Hector Martin

I see a lot of “I’m white + face racism in Japan!” tweets + I understand what they’re trying to say but that’s not it. Housing discrimination is real + terrible but if you get denied an apartment it’s because you’re foreign not because you’re white specifically. That’s Xenophobia

You're right, though it's also worth keeping in mind that people in Japan use race as a proxy for nationality. So you're foreign by default because you're white. Just ask the few white naturalized Japanese citizens whether they get treated as such!

Hmmmmmm i think it’s still a gaijin thing rather than a race thing. You’ll hear “外人がー“ but not often a white person specific “白人がー”

Oh sure, it's a gaijin thing, but gaijin is largely equal to "not of the Japanese race" in practice, and that's the presumed first approximation. So the underlying division may be xenophobic, but race is how it is determined on first impression. So it's kind of both.