lectures 講演

The image of the African American as a genetically-advantaged athlete prevails in Japanese society even today. According to my preliminary survey, more than 90% of my respondents (who are all Japanese college students) answered that African Americans are better athletes than European Americans—let alone Japanese—and they believe that the reason is biological or genetic; that is to say, they still cling to the old stereotype about the innateness of African American athleticism. The result of this survey must be surprising to the participants in the American intellectual community where the pitfall of stereotyping has long been studied and circumvented, but this in an unfortunate fact, which suggests that Japanese are probably three-quarter-century behind Americans (when Americans were in the days of Jesse Owens and Joe Louis) in terms of the knowledge and experience with which one should deal with the touchy issue of racial difference. Following the summary of American/Japanese major differences in the respondents’ replies, this presentation analyzes why the Japanese answer in the way they did, while it also searches for the ways in which they can be shifted toward a more balanced view, drawing on the information deriving from the replies of the American counterparts.