Chinese attitudes to blacks

[Karl]

Chinese attitudes to blacks

DIANE ABBOTT

Sunday, November 22, 2009

US President Barack Obama's recent visit to China put the spotlight on Chinese attitudes to black people. Many Chinese were shocked and disbelieving that America could elect a black president. Yet China is reaching out to Africa and the Caribbean as never before, investing billions of dollars in the countries of those regions through trade and aid. But are the Chinese any less racist than the traditional white colonialists?


DIANE ABBOTT
I personally have visited China and Hong Kong on a number of occasions and I have always been treated with courtesy. But other black people that I know who have visited China have recounted how the Chinese stare at them in the street. Is this simple curiosity or is there an underlying hostility?

From the early eighties, when African students could study for free in Beijing, there have been reports of discrimination against Africans. Just before the Beijing Olympics stories of racism surfaced again, with blacks being denied entry to bars.

Recently a mixed-race Chinese girl (her father is black) who won a Chinese television talent show, Go! Oriental Angel, was shocked at the racist remarks that her victory triggered. Angry Internet users called her a "black chimpanzee" and called for all blacks in China to be deported. The talent show victor, 20-year-old Lou Jing, said, "It's sad. If I had a face that was half-Chinese and half-white, I wouldn't have gotten that criticism. Before the contest, I didn't realise these kinds of attitudes existed."

A Nigerian businessman who has lived in China for five years told the American newspaper, The Washington Post, "Chinese don't like Africans. They don't like black skin. China trying to embrace Africa is a political statement. The question is, 'How do they treat black people?'"
Other Africans living in China say that they often experience discrimination and police harassment.

Skin-whitening creams are very popular in China. It is a $100-million business. Chen Juan, a 27-year-old secretary, told the Washington Post, "For me, the whiter, the better. Being white means pretty. If someone looks too black, I feel they look countrified and like a farmer. Being white is prettier than being black. In my impression, black people, especially Africans, are not clean enough. To be frank, I just feel black people are too black. Definitely, I wouldn't consider having a black guy as my boyfriend even if he were rich."

Another 24-year-old girl said, "You know what they are doing here? They trade in drugs and girls. In their neighbourhood you can't go out in the street at night. Too dangerous. Could I marry an African? Have you gone mad? No, inter-racial marriages between Chinese and Africans hardly ever happen or never. With Europeans, that's a different story."

But just as the election of Barack Obama has challenged assumptions of black inferiority in America itself, it may have the same effect in far-off China.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...TO_BLACKS_.asp

[Mosiah]

No, inter-racial marriages between Chinese and Africans hardly ever happen or never. With Europeans, that's a different story."

They could learn a thing or two from the West Indies.

[Baddaz]

nutten nuh strange bout dat... directly from mi chinese friend in college... she couldn't take me to her house because i was too black for her father... to be dark skinned meant you were a peasant... you worked in the fields in the sun... it was funny listening to her explain...

chiney people in china nuh like blacks period... the younger generation is less prejudiced... i suppose that's everywhere...

[Baddaz]

most of china is illiterate... illiteracy breeds ignorance and prejudice...

[Mosiah]

but Bolt nuh black, and well black tuh?!?

[Lionpaw]

black ppl nuh like blacks either. a nuff girl seh dem nuh want nuh black and seek out whitey. well, dat a until dem realize say whitey have certain short-comings still.

[Hortical]

Asians, especially the Chinese view black people as inferior. Bleaching cream is a hot seller in Hong Kong where lighter skin is preferred. Asian parents in the USA often recommend their girls to marry white men, and in many big cities white men with asian women is very common.


