Race Is All Messed Up

2:48 am EST November 17th, 2009 | News | 18 Comments

In China, race and prejudice rears its head. The hangup over people’s skin color seems as widespread as mankind. Maybe the movies are right and we need some sort of alien invasion to shake us out of this. The discovery of the Martian threat will be a harmonious moment for mankind.

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18 Responses to “Race Is All Messed Up”

  1. Jaim says:
    November 17, 2009 at 3:01 am

    IMO it’s kind of an Asia-wide issue. Throw Russia in there as well. There’s just a really deep animosity and fear towards black-skinned people.

    Which is even stranger to me because hip-hop culture has made a big splash in Korea and Japan and to a lesser extent China.

    I guess I’d also add that if you look at it in terms of age, younger folks in this part of the world are definitely a lot more open-minded than their parents (usually). So it is changing, but there’s still a lot of crazy stuff. You can find the n-word on T-shirts here in Korea and people think wearing that is cool. So it’s complicated to say the least.

  2. anotherbozo says:
    November 17, 2009 at 8:39 am

    “…for I had sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
    who art as black as hell, as dark as night.” –Shakespeare

    The roots go deep, from darkness = evil to the value system among fair-skinned peoples that traditionally associated lighter skins with indoor, higher classes and darker skins with farming and other outdoor occupations. I think that latter is the case in traditional China, so it was easy to transfer that to the new (threatening) immigration of African businessmen and tradesmen.

    This is such an old story in Europe and the U.S., and we’ve begun to get over it. Let’s hope China doesn’t take quite so long.

    I remember being in a Beijing Museum 16 years ago. A Chinese boy who obviously hadn’t seen that many round-eyed Westerners followed me through several rooms, gawking, but I was interested in him, too: he was darker skinned than many Africans, and my wife (who is Asian) surmised from his generally appearance that he was a farm boy. I hadn’t known Chinese could look that dark, nor that color and class were so identifiable there.

  3. Pryme says:
    November 17, 2009 at 9:26 am

    Saw this story in WashPost…they also talk about how the fad is whitening the skin (a la Sammy Sosa). And they quoted someone who pretty much said what anotherbozo said, only a tad more blunt.

  4. Rheinhard says:
    November 17, 2009 at 10:20 am

    Of course some of the worst Asian racial prejudices are against… other Asians. I have a wonderful “educational” manga about the life of Albert Einstein that mentions his visit to Japan, and how he was treated well unlike other countries because Japan didn’t have anti-Semitism. Well, of course they didn’t, because they didn’t have Jews! But Japan suuuuure did have anti-Koreanism and anti-Chineseism! You always hate your nextdoor neighbors… the folks on the next continent whom you never see, not so much.

  5. deus ex machina says:
    November 17, 2009 at 10:24 am

    You don’t need to go all the way to China. Did you hear about what’s in today’s Washington Times? There’s an op-ed by notorious racist Wesley Pruden that in the course of attacking Obama, takes a gratuitous slap at his mother for being “attracted to men of the Third World”. I guess that’s the 2009 version of “n****r lover”?

  6. Southern Quaker says:
    November 17, 2009 at 11:59 am

    There’s a strong prejudice against dark skin in India, as well, and skin lightening cremes are all the rage these days among men as well as women. I’ve read speculation that a contributing factor has been the repeated invasion of the sub-continent from the North – having lighter skin made it easier to assimilate into the conquering peoples and retain (or gain) some power in society.

  7. gruaud says:
    November 17, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    “The discovery of the Martian threat will be a harmonious moment for mankind.”

    Nah, we were supposed to be united after 9/11 and the GOP turned on the rest
    of us like the rabid dogs they are.

    The authoritarian whites would sell all the brown-skinned people to the Martians
    for food or slave labor the first opportunity they get.

  8. canadian bacon says:
    November 17, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    A friend of mine who is Chinese asked me if I knew why so many Chinese women in our Chinatown used umbrellas on sunny days. I answered “to keep cool” and she told me it was to keep their skin from darkening because darker skin was not desirable at all.

  9. justadood says:
    November 17, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    in my travels in Asia, dark skin == labourer in the outdoors under the sun…longhand for ‘poor, uneducated, schlub’

    was the same in Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, China, Japan, Korea…if you were Asian with dark skin it meant you were lower-class/caste, poor, and a servant/labourer. Lighter skin tone was attributed to the affluent or to the ruling class.

    Odd thing, that……

  10. KXB says:
    November 17, 2009 at 1:56 pm

    When discussing the whole nonsense of whitening creams used by Indians, I’d like to point out that affluent whites are damaging their skin by either staying out in the sun too long, or using those hideous spray tans that make white people look orange. And black women go through grueling chemical treatments to straighten out their hair. Everyone has their own absurd cosmetic routines. But, I can’t think of any cosmetic routine that black men do regularly, aside from keeping plenty of lotion on hand during the winter – but everyone does that.

  11. rat_bastard says:
    November 17, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    At least the Chinese don’t have scary Pineapple Negros screaming “M-effer get me some iced tea!”

  12. anotherbozo says:
    November 17, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    “The authoritarian whites would sell all the brown-skinned people to the Martians for food or slave labor the first opportunity they get.”

    Gruaud – Check Derrick Bell. He wrote an essay about just that probability (I forget the title).

  13. Jaim says:
    November 17, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    “Of course some of the worst Asian racial prejudices are against… other Asians.”

    Asian hate of Japan isn’t at all irrational, given what that country did to the other ones in the first half of the 20th century.

  14. Randy Brown says:
    November 17, 2009 at 7:45 pm

    Is it any fucking wonder that the DC Times is on the verge of going out of business? I mean, this is a paper that is being investigated by the EEOC for forcing employees to attend Rev. Moon’s mass weddings…

  15. rat_bastard says:
    November 17, 2009 at 8:05 pm

    Dude? Did you read that after typing it? Its rational to hate a country for things it did over half a century ago?

    So what we hate Germany for WW1 and WW2?
    So Japan hates us for Fat man and Little boy?

    Whats the statute of limitations? Should we still hate Britain for wanting to maintain control of its colonies? Should black people still hate white people for slavery?

  16. Jaim says:
    November 17, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    Rape of Nanking:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

    Japanese occupation of Korea:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Korea

    Maybe if Japan would, you know, actually apologize for these attrocities we could begin to forgive and forget.

    FWIW, I used to live in Japan. Great country and nice people. But their government policies re: past activities are insane.

  17. rat_bastard says:
    November 18, 2009 at 12:05 am

    So its allright to hate a people if their parents did something really really bad?

    Fuck,

    OW for the record, my family immagrated from Ireland and Scotland in the early 20th century, so we where not really involved in the slave trade.

  18. gruaud says:
    November 19, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    ‘The Space Traders’

    Thanks, that was a very interesting story.