Here is one for you. Google has a chance to stand against an insidious type of racism, NATIONALIST BIGOTRY, but they instead fold. And they fold at the request of those that are the recipients of the bigotry.
From Times Online UK... Google Earth maps out discrimination against burakumin caste in Japan...
A handful of innocent-looking antique maps, one offensive word and tens of thousands of offended "untouchables" have plunged Google into an unspoken class war that has raged in Japan for centuries.
Despite its ambition to be the cartographer of the internet age, the search engine has lumbered into one of the darkest corners of Japan - the bigotry of mainstream Japanese society towards the Burakumin, the "filthy mob", whose ancestors fell outside the caste system of the 17th-century samurai era.
By allowing old maps to be overlaid on satellite images of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto on its Google Earth service, the search engine shows how the old ghettos relate to the 21st-century streets.
That, critics say, is perfect ammunition to hurt descendants of the people who lived there 400 years ago.
OK! Got that? 400 years ago sections of Tokyo were the living spaces of outcasts. They were the black sheep of the nation concerning whom Wikipedia says, "The burakumin are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, which mainly comprised those with occupations considered "tainted" with death or ritual impurity (such as executioners, undertakers or leather workers), and traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and ghettos."
I imagine they were the outhouse cleaners too but Wiki does not say that. The Times Online article goes on to say,
Under pressure to diffuse criticism, the search engine has asked the owners of the woodblock print maps to remove the legend that identifies the ghetto with an old term that translates loosely as "scum town".
Google has unwittingly created a visual tool, however, that would have prolonged an ancient discrimination into the internet age, according to the lobbying group established to protect the human rights of three million burakumin.
Members of the sub-class were condemned by the old feudal system to unclean jobs associated with death and dirt. Laws made 150 years ago supposedly ended the caste system but, their descendants say, the prejudice remains.
Google should have told the burakumin folks that they would work with them to end the discrimination not by removing or changing the maps but instead shaming the perps of the prejudice and encouraging the people of the world to abstain from buying products manufactured by companies that acquiesce, allow, or even encourage this twisted mindset.
Many Japanese people are so filled with this jaundice that they bring it home and fill their lives with it.
Companies sometimes hire private detectives to ensure that they are not employing someone of burakumin ancestry. Parents may run a similar check on their prospective son or daughter-in-law, and children may be excluded from good schools. Property prices in burakumin communities are lower than in the areas that surround them and public works projects take longer to be completed in the zones.
Toru Matsuoka, an opposition MP and member of the Buraku Liberation League, said that it amounted to illegal bullying.
Prying1 would like to see Google set up an OUTING service. One that would OUT those idiots that are guilty of continuing a 400 year 'tradition' of ostracizing fellow human beings. A way to present the people guilty of this nationalist racism to the world and show them for what they are. Segregationist rectal apertures.
Shame them and if that does not work hit them in the pocket book. They need to be taught the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
And these narrow minded bigots are not even using the color of skin as a standard to throw their unreasoned hatred at but instead the jobs their great, great, great, great, great grand parents held. Talk about stupid...
One more thing. Japanese government intervention concerning this problem seems to have it's own set of problems with fraud and waste.
Breaking the silence on burakumin By IAN PRIESTLEY
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