Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Tibetans Within Tibet

Here’s something I posted as a comment in the “The Positive Impacts of China in Tibet” post earlier. I thought I should make a separate post with the comment so people could comment with their own views of this assessment:

I think much of the problem lies within the perceptions and attitudes of Tibetans and other minorities with China. At the Tibetan University Student Conference some of the speakers who visited Tibet talked about the negative stereotypes the Chinese associated with the Tibetans as being lazy, ungrateful, etc… This sort of sentiment causes a problem since the state can put in any measures they want to try and provide equal opportunities or even better opportunities for minorities but like the popular saying goes “it’s not what you know but who you know”. Thus when people with power, who largely belong to the “majority”group, choose individuals with whom to give privileges, jobs, etc.. If they accept the negative views and stereotypes types towards these minorities, then of course the minorities will end up with less: opportunity, social standing, wealth, etc…

Of course other problems lie wherein laws in the PRC are not truly guaranteed to be enforced because the enforcement is poor and arbitrary since certain supposed “rights” are completely overlooked by those in power because of their own individual judgment of what is best. This sort of situation is ripe for discrimination to be inflicted on the minorities and/or any individual citizen since the enforcement of laws is subjective and selective by those in power. Similar to the situation in the south during the 50-60′s where laws were in place to supposedly protect and help the blacks within America but these laws were meaningless when they were not enforced by the law enforcement due to the society’s racist views towards blacks. Of course I don’t mean imply that Tibetans and Tibet are being treated as badly as the blacks of the south in the 1950′s.