https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68078061
Ukrainian-born model winning Miss Japan re-ignites identity debate
24th January 2024, 04:25 EST
By Shaimaa Khalil, Tokyo correspondent
*** begin quote ***
Ai Wada, the organiser of the Miss Japan Grand Prix pageant told the BBC that judges had chosen Ms Shin as the winner with “full confidence”.
“She speaks and writes in beautiful and polite Japanese,” Ms Wada said. “She is more Japanese than we are.”
Ms Shiino had announced in Instagram earlier last year when she received Japanese nationality, saying that she “may not look Japanese”, but her mind had “become Japanese” because she had grown up in Japan.
*** end quote ***
I immediately remembered: “‘Pusher’ Ross: Well, you tell ‘im. You talk better English than I do!”.
The organizer’s quote just struck me as funny.
What makes someone “Japanese”?
Or an “American” for that matter. I’d like to believe that it’s a desire for freedom and liberty to “be all that you can be”. Some how that ethic has been lost on many native born Americans. As demonstrated by those from China and India that arrive with little or nothing and within a few decades they are “prosperous”. But those born here with the same opportunities or even more never can rise from a self-inflicted poverty.
I’m sure that the Gooferment “welfare” — handouts that are enough to starve — blunts any ambition.
So sad that one has to be “Japanese” to win a beauty contest in Japan but not “ambitious” to be an “American”.
Argh! Makes me sad!
—30—
Posted by reinkefj 
Reinke Faces Life 