I assume you mean with you

Multi-ethnic communities work best when there is greater financial equality, and a willingness to intermingle. With slightly different circumstances, Koreans could be role models for poor blacks around them, just as Chinese could be for indigenous Indonesians. Your point about “the human environment” is a salient one. It makes me think of how right-wingers talk about “job creators”, as in the wealthy who contribute to society by creating jobs for the less wealthy; perhaps this contribution to economic activity is incomplete without also contributing to the social aspects of the community, with the goodwill that generates.

My perspectives on the issue are strongly influenced by my first hand experiences of anti-Chinese discrimination. You could do a google search on Indonesian Chinese, I don’t know if what is ever written could even remotely shed light on the experiences people had to live through. In addition, throughout south east Asia white authors linked to indiginious elites have been quite active in promoting the myth of “Chinese domination” of the indiginious economy. This myth is promoted for ulterior motives, the result of which an entire people are unfairly painted and thus become targets of pervasive, severe prejudice.

The thing about trade and business is that the competition can be very high and unforgiving, in a sense the scale of rivalry can seem like war and domination (and it may be), this is bound to cause negative emotions in everybody involved at times. Nowadays businesses can pride and brand itself on customer service, but what is the experience like for the customer relations officers? They could be facing very high pressure, and that is just one example.

So as a whole business does cause ill-feeling and unhappiness, it is unavoidable, and complicated enough, but what happens when you add into the mix racial perception, and cultural clashes? What happens if the context of the setting is a local community that is unfortunately under-represented in business? Things become even more complicated!

It is true that it is a fallacy that the actions of unethical traders and merchants can represent the all practices of an entire race, just as it is a fallacy that the actions of professional griefers and troublemakers can represent the other side. Unfortunately, due to circumstance, this is how things can be perceived. (People are not so sophisticated, we do grasp at easily understood things as a means of making sense of the world. All of us do it I think.)

Because this sort of racial perception does color people’s thoughts, it is part of the business environment, so it may be good for trade associations and business owners to think about how to better manage and handle human relations within the communities they do business in. Business isn’t all about just goods and services in exchange for money. Much of it could be about the concentration and exercise of power, the monopoly of finite resources, etc, but businesses also have an important role within the human environment that influences people.

To cut a long story short, anti-Asian sentiment targeting us on the basis of racial prejudice isn’t going to go away, and there are incentives for people to cause and provoke this sort of thing. It will be necessary to think about how to deal with this proactively rather than reactively.

Haha! Maybe that dude is on to something with the foreign language nagging. But to be honest, maybe he should’ve chosen a wife with a softer sounding language than Chinese–maybe a Romantic language like French or Catalan. His ears would thank him every time he forgot to turn the shower tight enough.

Right, just like you didn’t bother to look up the law before saying that you didn’t think that shopowner who refused to take back bottles was breaking the law. I’ve been trying to do the right thing, but it ain’t working, so I’m just gonna agree with you. Yup, you’re oppressed, and the world is out to get you.