Is Alex Kerr calling Debito a "smart nigger"?

[Update April 12, 2007: Debito posted an entry discussing the issues raised here, and Alex Kerr responded very positively, saying he fully supports Debito's activities. Great! Only I still kind of wish Kerr wouldn't use the word "gaijin" ... ]

About a year and a half ago, Alex Kerr stated the following in an interview with the Japan Times:

In Dogs and Demons you argue that Japan has failed to internationalize. What do you think about the work of Debito Arudou and others to combat racial discrimination in Japan? Well, somebody has to do it. I'm glad that there is a whistle-blower out there. But, I am doubtful whether in the long run it really helps. One would hope that he could do it another way. He's not doing it the Japanese way. He's being very gaijin in his openly combative attitude, and usually in Japan that approach fails. I fear that his activities might tend to just confirm conservative Japanese in their belief that gaijin are difficult to deal with. That said, perhaps we who live here are slow to stick our necks out when we sense an injustice, and quick to self-censor in order to get along smoothly in our communities. To me the most interesting aspect of Arudou Debito is that, in taking on Japanese citizenship, he has brought the dialogue inside Japan. His activities reveal the fact that gaijin and their gaijin ways are now a part of the fabric of Japan's new society. A very small part of course, but a vocal and real part.

Compare this to C. Eric Lincoln's vivid description of a "smart nigger" in Coming Through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America:

The smart nigger was likely to be everything the good nigger was not. Most likely he was educated above the norm considered sufficient for colored folks; whether he got it in school or some bigger fool than he had put it into his head, he had some dangerous notions. In either case, Mr. Martin said that the smart nigger was a pain in his own ass, and everybody else's too. He wanted too much. He wanted his street paved, and he wanted it paved because he paid taxes rather than because his wife cooked for the judge. His house was painted and well kept and he didn't waste his money on rattletrap cars. He didn't "owe money downtown," or "take up" advances on his pay every Monday morning. More than likely he had "been up North," and he had a colored newspaper come to his house in the mail. The smart nigger paid his poll taxes, and he was mighty slow, it seemed to Mr. Dubbie Gee, to answer when somebody said "Boy!" He didn't think that the bad nigger was funny, or that the good nigger could be trusted. Clearly, every smart nigger would bear watching. "They don't last long," Mr. Martin said, and he "flat out had no use for them." He said that if he were colored he'd either kick a smart nigger's ass down off his shoulders or keep away from him. A smart nigger, he said "is a damn fool hell-bent for trouble. And mark my words, he's gon' find it quicker'n a catfish can suck a chicken gut off a bent pin."

Is Alex Kerr saying Debito is a "smart nigger"?

I'd like to note that Kerr should be more specific in his comments, because is it really the case that there are no non-"gaijin" doing the things that Debito does? Is he saying that when Japanese file laws suits, this is a natural evolution of culture, but when Debito does it, it's reinforcing the notion that "gaijin" have an "openly combative attitude"?

Is he saying the teachers who refuse to sing Kimigayo are acting like "gaijin"?

What exactly is the definitive way some one displays an "openly combative attitude"?

Moreover, what is the definitive "Japanese way"? And in what specific way is Debito not doing it?

It's very disappointing to see some of Alex Kerr's calibar engaging in Nihonjinron. He should know that there is nothing so destructive to Japan's traditional local customs as Nihonjinron. Do I need to quote from his own books? Just like the centralization of construction standards begins to make all parks and all buildings look bleakly similar, the centralization of identity around the concept of "Japanese" in an essentialist sense is just as destructive to the development of a full personality.

In these days and times where the government is seeking to impose it's own morality on the people, Kerr should be more careful in how he words himself.

If Kerr has specific criticisms of Debito, by all means, he should make them. But what he says here is far below the high quality standards he put into his own books, Lost Japan and Dogs and Demons.

What a let down.