Racial rethinking as Obama visits
Increasing diversity, born out of boom, forces Chinese to confront old prejudices
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 15, 2009




SHANGHAI -- As a mixed-race girl growing up in this most cosmopolitan of mainland Chinese cities, 20-year-old Lou Jing said she never experienced much discrimination -- curiosity and questions, but never hostility.
So nothing prepared Lou, whose father is a black American, for the furor that erupted in late August when she beat out thousands of other young women on "Go! Oriental Angel," a televised talent show. Angry Internet posters called her a "black chimpanzee" and worse. One called for all blacks in China to be deported.
As the country gets ready to welcome the first African American U.S. president, whose first official visit here starts Sunday, the Chinese are confronting their attitudes toward race, including some deeply held prejudices about black people. Many appeared stunned that Americans had elected a black man, and President Obama's visit has underscored Chinese ambivalence about the growing numbers of blacks living here.
"It's sad," Lou said, her eyes welling up as she recalled her experience. "If I had a face that was half-Chinese and half-white, I wouldn't have gotten that criticism. . . . Before the contest, I didn't realize these kinds of attitudes existed."
As China has expanded its economic ties with Africa -- trade between them reached $107 billion last year -- the number of Africans living here has exploded. Tens of thousands have flocked to the south, where they are putting down roots, establishing communities, marrying Chinese women and having children.



In the process, they are making tiny pockets of urban China more racially diverse -- and forcing the Chinese to deal with issues of racial discrimination. In the southern city of Guangzhou, where residents refer to one downtown neighborhood as Chocolate City, local newspapers have been filled in recent months with stories detailing discrimination and alleging police harassment against the African community.
"In Guangzhou, to be frank, they don't like Africans very much," said Diallo Abdual, 26, who came to China from Guinea 1 1/2 years ago to buy cheap Chinese clothes to ship back to West Africa for sale.
With the recession, his business has dried up, his money is gone, and he has overstayed his visa. Now, like many Africans here, he spends most of his days at Guangzhou's Tangqi shopping mall avoiding the police.
"The security will beat you with irons like you are a goat," he said. "The way they treat the blacks is very, very bad." He and others pointed out the spot where in July several Africans jumped from an upper-floor window to escape an immigration raid. One migrant was reported critically injured in the fall, and a large number of Africans marched on the local police station in protest.
The Guangzhou Security Bureau said in a statement at the time that it had a duty to check that foreigners living in the city were there legally.
Long-held prejudice
In the 1960s, China began befriending African countries, supporting liberation movements in Africa and bringing African students to China in a show of Third World solidarity. Lately, China has further deepened its ties to the continent, with Premier Wen Jiabao pledging $10 billion in new low-cost loans at a China-Africa summit in Egypt last week.
But that official policy of friendship has always been balanced against another reality -- the widely held view here that black people are inferior, that white people are wealthy and successful.



"The kind of prejudice you see now really happened with the economic growth," said Hung Huang, a Beijing-based fashion magazine publisher and host of "Straight Talk," a nightly current affairs talk show. "The Chinese worshiped the West, and for Chinese people, 'the West' is white people."
Hung, 48, said her generation was "taught world history in a way that black people were oppressed, they were slaves, and we haven't seen any sign of success since. The African countries are still poor, and blacks [in America] still live in inner cities." Hung noted that Chinese racial prejudices extend to the country's own minority groups, including Tibetans and Uighurs -- or anyone who is not ethnically Han Chinese.
The view of African Americans as poor and oppressed fits into the official narrative of the United States as a place of glaring inequalities. China's most recent annual report on the United States' human rights record in 2008, released in February, made no mention of Obama's historic election. But it said, "In the United States, racial discrimination prevails in every aspect of social life."
"Black people and other minorities live at the bottom of the American society," the report said. "There is serious racial hostility in the United States."



