by stressing a couple of times that all nations, none more so than the US, have their own problems with discrimination.
Good times. Columbia provides one with a lot of opportunities.
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2 comments:
That's pretty darn cool Rob, I'm sort of jealous. And I do love the automatic-japanese defense mode that kicks in... classic. I lost a few mixi friends when I went on about a few recent oddities that have occurred over here.
Knowing the profile the guy has in the JET community, it was kind of a trip to meet him, actually. I can kind of understand why the J-guy might have felt a bit defensive - I'm not sure he really got Debito's point, which is not that Japan is necessarily more racist than anywhere else, but that there don't exist legal mechanisms to address it.
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