Sherwood Hu, a Shanghai-based filmmaker, was one of the judges on "Go! Oriental Angel" who gave Lou high marks. "Before the Cultural Revolution, China considered black people our brothers and white people our enemies," Hu said. "But deep down, they're a little bit afraid of black people."
The racial animosity here reflects a prejudice dating to China's mainly agrarian past: Darker skin meant you worked the fields; lighter skin put you among the elite. The country is rapidly industrializing and urbanizing, but that historical prejudice remains. High-end skin-whitening products are a $100 million-a-year business in China, according to industry statistics.
'Are we racist?'
Chen Juan, 27, a secretary in an English-language training school in Beijing, regularly uses skin-whitening products and carries an umbrella on summer days. "For me, the whiter, the better. Being white means pretty," she said. "If someone looks too black, I feel they look countrified and like a farmer. . . . Being white is prettier than being black."
"In my impression, black people, especially Africans, are not clean enough," Chen continued. "To be frank, I just feel black people are too black. Definitely, I wouldn't consider having a black guy as my boyfriend even if he were rich."



P.C. Chike, a Nigerian businessman in Guangzhou who has been in China for five years, exports wigs and extensions made from Chinese hair to his home country. He married a Chinese woman from Beijing, and they have a son, with another on the way.
"Chinese don't like Africans. They don't like black skin," Chike said. "China trying to embrace Africa is a political statement. The question is, how do they treat black people?"
Li Wenjuan, Chike's wife, said she thinks racial attitudes are less coarse in Beijing than in Guangzhou, where the commonly used Cantonese term for blacks translates as "black ghosts."
Some here say Obama's presidency is causing a major shift in attitudes. Others, however, say many Chinese rationalize his election as a fluke of the American system or suggest that Obama, whose mother was white, isn't "really" black.



"It will be really interesting to see what happens when he comes to visit, because I really think the Chinese have a hard time with it," Hung said. "Nobody has dealt with this question of what this means to our sense of race. It's a kind of self-examination that Chinese -- including myself -- need to go through: Are we racist?"



Lou sees similarities between her life and Obama's: She also grew up without her father, whom she never knew. She read Obama's autobiography and watched his campaign speeches on television. She learned how to chant "Yes, we can!" in English and calls Obama "my idol."
Reading the withering online criticisms of her talent-show appearance, she recalled, she came across one post that asked: "Now that Obama is president, does that mean a new day for black people has arrived?"
"I think the answer is yes," she said. "Some Chinese people's perceptions of black people here have been transformed."

[wbvs]

jamaica won the prestigiuos Lunar year cup in 2007 'Year of the Pig'
we mathematically won the 2008 beijing olympics 1 Gold medal per
470,000 people,and our Para-olympics dust out the chinese in football.
On other notes , chineyman is inferior to me , mi have one as a manager
already and when im became too bossey mi tink seh mi a sh!T inna him head
and laugh affa dat mentally . Chineyman stingy ,chineyman run shop in jamaica , chiney man knoo kung fu and yes chineyman inferior to me . I remember when Jamaica was about to play Japan in'98 mi tell a bredrin seh
noo chiney man play better ball dan black man ,an mi words ketch dem .

[Islandman]

Wow! A lot of sweeping generalizations in this thread.

[Islandman]

Most of China is illiterate Baddaz?

Come man do betta than that. That is simply not true.

[Hortical]

Boss, I have traveled extensively to the Far East, and the info is not a generalization.

[Mosiah]

tell mi doh, di Chinese dem woulda smarter dan Kim Marie and go train a cold country instead of the Gobi Desert, right?

[Islandman]

If making a statement about 2 billion plus people is not a generalization then i don't know what is.

Anway, there were about half dozen generalizations the threads combined. Yours were probably the least questionable of them.

[Gamma]

what is interesting is how well the assimilate into jamaican rural society when they set up their shops!

my cousin's grandfather in nine turns frankfield is a bona fide chiney man (not 100 percent sure if he was born in china) ... then there s another one who set up shop in chapelton and assimilated as well then there is those who lived on the "front road" in barbican square.....and i will bet that this is oft repeated throughout the length and breadth of jamaica...

not disagreeing with the author but those indentured and most likely illiterate immigrants seemed to have been enlightened to some degree,,,,

[Baddaz]

lol... that wasn't right... i really meant to say china has a large number of illiterates... like most communist countries they provide basic education to their people... however, the sheer number of people makes it extremely challenging to educate a large segment of the population...